Indeed, here in Dubai, we have the perfect example of the 'chimp' eliminating conscious thought and selecting the WRONG motor program, which then ran automatically!
It is not surprising that when under pressure, with a lot of mental processing filling up his brain that he chose a sub conscious motor skill that he had been practicing and using on a regular basis. If we make the assumption that he was mentally overloaded. ( assumption) , then it would have been very surprising for him to select a sub conscious motor skill that he hasn't needed for years, ie pushing the thrust up.
Have you ever swapped from a European car to a Japanese car and put the windshield wipers on instead of the indicator? That happens regularly to experienced drivers. They are making the selection with little or no mental effort and they are selecting the wrong action.
For 777 drivers the action of pushing the thrust up with their hand is no longer the go to course of action at a sub conscious level. If they have the mental space/ time to actively think about what is required then they will no doubt come up with the correct action, but if they have no processing power to allocate to the job, they won't.
It could possibly be a combination of such things, but I have little doubt, in the current climate, many of us (both old and bold, AND magenta line!) could easily have fallen into the same trap.
I would agree with that if it read "
could easily have fallen into the same trap if it had been years since we had manually pushed a thrust lever forward."