Concrete example: when I’m full, I’m generally unable to imagine meals in the future as being pleasurable, even if I imagine eating a food I know I like. I can still predict and expect that I’ll enjoy having a burger for dinner tomorrow, but if I just stuffed myself on french fries, and just can’t run a simulation of tomorrow where the “enjoying the food experience” sense is triggered.
I take this as evidence for my internal food experience simulator has “code” that just asks, “If you ate XYZ right now, how would it feel?” and spitting back the result.
This makes me wonder how many other mental systems I have that I think of as “Trying to imagine how I’d feel in the future” are really just predicting how I’d feel right now.
More specifically, the fact that I literally can’t do a non-what-im-feeling-right-now food simulation makes me expect that I’m currently incapable of predicting future feelings in certain domains.
Concrete example: when I’m full, I’m generally unable to imagine meals in the future as being pleasurable, even if I imagine eating a food I know I like. I can still predict and expect that I’ll enjoy having a burger for dinner tomorrow, but if I just stuffed myself on french fries, and just can’t run a simulation of tomorrow where the “enjoying the food experience” sense is triggered.
I take this as evidence for my internal food experience simulator has “code” that just asks, “If you ate XYZ right now, how would it feel?” and spitting back the result.
This makes me wonder how many other mental systems I have that I think of as “Trying to imagine how I’d feel in the future” are really just predicting how I’d feel right now.
More specifically, the fact that I literally can’t do a non-what-im-feeling-right-now food simulation makes me expect that I’m currently incapable of predicting future feelings in certain domains.