I think this really just comes down to: our thoughts are strongly shaped by external details (including our interactions with them). She mentions a few cases o

I think this really just comes down to: our thoughts are strongly shaped by external details (including our interactions with them). She mentions a few cases of that, but overlooks many others: the articles and books we read, the conversations we have with others, the process of building and interacting with things (whether physical things, or stuff like software), etc. These are all major factors in developing ideas. Our mental processes can't develop ideas without such inputs, and the character of those inputs play a large role in the ideas developed.