Our Puny Human Brains Are Terrible at Thinking About the Future

Our current political climate in the United States reflects this same cognitive bias against the future. Recently, President Trump signed a sweeping executive order undoing a vast array of regulations designed to mitigate long-term climate change in favor of policies that provide much shorter-term economic benefits. And Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin recently made headlines when he said publicly that he is "not worried at all" about the possibility automation could eliminate millions or even tens of millions of American jobs in the future. "It's not even on our radar screen," he said, adding that it won't happen for "50 to 100 years or more." But, as Daniel Gross wrote in Slate, he's wrong.