Reversed bike, confused mind

On the heels of our “Bring It Back Home 2015” conference (a great event!), here comes an interesting link sent to me by a former student, one clever Qatari man, who is studying Aerospace Engineering in the United States. This short video illustrates difficulties involved in “re-educating” the brain to think differently, outside its usual fixed paradigms. Yes, that’s hard work – as I’m beginning to realise in the initial stages of writing my thesis.

I find myself stifled by years of – paradoxically – unreflective “thinking”. It’s like I’ve accumulated layers of cognitive leanings and tendencies to think in a specific way about my work/research context and the people in it. This “way” has been guided by confirmation bias rather than critical, continuous re-consideration and re-evaluation of my understandings of the context. So now, I’m having to dig through and try to discard those layers. Very uncomfortable!

Early drafts of my thesis show all that to my readers (thank you, Richard!) and I am in the process of trying to address these issues through more transparent and less positional writing. Wish me luck… 🙂

Anyway, here is the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0&feature=youtu.be

P.S. I’ve ordered a copy of An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield.  Should be interesting to read – it must be a different view of the world from up there.

Magda