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Comment by liamzebedee | Hacker News Reader

We had a thread a couple weeks ago "What interesting thought did you read on HN but couldn't find later?" - I'm wondering if anyone can help me rediscover this Wikipedia article.

It was a theory on the cognitive bias of depression/anxiety, applied to the locus/worldview of someone, wherein a person interprets with a smaller outlook on the future i.e. the opposite of "looking at the bigger picture".

I've found many anecdotal parallels in people I know, but am absolutely teething to find this article.

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In addition to spullara's Beck link, the "construal level theory" seemed to ring true to what you were describing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construal_level_theory

I recently heard that the same brain regions are involved in processing temporal and spatial distances.

In my own anecdotal experience, this appears quite reasonable; oftentimes, especially in childhood, stretches of time as short as 1 week into the future would "feel" (i.e. encompass the same emotions/sensations) as knowing how far away my relatives in Canada were from me. The perception of time seriously befuddled my brain for years -- no matter that it still does to this day!

If you happen to recall the outlets you read this at, I would be interested in learning more. Hopefully the article would have links to papers as well... perhaps including fMRI scans? Truly fascinating stuff.

> especially in childhood

Think of time spans as "percentage of life lived so far", and a lot of that particular time stretching suddenly makes sense.

Sure, but if science (especially neuroscience) were that simple then we'd have all the answers already. I'm more interested in quantifiable/demonstrable knowledge of this topic beyond a mere thought experiment.

would make sense: space, environment, reality, decision, hope .. not unrelated IMO

It might be on this list?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/The_Cogn...

Incoming thread hijack:

I wish I had seen that thread! I've been looking for an article I'm pretty sure I found on HN. It was an idea of the development of consciousness from the basis of developing models for action planning. It starts with purely reactive, non-planned actions as the low rung. Then development of models of physical self and environment, allowing planned actions. Then adding social modeling, eventually yielding a model of self that allows for self reflection and consciousness.

Or, at least, that's what I think I remember. Can't find the article for the life of me...

Maybe this one?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beck%27s_cognitive_triad

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