You Don’t Actually Know What Your Future Self Wants | Shankar Vedantam | TED

Summary

The speaker recounts personal stories to illustrate how people change over time, challenging the 'illusion of continuity' where we assume future selves will be the same. He discusses the ethical dilemmas arising from this illusion, using the example of a couple's differing views on end-of-life care. The talk concludes with advice to stay curious, practice humility, and be brave to shape a better future self.

Takeaways

• 😀 The speaker's childhood love for soccer contrasted with his later shift to American football illustrates how our interests can change dramatically over time.
• 🎓 At 22, the speaker was an electronics engineer with no idea he would become a journalist and podcast host in the US, highlighting the unpredictability of our future selves.
• 🌐 The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated changes in people, affecting their outlooks and perspectives, showing how quickly circumstances can alter who we are.
• 🔄 The 'illusion of continuity' is the idea that we expect our future selves to be the same as our current selves, despite recognizing changes in our past.
• 👵 The story of John and Stephanie Rinka reveals how our health conditions and circumstances can lead us to make decisions contrary to what we previously believed.
• 🚢 The 'ship of Theseus' thought experiment is used to explore the concept of personal identity and change, questioning if we remain the same person over time.
• 🧠 Our psychological identity is not static; it evolves as we gain new experiences and perspectives, challenging the idea of a consistent self.
• 🗣️ When making promises or laws, we should consider that our future selves might have different views and needs, urging a more flexible approach to commitments.
• 🌟 The speaker advises staying curious, practicing humility, and being brave to shape a future self that we will appreciate, providing actionable steps for personal growth.
• 👥 These principles are not just for individuals but also apply to organizations and societies, emphasizing the need for adaptability and evolution in all aspects of life.

Q & A

What happened to the speaker when he was 12 years old?

The speaker fractured his foot while playing soccer but chose not to tell his parents because he didn't want to miss seeing a soccer movie the next day.

Why did the speaker limp while walking to the movie theater with his dad?

He limped because of the fractured foot he sustained from playing soccer, but he lied to his dad, saying he had something in his shoe.

How did the speaker's interest in soccer change over time?

Four decades later, the speaker no longer considers himself a soccer fan and has shifted his sports interest to another kind of football.

What was the speaker's profession when he was 22 years old?

The speaker was a freshly minted electronics engineer in southern India.

What is the name of the podcast the speaker hosts?

The speaker hosts a podcast called 'Hidden Brain'.

What paradox does the speaker mention regarding how we perceive our personal changes over time?

The paradox is that while we can see significant changes in ourselves when looking back, we tend to imagine that we will remain the same in the future.

What is the term the speaker uses to describe the belief that our future selves will be the same as our current selves?

The speaker calls this belief the 'illusion of continuity'.

What is the story of John and Stephanie Rinka related to the speaker's main point?

The story illustrates the illusion of continuity by showing how Stephanie's wishes about her end-of-life care changed when she actually faced a terminal illness.

What disease did Stephanie Rinka develop in her late fifties?

Stephanie Rinka was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

How does the speaker suggest we should approach making decisions for our future selves?

The speaker advises to stay curious, practice humility, and be brave, recognizing that our future selves may have different perspectives and capabilities.

What is the 'ship of Theseus' thought experiment mentioned by the speaker?

The 'ship of Theseus' is a philosophical thought experiment that questions identity and change over time, using the analogy of a ship where parts are gradually replaced.

Outlines

00:00

😔 Childhood Soccer Injury and Changing Interests

The speaker recounts a childhood incident where at age 12, they fractured their foot playing soccer but concealed the injury from their parents because they wanted to watch a soccer movie the next day. Despite the pain, they enjoyed the movie about Brazilian soccer stars. However, four decades later, their interests have shifted from soccer to American football, a change that their younger self would find incomprehensible. The speaker then transitions to discuss how much people can change over time, using their own life as an example of transitioning from an electronics engineer in India to a journalist hosting a podcast in the United States. The COVID pandemic is mentioned as a recent example of how people's lives and perspectives can drastically change in a short period.

