MLA Alex Montecalvo

Professor Deby Jizi

UWRT 1102-029
22 February 2016
Double Entry Journal
Citation: "Transcript of "The Surprising Science of Happiness"" Dan Gilbert: The Surprising
Science of Happiness. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Feb. 2016.
Source: Quote (Page# or Paragraph #)

Responses

All of you have done this. Ben and Jerry's

doesn't have liver-and-onion ice cream, and
it's not because they whipped some up, tried
it and went, "Yuck." It's because, without
leaving your armchair, you can simulate that
flavor and say "yuck" before you make it.
Minute1:48

This point is very interesting because without

him pointing out that we have to ability to lay
things out in our heads before they actually
happen brings a lot of things into perspective.
We as humans mostly all the time think before
doing something and while doing this we
come up with many possible outcomes some
bad and some good. I could see life being very
different if we did not have this ability.

We synthesize happiness, but we think

I agree with this statement to be true! I believe
happiness is a thing to be found. Minute 5:00 that we think happens can be found and
achieved. We believe that sums of money and
fame will make us happy. But that is not the
case. Happiness come naturally
Because when people synthesize happiness,
as these gentlemen seem to have done, we
all smile at them, but we kind of roll our
eyes and say, "Yeah right, you never really
wanted the job." "Oh yeah, right. Minute
8:04

We as a human race do this all the time. I

believe that if someone says something that
we do not know to be true ourselves we often
tend to think that they are lying and dont
believe them. But we really do not know if
someone else is happy. They may seem
unhappy to us but in there minds they are
happy and that is all that matters. Like the first
drummer for the beetles, if he says he is
happier than if he was with the beetles then
who are we to tell him otherwise.

You're watching happiness be synthesized.

Would you like to see it again? Happiness!
"The one I got is really better than I thought!
That other one I didn't get sucks!" That's the
synthesis of happiness. Minute 10:23

I agree that this happens to everyone no

matter what is given to them. I think that we
try to always make the best out of every
situation that we run into. Like if we were
given a Toyota Prius but we really wanted was
BMW M3. We would try to think of reason
why the Prius is a much better car the the M3
because we are trying to make ourselves

believe that the choice we had chosen or was

given was the better option.
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. Minute 13:43

Freedom has so much to do with us being

happy. We can change what we are doing at
anytime to try to make ourselves happy. If we
not able to make our own decisions and
everything was controlled for us we would not
have the chose and we would try to make
ourselves happy with what we are doing.

The lesson I want to leave you with, from

these data, is that our longings and our
worries are both to some degree overblown,
because we have within us the capacity to
manufacture the very commodity we are
constantly chasing when we choose
experience. Minute 20:51

I agree with this statement. It is pretty much

saying that we can make up happiness even if
we are not happy. With this we can always
believe that we are happy even though we are
not truly happy at all.