Predictive Fog Theory: Due to the complexity of our world, our predictions in both directions of time drop off in accuracy exponentially.
As we make predictions, a circle of fog surrounds us. The farther we move away from the present in any direction, complexity is increasing exponentially. The fog grows thicker and thicker until we can only see the fog. We tend to then pretend that we can still see, as if confidence will make it so. This happens in both directions because the past fades as well as still being influenced by the present and future.
What This Means
This simply means that as we move away from the present, our predictions get worse until they become completely useless. We should train ourselves to simply stop making predictions once we reach the fog. It would benefit our minds to use the energy on other things as it is wasted on useless predictions. We enjoy using our imaginations to look far into the past and future that we tend to forget how much is real and how much is our imagination.
An Example
Setting goals is a great example of the issue we face. We like to believe that it benefits us to plan well into the future. This is not the case because it sets unfair expectations and shades how we see the future. Goals should only be set when we have a reasonable set of defined conditions, which would only be true for a short time into the future.