05:05

🏥 The Paradox of Personal Change and End-of-Life Decisions

The speaker introduces the concept of the 'illusion of continuity,' where people can recognize how much they have changed when looking back but tend to assume they will remain the same in the future. Using the story of John and Stephanie Rinka, the speaker illustrates how Stephanie's end-of-life wishes changed when faced with a terminal illness. Despite having expressed a desire for no life-prolonging measures, when the moment came, she chose to go on a ventilator. This highlights the difficulty of predicting one's future self's desires and the ethical challenges it presents.

10:08

🛠️ Crafting Your Future Self and Embracing Change

The speaker offers three pieces of advice to address the challenge of personal change over time. First, to stay curious and actively shape one's future self by engaging with new experiences and perspectives. Second, to practice humility in expressing views, recognizing that future selves might disagree with current beliefs. Third, to be brave and acknowledge that future selves may have different strengths and capacities. The speaker encourages embracing change and the potential for growth, suggesting that by doing so, future selves may look back with gratitude rather than resentment.

Keywords

💡Soccer

Soccer is a globally popular sport played between two teams, each consisting of eleven players, who use any part of their body except their hands and arms to try to maneuver the ball into the opponent's goal. In the script, soccer is used as a personal anecdote to illustrate the speaker's past interests and how they have evolved over time. The speaker recalls fracturing his foot while playing soccer as a child and choosing to delay medical attention to watch a soccer movie, underscoring the passion of his youth.

💡Fractured foot

A fractured foot refers to a break or crack in one or more of the bones in the foot. In the context of the script, the speaker's fractured foot is a pivotal moment that highlights his youthful priorities and the subsequent change in interests from soccer to American football, symbolizing personal growth and the unpredictability of life's trajectory.

💡Podcast

A podcast is a digital audio file made available for downloading to a computer or mobile device, so that users can listen to the material at their convenience. The speaker mentions hosting a podcast called 'Hidden Brain,' which explores human behavior and psychological science, demonstrating a shift in his career and interests from his early days as an electronics engineer.

💡Illusion of continuity

The illusion of continuity is a psychological phenomenon where individuals perceive their future selves as an extension of their current state, without significant change. The speaker introduces this concept to explain how people often fail to anticipate the personal transformations they will undergo, despite clear evidence of past changes, such as the speaker's shift from a soccer enthusiast to a football fan.

💡Cognitive dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort experienced by a person who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values. The script touches on this when discussing the speaker's transition from a soccer fan to a football fan, which would have been inconceivable to his younger self, indicating a significant shift in identity and values.

💡Advance directive

An advance directive is a legal document in which a person specifies what actions should be taken for their health if they are unable to make decisions due to illness or incapacity. The script uses the story of John and Stephanie Rinka to illustrate the complexity and potential for change in end-of-life decisions, where Stephanie's advance directive might have been different from her actual wishes when faced with a terminal illness.

💡ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis)

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, leading to difficulty in moving muscles. In the script, Stephanie is diagnosed with ALS, which becomes a test of her and her husband's understanding of their past wishes regarding end-of-life care, highlighting the challenges of predicting future desires.

💡Ship of Theseus

The Ship of Theseus is a thought experiment that raises questions about identity and change by contemplating what remains of an object when all of its components have been replaced. The speaker uses this metaphor to discuss the continuous transformation of the self over time, suggesting that the person we become in the future may be unrecognizable from our current selves.

💡Plasticity

Plasticity, particularly neural plasticity, refers to the brain's ability to change and adapt as a result of experience. The script mentions the brain's plasticity to emphasize how our thoughts, perspectives, and even personalities can evolve over time, leading to the creation of a 'new person' with each layer of experience.

💡Humility

Humility is the quality of being modest and respectful toward others. In the context of the script, humility is suggested as a virtue to practice when making strong assertions, considering that our future selves might hold different views, thus we should speak with an awareness of our own potential change.

