In his book on human psychology and neuroscience, with a blend of unexpected humor, Gilbert says our happiness is dependent on our ability to predict the future, i.e., to imagine.

For e.g., in choosing among options of which city to move to, we imagine how happy we are likely to be in any of these places in the future, affecting our present happiness.

Thus, imagination is very load-bearing, so it better be accurate. Unfortunately for us, there are three faults of the human brain that limit our imagination:

  1. Our imagination contains many holes and we fail to recognize these. Making predictions using these incomplete features, we end up with inaccurate predictions of our future happiness because the holes left out are often very important details. For e.g., imagine how happy you would be if your favorite team won the next tournament. Likely a lot. But what if this day also co-incides with a deadline at work that is driving you crazy? This detail that the brain failed to consider presently is likely going to affect your happiness a lot in the future. Failing to consider such details in anticipation, we end up with inaccurate predictions of our future happiness.

  2. The second fault is presentism - the idea that the future is going to look a lot similar to the present. This is a great inductive bias: if there are trees on your commute to work today, they are likely to be there tomorrow as well; if birds fly today, they are likely to fly in the future, etc. Great. But what of psychological states? Some examples to consider:

    • You just finished eating a large pizza on your own and your stomach got upset. You link your discomfort to the pizza and project this association onto the future, promising never to eat pizza again. But obviously, this is not going to be the case in the future. You are likely to eat pizza again and enjoy it.
    • How would you feel if you lost about half of your investment portfolio today? Likely really bummed out with very bleak hope for the future - something to the effect of inability to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Even in this scenario, the future would likely not look or feel like it does today, so anticipation of future sadness making you sadder today is a mistake.

  3. The final fault of the brain is to fail to recognize that its memory of past experiences is going to be different from the imagined or the actual experience. Again a couple examples to drive this point home:

    • We’ve all experienced the excitement of imagining that destination holiday, the relatively mellowed out experience in the moment, followed by the memory of the trip being much more exciting than the actual experience.
    • Getting fired from your job in prospect appears scary, feels horrible in the moment but in retrospect is typically remembered as “one of the best things that happened to me.”

    Gilbert reports statistical evidence to this effect: predicted and remembered psychological states differ widely from the actual ones.

How should we deal with our brain’s inability to make accurate predictions? Gilbert says that the solution is likely to be rejected. The fix is to simply ask others who have been through similar experiences. Lost all your money recently? Ask someone who had lost their money in the past and how they feel today? You’d likely dismiss any consolation from them, accusing your predicament of being “too special.” When in reality, while the special circumstances of an individual do matter, statistically, not too much. The trick is to give up the notion of being too special and to ask others who have been through similar experiences. This is the best way to get a more accurate picture of the future and make better decisions.

Another trick is to manage your expectations. This involves recalibrating your predictions about your future happiness with the awareness of how you are actually likely to feel in the future, as opposed to merely relying on your brain’s prediction. This is not strictly from the book but an inference I made from my read of the matter.

These were some of my takeaways from the book. Interestingly, the last section of the book covers most of this. So if you’re in a hurry - I’d recommend reading “Reporting Live from Tomorrow.” The book overall is a great read, however - Gilbert’s writing style is engaging and his prose has a lot of scientific depth. It was well worth my time to read this book.

A final note - I had received this book as a gift from a friend, and upon reading the title and summary at the back, I was quick to dismiss this as another “self-help” book; I know how to help myself, thank you very much. I somehow picked it from my bookshelf anyway and was pleasantly surprised at how wrong I was at predicting what the book is actually about; goes to show the relevance of the matter in the book even more!