You don't actually know what your future self wants | TED Business
Oct 4, 2023
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Journalist Shankar Vendantam discusses the 'illusion of continuity' and how we can actively shape our future selves. The podcast explores the ethical dilemma of our future selves differing from our present selves, and offers advice on crafting our future selves through curiosity, humility, and bravery. It also delves into the concept of affective forecasting and our tendency to mispredict our emotions.
Our future selves may not share the same views, perspectives, and hopes as our current selves, highlighting the importance of actively curating and shaping the person we want to become.
The belief in the illusion of continuity can have profound consequences in various areas of our lives, such as making promises, shaping legal systems, and crafting laws that align with the perspectives and values of our future selves.
Deep dives
Crafting our future selves
Shankar Vedantam, host of the podcast Hidden Brain, explores why we tend to assume that our future selves will have the same views, perspectives, and hopes as our current selves. He emphasizes the importance of actively curating and shaping the person we want to become by staying curious, expanding our horizons, and being the architect of our future self.
The illusion of continuity and its consequences
Vedantam discusses the illusion of continuity, the belief that despite the changes around us, we will remain the same people in the future. He highlights the profound consequences of this belief, including the challenges it poses in making promises, shaping legal systems, and crafting laws that align with the perspectives and values of our future selves.
Embracing the uncertainty of our future emotions
Drawing on the concept of affective forecasting, Vedantam explains how we are often ineffective at predicting our future emotions. He highlights the biases and cognitive limitations that cause us to overestimate the intensity and duration of our emotions. Vedantam suggests that embracing the uncertainty of our future emotions requires humility and bravery, encouraging us to remain open to new possibilities and opportunities that may lead to greater fulfillment.
"You are constantly becoming a new person," says journalist Shankar Vendantam. In a talk full of beautiful storytelling, he explains the profound impact of something he calls the "illusion of continuity" -- the belief that our future selves will share the same views, perspectives and hopes as our current selves -- and shows how we can more proactively craft the people we are to become. Stay tuned after the talk as TED business host Modupe Akinola shares a clear-eyed and empowering perspective on your future self's feelings. This is an episode of TED Business, another podcast from the TED Audio Collective. You can follow TED Business wherever you are listening to this.