Dan Gilbert

For example, name your best friend, your favorite kind of vacation, what's your favorite hobby, what's your favorite kind of music?

People can name these things.

We ask half of them to tell us, do you think that that will change over the next 10 years?

And half of them to tell us, did that change over the last 10 years?

And what we find, well,

People predict that the friend they have now is the friend they'll have in 10 years, the vacation they most enjoy now is the one they'll enjoy in 10 years, and yet people who are 10 years older all say, you know, that's really changed.

Does any of this matter?

Is this just a form of misprediction that doesn't have consequences?

No, it matters quite a bit, and I'll give you an example of why.

It bedevils our decision-making in important ways.

Bring to mind right now for yourself your favorite musician today and your favorite musician 10 years ago.

Now, we asked people to predict for us, to tell us how much money they would pay right now to see their current favorite musician perform in concert 10 years from now.

And on average, people said they would pay $129 for that ticket.

And yet when we ask them how much they would pay to see the person who was their favorite 10 years ago perform today, they say only $80.

Now in a perfectly rational world, these should be the same number, but we overpay for the opportunity to indulge our current preferences because we overestimate their stability.

Why does this happen?

We're not entirely sure, but it probably has to do with the

ease of remembering versus the difficulty of imagining.

Most of us can remember who we were 10 years ago, but we find it hard to imagine who we're going to be.

And then we mistakenly think that because it's hard to imagine, it's not likely to happen.