Constructive episodic simulation hypothesis

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“What the phenomenologist refers to as human time is what we also could call experienced time, that is, time as human meaning construction. It is precisely this meaningful gestalt of human temporality, I suggest, that takes form in the construction of autobiographical time, a construction that is intimately intertwined with the telling of stories (or of fragments of them) about ourselves and our lives” (Brockmeier, 2000, p. 54).

Reconstruction of individuals’ episodic memories is necessary for simulation of autobiographical future scenarios—as outlined in the “constructive episodic simulation hypothesis”—to the point where the specificity of recall affects the specificity of future projections, supporting that time synthesis is necessary for the autobiographical narrative (Gamboz, Brandimonte, & De Vito, 2010, p. 419; Mark et al., 1996). This hypothesis is closely linked to the “temporal construal theory” that abstraction accompanies distant future episodes more so than near future ones and the “reality monitoring framework”—that greater detail accompanies past events which are experienced in reality than the imagined future ones. Thus, in general, “people expect near future events to resemble what they are currently experiencing, while distant future situations are much more amenable to transformations” (Gamboz, Brandimonte, & De Vito, 2010, p. 426). Seeing as artificial intelligence (AI) also strives for efficiency, perhaps their future projections will be highly specific as they have highly specific memories. In this case, it may be interesting to see how AI may create future predictions based on a user’s input of their autobiographical narrative on a day-to-day basis, or even how AI may predict its own future.

The links between past and future are further explained by neurocognitive mechanisms, including the “‘heuristics and biases’ paradigm,” which “suggest[s] that the ease of retrieval from memory is used in making judgments about future events” and by the “descriptions theory” (Mark et al., 1996, p. 116). Rather than generating a completely new episode each time, future episodes are instead projected by recalling and tweaking past events. The finding that distant futures are less reliant on memories, though, weakens the argument that the brain needs to make shortcuts to imagine scenarios. Perhaps being “‘stuck’ in real episodes… may be a general heuristic that stems from the relationship between direct experience and knowledge about an event” instead (Gamboz, Brandimonte, & De Vito, 2010, p. 426). In this case, autobiographical time stems not from the neurocognitive process of memory recall and future simulation, but rather from the neurocognitive temporal link between episodes. Nearer episodes are more closely linked, while further ones are less so since they can be cognitively disconnected from the present. This may explain why distant future goals are more difficult to reach; as individuals move temporally closer to the previously distant future, their perspective on that time point becomes increasingly affected by the past, changing whatever desires and goals they previously had in mind. In The Lathe of Heaven, for example, Haber’s initial intentions may have just been to study the extent of Orr’s abilities, but as he became more successful in manipulating the surrounding world, these successes shaped his sense of duty and therefore future plans to establish his vision of what the world ought to be on a larger scale.