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The riddle of experience vs. memory | Daniel Kahneman

TED

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  • Recommended by 2 people, in Hacker News, across 2 different months.
  • Presented by Daniel Kahneman, as the video describes them

For anyone, no background needed. Education, not medical advice.

1.5M views16 years ago2 recommendations

Brain and nervesMental healthNeuroscienceMemory and learning

Daniel Kahneman explores the cognitive differences between the experiencing self and the remembering self, and how they shape our perception of happiness.

ted.com Using examples from vacations to colonoscopies, Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman reveals how our "experiencing selves" and our "remembering selves" perceive happiness differently. This new insight has profound implications for economics, public policy -- and our own self-awareness. TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at ted.com/translate. Watch a highlight reel of the Top 10 TEDTalks at ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

Why it's here

2 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended for its insightful distinction between how we experience moments and how we remember them, and the implications for happiness.

awonghin Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: Are you happy, well-rounded? (dealing w/ depression/lack of motivation)”

This is a bit of a tangent to your question, but I've been thinking about this a bit too. I've been depressed lately as well, and this ted talk [video ] was really interesting. It has nothing to do with being more happy, but has to do with how we define happiness and how we experience it... (being over-analytical and also unhappy, I thought it was quite good) It basically says that the concept happiness as we think of it is really two things, the "experiential self", which is happy when we're snowboarding or whatever, and the remembering self, which is happy when we're deploying some code that's going to take over the world or whatnot. It seems to me, from observation, that unless you are…

cgriswaldin Hacker News • Recommends

On “What We Want Doesn’t Always Make Us Happy”

You kind of touched on points of this video, although from a different direction. Daniel Khaneman talks about the experiencing self versus the remembering self, which is in charge, and how that relates to happiness. link to this video

davidgrenierin Hacker News • Mentions

On “Do Not Disclose Your Salary to Recruiters”

I read the paper but grant my ability to understand it is limited. My interpretation is built on what's discussed at the end of Kahneman's Ted presentation: link to this video Is that why the downvote? I linked the paper people can make their own interpretation... that's at least as praise worthy as "common sense".