It surprised me when Dan Gilbert described looking to the past and looking into the future as "fundamentally the same." I used to think that they were completely different. However, after watching Gilbert's interview, it makes sense when he states that "remembering is like imagination." Our brain is doing the same thing in both situations. The only difference is that when we "imagine" the past, we can do it with facts that we got from our experiences, but when we "imagine" the future, we make assumptions or predictions of what we think will happen since we do not have lived experiences yet.
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