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

00:00:00 - 00:10:00

Shankar Vedantam discusses the idea that people tend to forget that their future selves will be different from their past selves. He tells the story of a divorced couple, John and Stephanie Rinka, who were married in 1971 and who were both very young when they got married. Stephanie became a nurse and saw many patients who were terminally ill. When she came home from these visits, she would be shaken and tell John that she would rather die than suffer a long, drawn-out illness. Fast-forward several decades and Stephanie is diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). John tells Vedantam that he is prepared to shoot her if she gets that sick.

• 00:00:00 Shankar Vedantam discusses the idea that people tend to forget that their future selves will be different from their past selves. He tells the story of a divorced couple, John and Stephanie Rinka, who were married in 1971 and who were both very young when they got married. Stephanie became a nurse and saw many patients who were terminally ill. When she came home from these visits, she would be shaken and tell John that she would rather die than suffer a long, drawn-out illness. Fast-forward several decades and Stephanie is diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). John tells Vedantam that he is prepared to shoot her if she gets that sick.
• 00:05:00 Shankar Vedantam discusses the concept of "the ship of Theseus," in which the entire structure of a ship is new, but the individual parts are still the same. He uses the example of a person's lifespan, in which the person becomes a different person at different points in time, but still retains their identity. He discusses some of the challenges that arise when we make promises to future selves that may not share our views or perspectives. He concludes by discussing the implications of this concept for legislation and the law.
• 00:10:00 Shankar Vedantam offers three pieces of advice for coping with the problem of trying to make future selves happy: stay curious, be humble, and be brave. These three things, in turn, will make future selves appreciate us more.