Endlessly amused by people's minds.

My interest in well-being evolved from my interest in decision making - from raising the question of whether people know what they will want in the future and whether the things that people want for themselves will make them happy.

Poverty is clearly one source of emotional suffering, but there are others, like loneliness. A policy to reduce the loneliness of the elderly would certainly reduce suffering.

The experiencing self lives its life continuously. It has moments of experience, one after the other.

That's one of the real dangers of leader selection in many organizations: leaders are selected for overconfidence.

You know, the standard state for people is 'mildly pleasant.' Negative emotions are quite rare, and extremely positive emotions are rare. But people are mildly pleased most of the time, they're mildly tired a lot of the time, and they wish they were somewhere else a substantial part of the time - but mostly they're mildly pleased.

When action is needed, optimism, even of the mildly delusional variety, may be a good thing.