Transformative Experience

Abstract As we live our lives, we make decisions that shape our future selves and circumstances. When making such choices, such as whether to start a family, or which career to pursue, we often try to assess our options by imagining what different futures would be like. This book argues that, for choices involving dramatically new, life-changing experiences, we are confronted by the brute fact that we can know very little about our subjective futures. If we make major life choices, choices that can even change who we will become, in the way we naturally and intuitively want to—by considering what we care about, and what our future selves will be like if we choose to have the experience—we only learn what we…