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orking. Letamp。s just run a quick diagnostic before I proceed with the rest of the talk. Hereamp。s two different futures that I invite you to contemplate, and you can try to simulate them and tell me which one you think you might prefer. One of them is winning the lottery. This is about 314 million dollars. And the other is being paraplegic. So, just give it a moment of thought. You probably donamp。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。t it? But these arenamp。t the data. I made these up! These are the data. You failed the pop quiz, and youamp。re hardly five minutes into the lecture. Because the fact is that a year after losing the use of their legs, and a year after winning the lotto, lottery winners and paraplegics are equally happy with their lives. Now, donamp。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。impact bias,amp。 which is the tendency for the simulator to work badly. For the simulator to make you believe that different outes are more different than in fact they really are. From field studies to laboratory studies, we see that winning or losing an election, gaining or losing a romantic partner, getting or not getting a promotion, passing or not passing a college test, on and on, have far less impact, less intensity and much less duration than people expect them to have. In fact, a recent study this almost floors me a recent study showing how major life traumas affect people suggests that if it happened over three months ago, with only a few exceptions, it has no impact whatsoever on your happiness. Why? Because happiness can be synthesized. Sir Thomas Brown wrote in 1642, amp。I am the happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty to riches, adversity to prosperity. I am more invulnerable than Achilles。quot。39。quot。quot。39。39。39。quot。quot。quot。39。39。quot。quot。quot。 he lost his power. What does he have to say all these years later about it? amp。I am so much better off physically, financially, mentally and in almost every other way.amp。 What other way would there be to be better off? Vegetably? Minerally? Animally? Heamp。s pretty much covered them there. Moreese Bickham is somebody youamp。ve never heard of. Moreese Bickham uttered these words upon being released. He was 78 years old. He spent 37 years in a Louisiana State Penitentiary for a crime he didnamp。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 donamp。t have one minuteamp。s regret. It was a glorious experience.amp。 Glorious! This guy is not saying, amp。Well, you know, there were some nice guys. They had a gym.amp。 Itamp。s amp。glorious,amp。 a word we usually reserve for something like a religious experience. Harry S. Langerman uttered these words, and heamp。s somebody you might have known but didnamp。t, because in 1949 he read a little article in the paper about a hamburger stand owned by these two brothers named McDonalds. And he thought, amp。Thatamp。s a really neat idea!amp。 So he went to find them. They said, amp。We can give you a franchise on this for 3,000 bucks.amp。 Harry went back to New York, asked his brother whoamp。s an investment banker to loan him the 3,000 dollars, and his brotheramp。s immortal words were, amp。You idiot, nobody eats hamburgers.amp。 He wouldnamp。t lend him the money, and of course six months later Ray Croc had exactly the same idea. It turns out people do eat hamburgers, and Ray Croc, for a while, became the richest man in America. And then finally you know, the best of all possible worlds some of you recognize this young photo of Pete Best, who was the original drummer for the Beatles, until they, you know, sent him out on an errand and snuck away and picked up Ringo on a tour. Well, in 1994, when Pete Best was interviewed yes, heamp。s still a drummer。39。quot。39。quot。39。quot。quot。quot。quot。quot。39。quot。quot。quot。39。39。39。39。39。39。quot。quot。39。39。quot。39。quot。 it could be 15 days the same stimuli are put before the subject, and the subject is asked to rerank the stimuli. amp。Tell us how much you like them now.amp。 What happens? Watch as happiness is synthesized. This is the result that has been rep