Here is the full transcript of Shankar Vedantam’s talk titled “You Don’t Actually Know What Your Future Self Wants” at TED conference.
In his thought-provoking talk, journalist Shankar Vedantam explores the concept of personal evolution and the fluidity of our identities over time, challenging the notion that our present selves can fully comprehend the desires and needs of our future selves. He introduces the idea that despite the continuity of our physical existence, akin to the ship of Theseus, our psychological selves undergo significant changes, rendering our future selves almost strangers to our present identities.
Vedantam argues that this misunderstanding can impact various aspects of life, from personal commitments like marriage vows to societal actions such as legislation and incarceration, often predicated on the assumption of a static self. He highlights the illusion of continuity and our tendency to underestimate how much we will change in the future.
To navigate this “wicked problem,” Vedantam suggests three strategies: actively shaping our future selves by staying curious, embracing humility in our convictions knowing they may evolve, and courageously accepting the potential growth and capacities our future selves might possess. He posits that by acknowledging and preparing for these inevitable changes, we can make decisions that are more aligned with the unpredictable nature of our desires and identities.
Ultimately, Vedantam’s talk invites reflection on the dynamic journey of self-discovery and adaptation, urging us to approach life’s decisions with flexibility and foresight.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
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.” 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.
The Evolution of Interests
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.
Life, Love, and Change
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.
Navigating Change
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 in 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.
Embracing Future Possibilities
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. 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.
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.”