Happiness and Choice

If you haven’t watched the TED netcasts yet you’re really missing out, some great stuff on there, superb presenters with innovative subjects. I’m not keeping up though and finally watched Dan Gilbert and Barry Schwartz talking about the synthesizing of happiness and the paradox of choice respectively. Fascinating theories, especially since I’m also finishing up The Long Tail these days. Anderson is promoting choice and explaining how much we now have of every niche easily available while Schwartz argues that we have too much which raises expectations that we can never fullfill and Gilbert believes we can synthesize happiness out of pretty much anything and we are always aiming for things that in the end don’t necessarily make a difference. I’m hugely paraphrasing all three here but watch both videos and grab the book, important thinking in each case.