Mental time travel

Since past is fact and future is fiction, common sense might suggest that different cognitive mechanisms underlie recollection of past events and construction of future ones. There is a fundamental causal asymmetry, and one simply cannot know the future as one knows the past. However, various lines of evidence suggest that mental time travel into the past shares cognitive resources with mental construction of potential future episodes(Suddendorf & Corballis 1997). Normal adults report a decrease in phenomenological richness of both past and future episodes with increased distance from the present (D’Argembeau & Van der Linden 2004). The temporal distribution of past events people envisage follows the same power function as the temporal distribution of anticipated future events (Spreng & Levine 2006).
DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X07001975

It's quite possible that foresight is, at least in part, a skill that allows us to construct imaginary situations, either in the past or in the future. Maybe that is why exercises like The Three Magicians a The Nine-screen View are so useful during invention sessions.

Reference:
DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X07001975 Suddendorf & Corballis, 2007. The evolution of foresight. BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2007) 30, 299–351.

tags: creativity, forecast, magicians, 3x3, technique, teaching, method, quote