【正文】 39。39。39。quot。39。39。39。39。39。39。quot。39。quot。quot。t know this about themselves, and not knowing this can work to our supreme disadvantage.
　　Hereamp。39。Iamp。Ah! Now that you mention it, it does seem a little silkier!amp。t you just giving me my own paper?amp。 amp。Dogbertamp。t know they own it.
　　Now, when psychologists show you bars, you know that they are showing you averages of lots of people. And yet, all of us have this psychological immune system, this capacity to synthesize happiness, but some of us do this trick better than others. And some situations allow anybody to do it more effectively than other situations do. It turns out that freedom the ability to make up your mind and change your mind is the friend of natural happiness, because it allows you to choose among all those delicious futures and find the one that you would most enjoy. But freedom to choose to change and make up your mind is the enemy of synthetic happiness. And Iamp。t know they own it. amp。m showing it to you in graphical form amp。39。quot。quot。39。ve got a memory problem。re back.amp。s great! I could use a new print. Iamp。s syndrome, a polyneuritic psychosis that they drank way too much, and they canamp。 Now, hereamp。 (Laughter) Thatamp。 What happens? Watch as happiness is synthesized. This is the result that has been replicated over and over again. Youamp。39。quot。39。quot。quot。quot。quot。 He wouldnamp。 Harry went back to New York, asked his brother whoamp。Thatamp。glorious,amp。 Glorious! This guy is not saying, amp。t mit. He was ultimately exonerated, at the age of 78, through DNA evidence. And what did he have to say about his experience? amp。I am so much better off physically, financially, mentally and in almost every other way.amp。quot。quot。39。quot。t feel too bad about failing the first pop quiz, because everybody fails all of the pop quizzes all of the time. The research that my laboratory has been doing, that economists and psychologists around the country have been doing, have revealed something really quite startling to us, something we call the amp。t feel like you need a moment of thought.
　　Interestingly, there are data on these two groups of people, data on how happy they are. And this is exactly what you expected, isnamp。 before you make it.
　　Letamp。Yuck.amp。s up there with opposable thumbs and standing upright and language as one of the things that got our species out of the trees and into the shopping mall.
　　Now (Laughter) all of you have done this. I mean, you know, Ben and Jerryamp。prefrontal cortex.amp。39。t just get three times bigger。quot。39。quot。39。39。quot。 What kind of remarkable machinery does this guy have in his head?
　　Well, it turns out itamp。t need me to give you too many examples of people synthesizing happiness, I suspect. Though Iamp。 amp。 amp。quot。quot。quot。quot。39。39。39。Iamp。Yeah, right.amp。Oh yeah, right. You really didnamp。 What are these terms? Natural happiness is what we get when we get what we wanted, and synthetic happiness is what we make when we donamp。m a scientist, so Iamp。 Itamp。re going to give you one as your prize to take home. We happen to have number three and number four,amp。39。39。39。39。39。quot。 thatamp。t remember.amp。 amp。No problem, Jim. All I want you to do is rank these for me from the one you like the most to the one you like the least.amp。t have a clue. They canamp。quot。quot。39。39。quot。quot。quot。39。re married to a guy and he picks his nose? Yeah, he has a heart of gold。39。Which one would you like to give up?amp。Oh, yes. We need one as evidence of the class project. So you have to give me one. You have to make a choice. You get to keep one, and I get to keep one.amp。ll be glad toamp。Iamp。s totally returnable.amp。re going to e to like the picture that they keep and the picture they leave behind. Other students are just sent back to their little dorm rooms and they are measured over the next three to six days on their liking, satisfaction with the pictures. And look at what we find.
　　First of all, hereamp。t much matter whether they were in the reversible or irreversible condition.
　　Wrongo. Bad simulators. Because hereamp。t the good one? Maybe I left the good one?amp。s the final piece of this experiment. We bring in a whole new group of naive Harvard students and we say, amp。re doing another course where you take the two pictures and you make up your mind right away and you can never change it. Which course would you like to be in?amp。amp。t exactly be right. Is there really nothing good or bad? Is it really the case that gall bladder surgery and a trip to Paris are just the