Do we really know what we want in the future?

How do we prepare for the stranger we will be in the years to come?

Are we consistently the same? If we looked at ourselves at age 12, would we have the same interests? Similar dreams? Probably not. Shankar Vedantam, for example, thought at that age he would become a great soccer player. At 22, he would get a certificate in computer science and at 42, he would be living in the United States, a journalist and host of a podcast on the possibilities of the brain. In short, a total betrayal of the aspirations of the boy he was.

Yet this is not seen as a failure by this man. Quite the contrary. Because he realized that we have a very strong cognitive bias: the illusion of continuity. We have the impression that our future will be an identical version of us but with a few years more. This could not be further from the truth. Only at the cellular level, everything changes over the years.

Same thing psychologically. We evolve through our experiences and acquire a worldview that changes. He will give the example of a woman who, in her 30s, working with terminally ill patients, will tell her husband that she would rather die than endure this suffering. Yet, suffering from Lou Gherig's disease 20 years later, she will ask to be put on a ventilator to live as long as possible. Because her vision has changed.

This reflection is not one about dying with dignity but rather about the choices we make and our arrogance about them. We promise fidelity to a person when it is a "stranger" who will have to keep that promise in 10 years. We pass laws to improve a country without thinking that they may become obsolete and ridiculous in 20, 40, or 100 years.

Except at the moment of our death, we are not at the end of history. Everything can change. Therefore, Mr. Vedantam proposes to nurture our curiosity, practice humility and be courageous in order to prepare for our future selves.

Length: 14min09 (in English with French subtitles)