I just finished reading Stumbling on Happiness, by Harvard psych prof Daniel Gilbert, which was a really fun read.
As soon as I started reading it, I realized that the author's style was very familiar: I'd listened to a talk he gave last summer, called How to Do Precisely the Right Thing at All Possible Times. It was a fabulous talk on how terrible people are at calculating probability and utility -- the two things we have to figure out in order to decide what course of action will make us most happy. He has tons of fun examples that have stuck with me for a long time. The mp3 of it is here.
As soon as I started reading it, I realized that the author's style was very familiar: I'd listened to a talk he gave last summer, called How to Do Precisely the Right Thing at All Possible Times. It was a fabulous talk on how terrible people are at calculating probability and utility -- the two things we have to figure out in order to decide what course of action will make us most happy. He has tons of fun examples that have stuck with me for a long time. The mp3 of it is here.