Simulation Skills: This is Your Brain on the Future Quiz Answers

Get All Weeks Simulation Skills: This is Your Brain on the Future Quiz Answers

Week 1: Simulation Skills: This is Your Brain on the Future Quiz Answers

Quiz 1: Neurological Pathways of Simulation

Q1. This week you learned about the neurological pathways and activity areas of the brain that support thinking more creatively about the future.

One of the most important neurological activities in thinking about the future is “scene construction.” During scene construction, the brain creates a vivid movie or 3D virtual reality in your mind’s eye. It allows you to “look around” and immerse yourself in a simulated scene, whether it’s something that you’re remembering or something you’re imagining could happen in the future. What is another term for this neurological activity?

Mentalizing
Performance monitoring
Memory and simulation

Q2. Another important neurological activity that happens when we think about the future is that we try to simulate how other people might feel and what they might do. This activity is a way for our own brain to “get inside someone else’s mind.” That why it’s called:

Memory and simulation
Mentalizing
Performance monitoring

Q3. A third neurological activity that happens when we think about the future is a kind of “scanning” of the future for possible opportunities to make choices and take actions that serve our own personal goals. What is this called?

Performance monitoring
Memory and simulation
Mentalizing

Q4. If you want to build up all of the neurological pathways that support these 3 important activities – memory and simulation, mentalizing and performance monitoring – you can practice the “magic triangle” of simulation. What are the 3 habits that make up this magic triangle? Pick three answers only.

Remembering the past exactly as it was
Remembering the future as if it has already happened
Predicting the past, and how it could have been different
Predicting the future, and explaining why it will be that way
Hard empathy, or imagining yourself in situations you’ve never directly experienced
Easy empathy, or experiencing other people’s feelings in familiar situations as if it were happening to you

Week 2: Simulation Skills: This is Your Brain on the Future Quiz Answers

Quiz 1: Why the brain thinks differently about your future self

Q1. There’s a region of the brain that fires up whenever you register something as important to you, personally. It says, “Hey! This matters to YOU! It’s about YOU! Pay attention!” What is this region called?

Amygdala
Medial PreFrontal Cortext
Hippocampus
Temporal Lobe

Q2. What does this same part of the brain do, for most people, when they imagine themselves in a far future – say, 10 years out or more?

If they’re in a good mood, it fires up and says “Hey! Pay attention!” If they’re bored, frustrated, or angry, it doesn’t react.
It acts like they’re thinking about a complete stranger, someone who doesn’t matter to them at all.
It fires up and says “Hey! This is important! Pay attention!”

Q3. What’s the result of this part of the brain’s behavior, when it comes to imagining your future self?

It’s easier to predict what you will do and harder to predict what other people will do in the future. As a result, you lose empathy for others and focus only on your own needs and goals.
If you spend too much time thinking about your future self, you can become disoriented. You may become confused about what is realistic or possible and set unrealistic goals for yourself.
It’s hard to have empathy for your future self. As a result, you make decisions that feel good in the short run but are maybe not so good in the long run.

Week 4: Simulation Skills: This is Your Brain on the Future Quiz Answers

Quiz 1: New Kinds of Simulation

Q1. This week, you learned about 3 different areas of simulation innovation.

One area of innovation is creating realistic video or audio of a real person saying something they’ve never actually said, or doing something they’ve never actually done. These videos and audio recordings are based on machine intelligence. An AI creates an authentic-seeming “fake” based on real, previous videos and audio recordings. So they are a hybrid of “real” and “faked.” What does futurist Jamais Cascio call these new kinds of half-real simulations?

A “Simtainers”
“Simulacra”
Haptics

Q2. Another area of simulation innovation is the use of shipping containers to create a portable Virtual Reality environment that can easily be set up, moved, and re-installed anywhere in the world. Futurists are using these spaces to imagine how real shipping containers, an important and underutilized part of the global infrastructure, might be used in the future. What is this project/technology called?

Simtainers
Simulacra
Haptics

Q3. The third simulation technology explored this week is technology that simulates touch. It allows you to have a physical sensation of touching a virtual object, or being touched by a virtual object. This can include anything from simulated hugs via video chat to phone vibrations that feel like raindrops falling on your hand. What is this technology field called?

Simtainers
Simulacra
Haptics

Q4. It’s not hard to imagine negative consequences of simulacra technologies. Convincingly faked videos or faked audio created through AI machine learning will almost certainly lead to new forms disinformation, propaganda, and new kinds of bullying and harassment.

