A prey animal sees another animal, and this new animal has been established as a potential predator. The prey responds to this threat based on;
>what it sees in front of it (present event),
>what it knows about what it sees (past knowledge mixed with instinct),
>what it knows will happen if it does nothing (short term future prediction = death).
~ now for a different scenario
A human being is both prey and predator in different contexts. If a human being fears an apex predator but imagines a future where he doesn’t have to run from those predators;
>a future where those predators have been removed or displaced
>a future where they have weapons to attack back or deal with the predators as they come
>a future where they are defended from the predators some other way
Humans can chart a course from an idealized future, back to the present in sequential stages, and change their present actions in response to a long term future calculation.
Humans can, but don’t "have" to respond dynamically to each game that they play. Humans can establish a game as "solved", by which they can beat both the game they play and every future iteration of that game. We sit in our minds and build mazes within mazes. We brood on things that have happened, will happen, might happen, and we can respond to these as if they were happening to us now, a kind of simulated prescience.
~
A fox chews of its leg to escape from a trap.
>get out of the trap, death is postponed (calculation in the short term future)
A man waits in or near the trap to establish who the trapper is.
>get rid of the trapper, get rid of all future traps (calculation in the long term future)
~
>playing each iteration of a game intelligently
vs
>solving the game and all future iterations of a game