💡Curiosity

Curiosity is the desire to learn or know more about something or someone. The speaker encourages staying curious as a way to shape the future self, suggesting that by exploring new interests and experiences, we can guide the person we will become, aligning with the theme of personal evolution and self-determination.

Highlights

The speaker fractured his foot at 12 but chose to watch a soccer movie instead of seeing a doctor, illustrating the lengths one might go for their passions.

Four decades later, the speaker's interests have shifted from soccer to American football, indicating significant personal change over time.

At 22, the speaker was an electronics engineer in India with no idea he would become a journalist and podcast host in the U.S., highlighting the unpredictability of life paths.

The concept of 'Hidden Brain,' a podcast about human behavior and psychological science, is introduced as a tool to understand life changes.

The speaker discusses the illusion of continuity, where people see significant changes in their past selves but fail to anticipate future changes.

The paradox of recognizing personal change in retrospect but not anticipating it in the future is explored.

The story of John and Stephanie Rinka is introduced to illustrate the complexities of personal change and end-of-life decisions.

Stephanie's initial desire to avoid prolonging suffering in the face of terminal illness contrasts with her later decision to go on a ventilator.

The ethical dilemma of honoring past wishes versus present needs is highlighted through the Rinkas' story.

The 'ship of Theseus' thought experiment is used to analogize the continuous change in human identity and bodies.

The brain's plasticity and the psychological changes it entails are discussed as a profound aspect of personal evolution.

The speaker challenges the audience to consider how their future selves might view their current decisions and beliefs.

Three pieces of advice are offered: stay curious, practice humility, and be brave in the face of change.

The importance of being open to the idea that our future selves will have different perspectives and strengths is emphasized.

The speaker encourages the audience to actively shape their future selves through curiosity, humility, and bravery.

The potential for future selves to have different capacities and wisdom is acknowledged, urging people to be open to change.

The talk concludes with the idea that by embracing curiosity, humility, and bravery, we can ensure our future selves will be grateful for our current actions.

Transcripts

When I was 12 years old,

I fractured my foot playing soccer.

I didn't tell my parents when I got home that night,

because the next day, my dad was taking me to see a movie,

a soccer movie.

I worried that if I told my parents about the foot,

they would take me to see a doctor.

I didn't want to see a doctor,

I wanted to see the movie.

The next morning, my dad goes,

"It's nice out. Why don't we walk to the theater."

(Laughter)

It was a mile away.

As we go, he says,

"Why are you limping?"

I tell him I have something in my shoe.

The movie was spectacular.

It told the story of some of soccer's greatest stars,

great Brazilian players.

I was ecstatic.

At the end of the movie, I told my dad about the foot;

he took me to see an orthopedic doctor,

who put my foot in a cast for three weeks.

I tell you the story today, because four decades later,

I don't really consider myself a soccer fan anymore.

Today, my sports fandom is tuned to another kind of football.

Now my 12-year-old self wouldn't just find this incomprehensible.

My 12-year-old self would see this as a betrayal.

Now you might say we all change from the time we are 12,

so let me fast-forward a decade.

When I was 22,

I was a freshly minted electronics engineer in southern India.

I had no idea that three decades later, I would be living in the United States,

that I would be a journalist,

and that I would be the host of a podcast called "Hidden Brain."

It's a show about human behavior

and how to apply psychological science to our lives.

Now we didn’t have podcasts when I graduated from college.

We didn’t walk around with smartphones in our pockets.

So my future was not just unknown;

it was unknowable.

All of us have seen what this is like in the last three years,

as we slowly try and emerge from the COVID pandemic.

If we think about the people we used to be three years ago, before the pandemic,

we can see how we have changed.

We can see how anxiety and isolation

and upheavals in our lives and livelihoods,

how this has changed us, changed our outlook,

changed our perspective.

But there is a paradox here,

and the paradox is when we look backwards,

we can see enormous changes in who we have become.

