Dr. David Eagleman

Well, they have a dialogue with the page.

So if you're a guy drawing and, you know, you're looking at the horse or you're picturing what, you know, Ariel the mermaid looks like or whatever, you're trying lines and scratching and doing things.

You don't come to the table or say, oh, I know what a mermaid looks like and you draw it.

So they just end up getting more practice and they get better at it.

I'd say a couple of things.

One is we're clearly predisposed to particular things.

And so, for example, I'd like to be a swimmer as good as Michael Phelps, but I just don't have the wingspan that he does.

He's got like, I don't know, seven feet between his fingertips or something.

Jesus.

There's no way I'm going to be able to be as good as he is.

That's a genetic thing that he drops into the world with that I don't.

Fine.

So given that, people are off on different trajectories anyway.

The way I think about this, I don't know how this will translate just in terms of audio, but like a space-time cone in physics is where you start in one spot and then there are all these different trajectories you can take into the future.

Picture this like you're starting at the bottom of the ice cream cone and you can –

You can take any different trajectory as long as it still exists within the ice cream cone.

OK, so, you know, we drop into the world with our genetic skills and predispositions.

We have childhoods that we don't choose.

We're born into a cultural language and era that we don't choose.

And that defines the limits of the ice cream cone about where we can go with that.