Hits the nail on the head. Our brains are back propagating, recursive neural networks that are consistently making predictions about the next input in the stream of input signals as it changes over time. When the prediction results are correct we save a fuzzy recording of the higher-order-pattern that resulted in our correct prediction. Each time our predictions are correct that "memory" is reinforced so we're able to make faster predictions, at earlier points in the pattern.<p>I hypothesize that the source of most anxiety or nervousness stems from our brains making no correct predictions in that moment. This is supported anecdotally by my patterns for overcoming social interactions that used to make me anxious that I've now become comfortable with. My brain now makes enough correct predictions that I don't feel the need to leave the situation.<p>I hypothesize that part of why I started acting on my transgender feelings was because I'd become so uncomfortable in my own body that my brain wasn't able to make accurate predictions about the sensations coming from my within. This is supported anecdotally by the following.<p>I started 2 activities when I accepted my desire to transition to female. Both were touted at reducing the feelings of un-comfortableness in my own body. Female to Male hormone therapy and taijiquan. Both produced lots of new feelings for my brain. Both gave me a sense of agency over my own body, the understanding that I have the ability to shape my body into what I want. In the end I stopped transitioning because taking the hormones(mostly the T blocker) isn't known to be healthy for the body(Liver/Kidneys). Taijiquan is almost unanimously a positive source of change in ones health for the rest of their lives therefore I choose taijiquan and a long healthy life over my desires to have female genitals. Practicing Taijiquan makes me feel better, and in regards to my gender dysphoria taijiquan has cured it; I am very comfortable with my male genitals now that I'm able to make enough consistent predictions during sex to remain engaged with the situation and remain turned on.<p>Edit Addition: I'd like to state that I still identify as a cross dresser and I'm comfortable saying that love certain parts/styles of womens fashion and accessories. Example, I love long flowing skirts. As a society I feel we should reassess men wearing skirts as it is much healthier for our genitals.
Just because it has been an evolutionary advantage for our mind to be constantly active, doesn't mean that this can't change.<p>That's the point of evolution: we adapt to what's necessary and, for millions of years, constant thought was the factor that made us smarter than everyone else, and the humans in whom this didn't occur weren't smart enough, thus their genes disappeared from the gene pool.<p>This, however, doesn't mean we can't keep evolving towards a state of consciousness where constant thought isn't required, it just means that -- as is always the case -- existence is challenging, because there's millions of years of inertia behind the mind. It has a strong pull, because it was needed for survival. But we can keep evolving.<p>It doesn't need to continue like this forever. It just means that, as opposed to earlier, the people in whom thought is too strong and uncontrollable are now the ones whose genes are removed from the gene pool, through mental illness and anxiety.<p>If you're willing to spend some time watching your mind, you'll realize that it already stops all the time, it's just a matter of noticing this, thus strengthening its absence. But don't expect there to be a button to push to make it stop. It was needed for survival, so its cessation has become associated with fear. But, while you are conscious of this fact, it's not a problem, just a challenge.
This is a decent article but I strongly dislike the title. The phrasing "we aren't built for" is so pessimistic, as if being mindful (living in the moment) is hopeless or unachievable, or even undesirable or harmful.<p>Thousands of years of meditation practices have proven that living in the moment is very possible. Yes our brains are constantly planning and scheming and trying to derail us, but this can be addressed with a modest amount of deliberate practice.<p>Perhaps imagining the future is emblematic of humans, and maybe that has developed over the last 2 million years, but animals have been around 300 million years, and they are (presumably) quite adept at living in the moment. We can be as well. Striving towards that goal is very beneficial and rewarding.<p>One entry point to meditation is Sam Harris's book Waking Up which I describe here: <a href="http://www.kmeme.com/2016/07/waking-up.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.kmeme.com/2016/07/waking-up.html</a>
What uniquely distinguishes our species, more than anything else, is our ability to tell stories. From hunting a mammoth to constructing an atomic device, everything depends on our ability to believe in a common story.
A lot of interesting points made in this article, but the assertion that trauma plays only a minor role in depression, made in passing, raised an eyebrow. There's quite a bit of evidence that coming to terms with trauma, can be key for some. Trauma is of course related to imagining the future, and the therapies involved are aimed at resolving the haunting past so you can engage with the present and future unfettered, but it's not like you can tell someone with PTSD to just look to the future more positively.
Ah, there goes present moment awareness mindfulness and all that ancient millennial rediscovered new age mumbo jumbo.<p>Hey Buddha you ain't all dat!<p>My homo prospection:<p>In their foundational paper,"The authors speculate that prospection ..." that will build up a novel cottage conference, paper, grant, VC money startup generating industry catering to the buzzy AI/ML secular humanism neurotechnopoly crowd starving for some paterno-religio-academic validation. [1]<p>Carrie Fisher echos, 'Damn, we need you more than ever Pope Francis, you are our only hope...'<p>I'd like to think computers are amazin' and my brain ain't one of em'<p>[1] <a href="https://www.prospectivepsych.org/sites/www.prospectivepsych.org/files/pictures/Seligman-et-al_Navigating-into-the-future-2013.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.prospectivepsych.org/sites/www.prospectivepsych....</a>
This makes a lot of assumptions, like we know what really went on in the minds of our primitive ancestor's.<p>Meditation, yoga, and martial arts has taught me that being in the moment actually makes prospecting easier and better. Not to mention the stress/anxiety relief, being better connected socially, etc.<p>We've built up a lot of mental constructs over the millennia. These constructs are things like how we're taught to react/respond to various stimuli like emotions from ourselves and others. We're taught these by parents and society. And we constantly refine them for better or worse.<p>There is so much going in this hyperconnected society that being in the moment has become hard and/or harder to maintain.