But when we look forwards,

we tend to imagine that we're going to be the same people in the future.

Now sure, we imagine the world is going to be different.

We know what AI and climate change

is going to mean for a very different world.

But we don't imagine that we ourselves will have different perspectives,

different views, different preferences in the future.

I call this the illusion of continuity.

And I think one reason this happens is that when we look backwards,

the contrast with our prior selves to who we are today is so clear.

We can see it so clearly that we have become different people.

When we look forward, we can imagine ourselves being a little older,

a little grayer,

but we don't imagine, fundamentally,

that we're going to have a different outlook or perspective,

that we're going to be different people.

And so those changes seem more amorphous.

I want to make the case to you today

that this illusion has profound consequences

not just for whether we become soccer players or podcast hosts,

but for matters involving life and death.

Let me introduce you to John and Stephanie Rinka.

We did a story about them for "Hidden Brain" some years ago.

This photograph was taken in 1971, on their wedding day.

John and Stephanie had just eloped,

and gotten married at Cambridge City Hall in Massachusetts.

He was 22, she was 19.

John told me that after they got married,

they traveled to different parts of the country.

They eventually settled in North Carolina.

John became a high school basketball coach,

Stephanie became a nurse.

And because they lived in a rural part of the state,

she would often make house visits to patients.

Many of the patients she saw were very sick.

They had terminal illnesses, very low quality of life.

And when Stephanie came home from these visits,

she was often shaken.

And she would tell John,

"John, if I ever get a terminal illness,

please do nothing to prolong my suffering.

I care more about quality of life than quantity of life.

In her more dramatic moments, she would say,

"John, if I ever get that sick, just shoot me.

Just shoot me."

And John Rinka would look lovingly at his wife, his healthy wife,

and he would say,

"OK, Steph. OK."

Fast-forward a couple of decades.

In her late fifties, Stephanie begins to slur her words.

She goes to see a doctor, who runs some tests,

and he diagnoses her with ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease.

He tells her it's fatal. It's incurable.

And he tells her that a day is going to come

when she is no longer able to breathe on her own.

Stephanie, being Stephanie,

decides to extract as much joy and pleasure from life as she can,

she spends time with friends and family.

As she gets sicker,

she and John spend some time on a beautiful beach that they both love.

But there comes a day when Stephanie, in fact, is no longer able to breathe.

She's gasping for air, and John takes her to the hospital.

And a nurse at the hospital asked Stephanie,

"Mrs. Rinka, would you like us to put you on a ventilator?"

And Stephanie says yes.

John is flabbergasted.

They've been having this conversation for 30 years.

Surely that's not what Stephanie wants.

He doesn't say anything.

The next morning, he says,

"Steph, when the nurse asked you yesterday if you wanted to go on a ventilator,

and you said yes,

is that really what you want?"

And Stephanie Rinka said yes.

Now, you might argue that if Stephanie had written out an advance directive,

if Stephanie had come into the hospital unconscious,

if the nurse had asked John, "What is it your wife would want?"

John, without hesitation, would have said,

"Of course she does not want to go on a ventilator.

We should figure out a way to keep her as comfortable as possible

so that she can die with dignity."

But of course, this only solves the legal conundrum.

It doesn't solve the ethical problem here.

And the ethical problem is that Stephanie, at age 39, as she was healthy,

had no real conception of what Stephanie at age 59,

with a terminal illness, gasping for air,

would really want.

For the older Stephanie,

her younger self might as well have been a stranger.

A stranger who was trying to make life and death decisions for her.

Philosophers have talked for many years about a thought experiment;

it’s sometimes called the “ship of Theseus”.

The great warrior Theseus returned from his exploits,

his ship was stationed in the harbor as a memorial.

And over the decades, parts of the ship began to rot and decay,

and as this happened, planks were replaced by new planks.

Until, eventually, every part of the ship of Theseus

was built from something new.

And philosophers, starting with Plato,

have asked the question "If every part of the ship of Theseus is new,

is this still the ship of Theseus?"

