‘Hey Bill Nye, Our Brains Are All the Same – Why Aren’t People More Identical?’ | Big Think

Bill Nye: Shouldn't we all have the same favorites? Aren't we all the same? Don't our brains all grow the same? The answer is no and yes. That is to say we have much more - we are much more alike than we are different.

This old question - if I see red, is it the same to you as it is to me? Like what I think is red is really green, and your brain learns to call what your green is my red, and so on? Okay, these are good questions, but I think the reason we have favorites is that we all are slightly different. We do not look identical. We are not biological clones. Everybody is a little different.

Everybody is exposed to different experiences and different chemicals, different things in the air and water as you grow up. So what you prefer in food could change from one place to another based on your environment. And everybody's genes are different. One exception might be identical twins. But everybody's genes are different, and so what we prefer, what we like, what we find as favorites is different from one person to another.

But if nothing else, I have learned in life people are a heck of a lot more alike than they are different. You'll find that if you like a yummy chocolate dessert, it's very likely that someone else will like that yummy chocolate dessert. That your favorites, you may be surprised, are favored by a great many people.

When you get into disagreements, it's often, I think, a result of your experiences. Like I've had great experience eating ice cream with honey, vanilla ice cream with honey. Every time I think about it, I think about my dad, and I have good thoughts. But there's other people who think vanilla ice cream, that's not interesting enough to me. Honey, that's too commonplace.

I won't say I feel bad for you, but that means more vanilla and honey for me. You'll find people are more alike than they are different and enjoy the favorites, celebrate these little differences. It's part of what makes life fun. Carry on.