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Loading... Stumbling on Happinessby Daniel Gilbert
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. The author is incredibly funny and persuasive. He's also quite adept at using metaphor to explain complex ideas. I was annoyed at his depressing conclusions, which inferred that we're all chasing an elusive feeling, and the only way to scientifically know how to achieve it is to ask people who are currently experiencing what we want, which no one ever does. Clearly science doesn't include "instill hope for humanity" in its list of aims. (  ) sarahjbray | Oct 23, 2009 |  How can you predict how happy you'll be doing something in the future? Ask someone else who is doing that same thing NOW! Why? Daniel Gilbert explains with wit and humor that psychological studies, observations and experiments show how poorly we remember our emotional states of the past, and how that and our present states color - usually "wrongly" - our imagination/simulations of our future states. And yet, evolution selected for these seemingly conflicting traits for the benefit of us and the others: If one weren't somewhat deluded into imagining the future could not be better than the present, then one might be content to just remain status quo, and not working for the advancement of society in general. Read about this and more in Gilbert's wonderful book! Do note, however, that this is not so much a book that gives prescription for happiness, but rather explains the stumbling blocks that cause us to mis-estimate our happiness. It would seem that other than attempting to gauge future levels of happiness by querying others in the present, that we are always bound (by evolutionary wiring) to otherwise not predict or remember well, and it is difficult or impossible to get around such. Again, that is not necessarily such a bad thing; after all, evolution selected for this. (  ) motjebben | Sep 26, 2009 | He has some interesting ideas and research results - the basic premise is that people are not very good at figuring out what will make them happy. However, I really didn't like the style of his writing. The examples he made up to illustrate concepts ended up being more distracting than illustrative, and his humor is not all that funny. (  )1  vnovak | May 23, 2009 | A thoroughly fascinating read that manages to examine neurology, psychology and a few other related disciplines to explain why it is that we're so bad at determining what it is that will make us happy. (  )1 OnorioCatenacci | May 22, 2009 | This study of how our minds work provides an interesting insight into the human condition. The book examines why we are not very good at achieving happiness even though we're very good at imagining scenarios of our future happiness. The book's narrative unfolds like a psychological detective story about the mystery of why there is so much pursuit of happiness but so little satisfaction at achieving happiness. After all, pursuit of happiness must be very important to us since it is one of the inalienable rights referenced in the U.S Declaration of Independence. Almost all reviews of this book note that this is not a "how to" book as inferred by the title. My thought is that this may indeed be a better "how to" book than most books the claim to explain "how to" achieve happiness. After all, isn't knowing one's self the first step toward such a goal? And what better way to know one's self than to understand the workings of the human brain. The first part of this book reminded me some of the material covered in the book, Animals In Translation by Temple Grandin (see my review). Read in August, 2008 ( ) Clif | Jan 14, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0739332228, Audio CD)Do you know what makes you happy? Daniel Gilbert would bet that you think you do, but you are most likely wrong. In his witty and engaging new book, Harvard professor Gilbert reveals his take on how our minds work, and how the limitations of our imaginations may be getting in the way of our ability to know what happiness is. Sound quirky and interesting? It is! But just to be sure, we asked bestselling author (and master of the quirky and interesting) Malcolm Gladwell to read Stumbling on Happiness, and give us his take. Check out his review below. --Daphne Durham Guest Reviewer: Malcolm Gladwell Now Gilbert has written a book about his psychological research. It is called Stumbling on Happiness, and reading it reminded me of that plane ride long ago. It is a delight to read. Gilbert is charming and funny and has a rare gift for making very complicated ideas come alive. Stumbling on Happiness is a book about a very simple but powerful idea. What distinguishes us as human beings from other animals is our ability to predict the future--or rather, our interest in predicting the future. We spend a great deal of our waking life imagining what it would be like to be this way or that way, or to do this or that, or taste or buy or experience some state or feeling or thing. We do that for good reasons: it is what allows us to shape our life. And it is by trying to exert some control over our futures that we attempt to be happy. But by any objective measure, we are really bad at that predictive function. We're terrible at knowing how we will feel a day or a month or year from now, and even worse at knowing what will and will not bring us that cherished happiness. Gilbert sets out to figure what that's so: why we are so terrible at something that would seem to be so extraordinarily important? In making his case, Gilbert walks us through a series of fascinating--and in some ways troubling--facts about the way our minds work. In particular, Gilbert is interested in delineating the shortcomings of imagination. We're far too accepting of the conclusions of our imaginations. Our imaginations aren't particularly imaginative. Our imaginations are really bad at telling us how we will think when the future finally comes. And our personal experiences aren't nearly as good at correcting these errors as we might think. I suppose that I really should go on at this point, and talk in more detail about what Gilbert means by that--and how his argument unfolds. But I feel like that might ruin the experience of reading Stumbling on Happiness. This is a psychological detective story about one of the great mysteries of our lives. If you have even the slightest curiosity about the human condition, you ought to read it. Trust me. --Malcolm Gladwell (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:10 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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