Thursday, August 25, 2011

One of my favorite TED talks

And it's interesting too!

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html

We are strange stuff.

3 comments:

  1. Fascinating. Scientific evidence in support of something I have long since concluded.

    If you recall my saying that I had come to a point at which I was capable basically of choosing what is important to me and then deriving satisfaction from that choice, having nothing else effect my satisfaction, or being empty of other passions--apathetic to other things... this is precisely the reason that is possible; it is because I have recognized this fact that he makes here almost innately--it doesn't matter what events occur, my own happiness is largely an independent process from my experiences.

    The interesting thing in my opinion is the question of how one discerns the value of things after such a point has been reached. What are the parameters that guide the decision to derive happiness from one particular event as opposed to another? How does one determine which events shall be held as meaningful and which shall be disregarded as meaningless? Normally that process would be dependent upon the consideration of happiness, the expected effect upon the individual's happiness would be the determining factor. But when we realize that happiness is something that is determined not a priori to the event but rather after the event has already occurred, then there is no reason to judge the event on the basis of its anticipated effect upon happiness, so what other criterion can we use? That is a fascinating question to me.

    And sorry if that wasn't very precise I wrote it in under 30 sec...

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  2. on a completely unrelated topic... as you mentioned you'd been watching some tv and stuff as well, something I thought you might be interested in... I got this a while ago and it has proven to be the most awesome thing I've bought in a long time and well worth the (not too bad) price tag:

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822361003

    It's a 2tb external hard drive that has software programmed into it so that it can act as a player for basically anything you can put on it (video/audio/image files of practically any format)... pretty awesome... and extremely space-saving... I've pretty much downloaded hd versions of all my old dvd's... transferred my entire music collection to it, and gotten all the tv shows we talked about on it, and still have plenty of space to go... it's like a mobile archive of everything you like... take one box with you to a friend's house and you have the option to share anything with them you want...

    anyway, yeah, I'd recommend it if you've got a few extra bucks sometime

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  3. Huh. I've thought of a need for an external HDD for a long time. That might just be the one - it would be nice to easily bring it over to a friend's house and hook it up to the TV or whatever.

    That said, as an upcoming post reveals, I don't have much to show or store anymore, as it's all online.

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