We are happy when we have family, we are happy when we have friends and almost all the other things we think make us happy are actually just ways of getting more family and friends.
Daniel GilbertWe humans can look deep into future and predict what will happen, but then turn around and do nothing about it.
Daniel GilbertWhen we have an experience -- hearing a particular sonata, making love with a particular person, watching the sun set from a particular window of a particular room -- on successive occasions, we quickly begin to adapt to it, and the experience yields less pleasure each time. Psychologists call this habituation, economists call it declining marginal utility, and the rest of us call it marriage
Daniel GilbertThe fact that we often judge the pleasure of an experience by its ending can cause us to make some curious choices.
Daniel GilbertResearch suggests that people are typically unaware of the reasons why they are doing what they are doing, but when asked for a reason, they readily supply one.
Daniel GilbertBecause your brain uses information from the areas around the blind spot to make a reasonable guess about what the blind spot would see if only it weren't blind, and then your brain fills in the scene with this information. That's right, it invents things, creates things, makes stuff up! It doesn't consult you about this, doesn't seek your approval. It just makes its best guess about the nature of the missing information and proceeds to fill in the scene.
Daniel Gilbert