Our brains are great at using past experience to understand the future. We can make weather predictions based on the past, for example, or anticipate what someone might do based on their past behavior.
At the same time, there are downsides to mapping our past experiences onto our current ones. In Jack London’s famous short story “To Build a Fire,” the protagonist doesn’t realize how much colder it is than what he’s experienced in the past.
As a result, he’s unprepared to protect himself from the Yukon elements and temperatures of seventy-five degrees below zero.
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