The quotations and summary imply they went directly to “therefor people are bad predictors” without passing through “they made bad predictions”
For example, it’s not impossible for the past to always be more different from the present than the future is; they could be exponentially approaching a stable self. This is in fact the impression I’ve gotten from all the talk of old people not changing their minds, people implementing simulated annealing, young people being radical and fickle, etc.
I think the conclusion is probably correct and interesting, but the evidence as quoted only weakly supports it.
For example, it’s not impossible for the past to always be more different from the present than the future is; they could be exponentially approaching a stable self.
Yes, they report a decline in change with age [1], but even allowing for that, they find that people underpredict how different they will be. Age X predicts less difference in the next 10 years than age X+10 recollects in the last 10 years.
[1] It should be noted that these studies were not longitudinal, which introduces another class of possible error. They never compared any individual’s actual traits at different ages, only different individuals of different ages at the time of the tests.
The quotations and summary imply they went directly to “therefor people are bad predictors” without passing through “they made bad predictions”
For example, it’s not impossible for the past to always be more different from the present than the future is; they could be exponentially approaching a stable self. This is in fact the impression I’ve gotten from all the talk of old people not changing their minds, people implementing simulated annealing, young people being radical and fickle, etc.
I think the conclusion is probably correct and interesting, but the evidence as quoted only weakly supports it.
Yes, they report a decline in change with age [1], but even allowing for that, they find that people underpredict how different they will be. Age X predicts less difference in the next 10 years than age X+10 recollects in the last 10 years.
[1] It should be noted that these studies were not longitudinal, which introduces another class of possible error. They never compared any individual’s actual traits at different ages, only different individuals of different ages at the time of the tests.
Ok, thanks for clearing that up.