David Eagleman

The reason it's really hard to swat a fly is because the signals are moving around fast in that brain.

Sorry, I should say the signals are moving along the neurons in a fly brain exactly the same speed that they're moving with us.

But it can get across the brain and do everything it needs to and get to the motor system of the fly really quickly because there's just not that much territory to cover.

In contrast, the human brain is enormous.

You have to cross vast swaths of territory with these signals to get stuff to happen.

So there's a sense in which we are always going to live in the past.

Happily, technologically, things have sped up a lot.

It's always struck me so funny the way that we... Once something speeds up, we say, oh, I...

I never realized I could save time there and then you can never go back.

But often we don't realize there are ways that we could have saved time.

Like, for example, if somebody invents something where you can wash all your dishes or wash all your clothes, you know, like in one second and then the thing's done and unloaded automatically, you would say, oh, great, I'm never going back.

But, you know, we do washing machines and laundry machines now and it doesn't bother us too much.

Umwelt, yeah.

Yeah, it's, yeah.

Cool.

Well, the easiest way to think about the umwelt is that looking across the animal kingdom.

So, you know, for a tick, for example, all it can detect is temperature and body odor.

That's its only signaling mechanisms.

And so its world is built out of that.

Or for the blind echolocating bat, its world is built out of these echoing sound signals.