You and I are walking examples of the ship of Theseus.

Our cells turn over all the time.

The people you were 10 years ago are not the people you are today.

Biologically, you have become a different person.

But I believe something much more profound happens at a psychological level.

Because you could argue a ship is not just a collection of planks,

a body is not just a collection of cells.

It's the organization of the planks that makes the ship.

It's the organization of the cells that make the body.

If you preserve the organization,

even if you swap planks or cells in and out,

you still have the ship, you still have the same body.

But at a psychological level,

each new layer that's put down

is not identical to the one that came before it.

The famous plasticity of the brain that we've all heard so much about

means that, on an ongoing basis,

you are constantly becoming a new person.

This has profound consequences for so many aspects of our lives.

You know, I have the illusion that 12-year-old Shankar

who wanted to be a soccer star,

and 52-year-old Shankar who is the podcast host

and 82-year-old Shankar,

who will hopefully be living one day on a beautiful beach,

that these are all the same person.

Is that really true?

Let's set aside the philosophical questions for another day,

and let me tell you about some of the practical challenges

of this problem.

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.

(Applause)

When we pass laws,

we often do so with an intent of making a better country,

improving our country.

But any country that's been around for a few decades

has numerous laws on the books

that made perfect sense when they were crafted --

in fact, that were seen as enlightened when they were crafted --

and today, they seem antiquated or absurd, or even unconscionable.

And all of these examples stem from the same problem,

which is that we imagine that we represent the end of history.

That the future is only going to be more of the same.

I have three pieces of advice

on how to wrestle with this wicked problem.

And it is a wicked problem,

because all of us spend so much of our lives

trying to make our future selves happy.

We don't stop to ask,

"Is it possible that in 20 or 30 years,

our future selves are going to look back at us

with bewilderment, with resentment.

That our future selves will ask us,

"What made you possibly think that that is what I would want?"

The first piece of advice I have

is if you accept the idea that you're going to be a different person

in 30 years' time,

you should play an active role crafting the person you are going to become.

You should be the curator of your future self.

You should be the architect of your future self.

But what does that mean?

Spend time with people who are not just your friends and family.

Spend time on avocations and professional pursuits

that are not just what you do regularly.

Expand your horizons,

because you're going to become someone different,

you might as well be in charge of deciding who that person is going to be.

So the first piece of advice is to stay curious.

Second, as we make pronouncements on social media or in political forums,

or at dinner parties,

let's bear in mind that among the people who might disagree with us

are our own future selves.

(Laughter)

So when we express views with great certitude and confidence,

let's remember to add a touch of humility.

This is true, by the way, not just at an individual level --

it's also true at an organizational level.

I was speaking, some time ago, with this young, wonderful woman.

She had just reached a position of authority at her organization,

and she had many idealistic ideas

of how she wanted to change her organization.

And she asked me, "How do we make these changes

so that in the future,

no one's going to come along and undo the changes that I have made?"

And it's a very human impulse, but it stems from the same belief,

that our perspective on history is the final word.

And quite simply, this is wrong.

Three.

I've given you a number of ways

in which our future selves are going to be weaker and frailer than we are today.

And that is true, that is part of the story.

But it is only a part of the story.

Our future selves are also going to have capacities and strengths

and wisdom that we do not possess today.

So when we confront opportunities and we hesitate,

when I tell myself, "I don't think I have it in me

to quit my job and start my own company,"

or I tell myself I don't have it in me to learn a musical instrument

at the age of 52.

Or I tell myself I don't have it in me to look after a disabled child.

What we really should be saying

is "I don't have the capacity to do those things today.

That doesn’t mean I won’t have the capacity to do those things tomorrow.”

So lesson number three is to be brave.

I believe if you can do these three things,

if you can stay curious,

you can practice humility and you can be brave,

then your future self will look back at you

in 20 or 30 years --

will look back,

not with resentment or bewilderment,

but will look back at you and say:

"Thank you."

(Applause)