Charan Ranganath: belief

Transcript context

…So in the way we construct a narrative about our past, you say that it gives us an illusion of stability. Can you explain that? Basically I think that a lot of learning in the brain is driven towards being able to make sense. I mean really memory is all about the present and the future. The past is done. So biologically speaking, it’s not important unless there’s something from the past that’s useful. And so what our brains are really optimized for is to learn about the stuff from the past that’s going to be most useful and understanding the present and predicting the future. And so cause-effect relationships for instance, that’s a big one. Now my future is completely unpredictable in the sense that you could in the next 10 minutes pull a knife on me and slit my throat. I was planning on it.…

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