Our Future Selves Are Strangers To Us
When we make promises to other people, when we promise to love someone till death do us part, we are making a promise that a stranger is going to have to keep. Our future selves might not share our views, our perspectives, our hopes.
When we lock people up and throw away the key, it’s not just that the people we imprison are going to be different in 30 years. We are going to be different 30 years from now. Our need for retribution, for vengeance, might not be what it is today.
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Shankar Vedantam 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.
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