But your reading this week identifies several possible positive uses of the technologies. Which example stands out to you as the most legitimately useful application? Or, can you think of another potential positive use of this tech? What might it be?

This is an open-ended question with no right or wrong answers! Whatever you share will be marked as correct. Use it as an opportunity to reflect on, and make a more personal connection, with the material you read this week.

What do you think?

One positive use of simulacra technologies is the potential to create immersive and realistic training simulations for various professions, such as healthcare, aviation, or emergency response. These simulations could help professionals practice their skills in a safe and controlled environment, ultimately improving their performance in real-life situations.

Q5. In his interview, David Birnbaum points to the potential ethical issues around haptics. If you can simulate good touch, you can also simulate unpleasant or harmful touch. What kinds of negative uses can you imagine in the future, if haptics become more commonplace? What kind of touch would you NOT want to experience, or what safeguards would you want in place to prevent others online from “touching” you in unwanted ways or at unwanted times?

What do you think?

As haptic technology becomes more commonplace, potential negative uses could include the simulation of unwanted or harmful touch in online harassment and cyberbullying scenarios. To prevent such misuse, safeguards, and regulations may need to be implemented to protect individuals from experiencing unwanted tactile sensations in virtual spaces.

Q6. Which of these three types of simulation technologies are personally most interesting to you? Which one could you see yourself being most affected by in the future, or taking the time to work with and create something yourself in the future?

(There is no right or wrong answer to this question. Whatever you choose will be marked “correct.” Use this question as an opportunity to reflect and make a more personal connection with this week’s lesson.)

Simtainers
Simulacra videos/audio recordings
Haptics

Personally, I find haptics technology to be the most interesting among the three types of simulation technologies. I can see myself being more affected by haptics in the future, as it has the potential to significantly enhance virtual experiences, whether in gaming, communication, or other forms of digital interaction. It also offers intriguing possibilities for artistic and creative expression, making it an area I’d like to explore further.

Quiz 2: Afrofuturism

Q1. Who invented and first described “Afrofuturism”?

Samuel L. Delany
Octavia Butler
Mark Dery
N.K. Jemisin

Q2. Which of these are true statements about Afrofuturism? Check all that apply.

It focuses on the experience of black people in the future.
It usually has a positive or utopian aspect, depicting a better world than today.
It is often practiced and communicated through popular culture, like music videos, fashion magazines, movies, and science-fiction writing.
For many people, it is a kind of artistic therapy, working through the traumas of the past and present by imagining a more just future.

Q3. In one of this week’s videos, Professor Lonny Brooks says the African diaspora community “have always been futurists.” Why?

(The African Diaspora is the term commonly used to describe the mass dispersion of people from Africa during the Transatlantic Slave Trades, from the 1500s to the 1800s. This Diaspora took millions of people from Western and Central Africa to diﬀerent regions throughout the Americas and the Caribbean.)

The slave trade took Africans against their will to far-away, strange lands where they needed to adapt, innovate, and invent new culture in order to survive.
As a way to deal with the trauma of slavery, many cultural and religious practices spread by the African diaspora centered around imagining their future selves somewhere better.
The work performed by enslaved people globally built the future, creating the economies and raw materials needed to invent modern society.

Q4. Afrofuturism is a storytelling, art-making practice focused on a particular cultural imagination, rising out of a unique community: the African diaspora.

What other communities who have been displaced or traumatized in the past and present do you think have an important role to play in imagining better futures? What other kinds of futurism could you imagine building on and being inspired by the important cultural work of Afrofuturism? Or how would you like to see Afrofuturism itself develop and be used in the future?

There is no right or wrong answer to this question. Use it as an opportunity for you to reflect on what you learned this week, and to make a personal connection to the future topics we discussed.

What do you think?

Many communities that have experienced displacement, trauma, or historical injustices can play an important role in imagining better futures. Some other communities that come to mind include indigenous communities, refugees, and marginalized groups facing social, economic, or environmental challenges. These communities can draw inspiration from Afrofuturism’s cultural work to develop their own forms of futurism that address their unique experiences and aspirations.
In the future, it would be valuable to see Afrofuturism continue to evolve and be used as a platform for storytelling, creativity, and activism. It can serve as a means for marginalized communities to reclaim their narratives, advocate for social change, and explore possibilities for more equitable and inclusive futures. Additionally, cross-cultural collaborations and exchanges of futurist ideas could lead to a richer and more diverse landscape of futurist movements that empower communities worldwide.