"Homo prospectus is too pragmatic to obsess on death for the same reason that he doesn’t dwell on the past: There’s nothing he can do about it."<p>Lots of things weren't possible, until they were. Focusing on paths towards a goal beats focusing on paths towards failure. Not focusing on death =/= not focusing on living.<p>Healthspan is one of the easiest things to increase, and has hundreds of millions of people doing it whether they're aware of it or not, anyone that eats well or exercises is pro-longevity whether they realize it or not :) That could be considered anti-death behavior, without any need to focus on death at all.
On the principal author's site this is referred to as the "foundational paper":
<a href="https://www.prospectivepsych.org/sites/www.prospectivepsych.org/files/pictures/Seligman-et-al_Navigating-into-the-future-2013.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.prospectivepsych.org/sites/www.prospectivepsych....</a>
Huh, this sounds interesting. I wonder how often people were pinged during the day? Anyone want to go find the study?<p>> The central role of prospection has emerged in recent studies of both conscious and unconscious mental processes, like one in Chicago that pinged nearly 500 adults during the day to record their immediate thoughts and moods. If traditional psychological theory had been correct, these people would have spent a lot of time ruminating. But they actually thought about the future three times more often than the past, and even those few thoughts about a past event typically involved consideration of its future implications.<p>> When making plans, they reported higher levels of happiness and lower levels of stress than at other times, presumably because planning turns a chaotic mass of concerns into an organized sequence. Although they sometimes feared what might go wrong, on average there were twice as many thoughts of what they hoped would happen.
The comments on this remind me of the somewhat-related koan (from the Jargon File?) about how an apprentice tried to randomize the weights on a neural network to "rid it of preconceptions", and the master responded by closing his eyes "so that the room would be empty".
Vaguely related: I've been experimenting with positive visualisation - you picture yourself in the future achieving something or other. I think it may help focus the brains pondering / neural pattern recognition on positive stuff rather than what junk's on TV etc.
"We are never living, but hoping to live; and whilst we are always preparing to be happy, it is certain, we never shall be so, if we aspire to no other happiness than what can be enjoyed in this life."
From the Longnow Foundation’s about page:<p>> Upon moving to New York City, Brian (Eno) found that
“here” and “now” meant “this room” and “this five minutes” as opposed to the larger here and longer now that he was used to in England. We have since adopted the term as the title of our foundation as we try to stretch out what people consider as now.<p>— <a href="http://longnow.org/about/" rel="nofollow">http://longnow.org/about/</a>
Not according to Google [0]!<p>Given their pitch to advertisers, we are built <i>exactly</i> to live in "moments" - all conveniently full of advertising opportunities ;)<p>Depends on who you ask, I suppose. lol<p>[0] <a href="https://youtube.com/watch?v=cplXL-E1ioA" rel="nofollow">https://youtube.com/watch?v=cplXL-E1ioA</a>
We're like a little scared squirrel that looks back and forth not having the capacity to understand and enjoy 'this' moment.
I guess is because of how we perceive time and what we can do about it.
I might agree with the conclusion, but I mostly disagree with the rest<p>Humans making plans? Religion? That came as an afterthought and it's mostly <i>forced</i> through society (living the moment). Most people, most of the time <i>will do</i> what gives them pleasure right now instead of what might give them a reward later on. One just needs to look at obesity/lack of exercise/smoking, those are big problems.<p>The past is important, because all the predictions we do <i>are based on past experiences</i> even if there might be some random factor. Even artificial neural networks learn with time and what happened in the past is ingrained onto them.<p>Thinking about the future is certainly good but unless people fix their mistakes the outcome will be the same
You know how I can smell bullshit in this article? Right here:<p>><i>Some of our unconscious powers of prospection are shared by animals, but hardly any other creatures are capable of thinking more than a few minutes ahead.</i><p>That's simply not true. Evolution and historical knowledge are intertwined with our RNA/DNA more than we know.<p>Citation:<p><a href="https://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/animal_eqs.php" rel="nofollow">https://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/animal_eqs.php</a><p>We are completely built to live in the moment, if only we are wise enough to learn from the past. Learning when to trust the hairs on the back of the neck perking up for a sense of future danger is important. I've waited tables. I can tell within 15 seconds if you're generous or a cheapskate.<p>The article ends up basically trying to state, clumsily, that we don't live in the moment because we're seeking the meaning of life. You know, Flying Spaghetti Monsters. I guess I'm just surprised this article wasn't the result of a NYT All-Star-Idiot team up of Brooks & Friedman. This kind of smells like their brand of shitty intellectual posturing.
Bullshit. We are built by evolution to live in this particular physical environment and had no trouble living there for last few millions of years or so.<p>What we are not evolved to do is to live in an overpopulated urban areas, forced to wage slavery and to constantly compete for everything, even a place in a subway, while being awashed with emotionally charged verbal and visual bullshit 24h, hipsterism and other forms of idiotic cosplay of unearned success and presumably high social status by each and every one passed by, while being over-regulated by stupid laws imposed on us by a bloated self-serving "government" so even a straight look of contempt at a tasteless, fat woman in some stupid yoga pants would lead to trouble.<p>the Moment has nothing to do with this. It is so called "human society".