Natural Questions
22 Feb 2018The question comes up all the time: Would I trade my arms for wings1, if I could?
It’d be impossible to type this without arms, and especially the hands and fingers that accompany them. On the other hand, with (the right kind of) wings i’d have Flight - something I’m currently incapable of, and hard to truly imagine.
It’s a really tough question. The best answer I could come up with is that I’d like to keep my arms, but while developing the ability to manipulate the quanta of subatomic energies surrounding my body to overcome gravity and lift myself to any height and distance - within the reasonable limits of my own stamina.
I realize that’s cheating the question; it would be the best of both worlds. You can’t have your cake and eat it too2.
notes
1 This question has actually never come up.
2 This is false; I received a cake (the kind with a hole in the center) as a seasonal gift from Noho Productions. It was my cake, and I ate the whole thing one cold afternoon when I didn’t feel like going to the grocery store. It cost me nothing; it follows that there does exist such a thing as a free lunch3.
3edit: a follow up on free lunches from Seth’s blog. 03-22-2018