The riddle of experience vs. memory | Daniel Kahneman
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters recommend it in threads on happiness and well-being as a clear account of why memory and experience of happiness diverge.
What it is
In this TED talk, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman distinguishes the experiencing self from the remembering self, using examples such as vacations and colonoscopies. He explains how the two perceive happiness differently and what that means for economics, policy and self-awareness.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2010 to 2019.
What Hacker News said
Recommends awongh · 2010-04 · 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 [ [this 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
Recommends cgriswald · 2019-06 · 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. [this video]
Cites davidgrenier · 2015-09 · 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: [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".