You are more likely to learn something by finding surprises in your own behavior than by hearing surprising facts about people in general.

The 'Instagram Generation' now experiences the present as an anticipated memory

... sometimes when you are asked a question that is difficult, the mind doesn't stay silent if it doesn't have the answer. The mind produces something, and what it produces very characteristically is the answer to an easier but related question.

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

I used to hold a unitary view, in which I proposed that only experienced happiness matters, and that life satisfaction is a fallible estimate of true happiness.

This is the essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.

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