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(Dan Ariely)
♫ Wise men say...♫
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No.
Should I sing? Not really, uh?
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(A woman, off, laughs, then:) No, really you shouldn't sing, no.
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(Ariely) This is Aileen saying I shouldn't sing.
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So, I try all kinds of things,
sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.
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Singing, clearly, is not one of them.
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I wanted to thank you
for taking this class.
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As you can see, I'm unshaved and tired.
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It's because it has been
a very long period.
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It was taxing and demanding,
but also very enjoyable.
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But I want to link something, kind of
broad, about the experience,
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to something we learned about.
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So you remember the principle
of loss of urging.
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The principle of loss of urging is that
we suffer more from negative things
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than we enjoy positive things.
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And it is this asymmetry that
going below is painful,
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going above is just not that happy.
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And I discovered that, of course,
we all experience it in our day-to-day lives.
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For me, one of the strongest case was
when I wrote my first book.
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Mostly, I got very good reviews,
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but there was one review
that was just terrible.
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And you know what?
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I remember that review in much more detail
than I remember the positive ones,
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which is our tendency to focus
on the negative things.
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And actually, the same thing, basically,
happened in the class.
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You know, from time to time, we had
people in the class who complained.
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And we had people who complained
on the fora,
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we had people who called Duke,
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we had a few people who kind of made
our lives very, very difficult
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and if I think about the balance,
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then most of you have been appreciative,
and fantastic, and helpful,
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very few have been negative,
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but the problem is that the negative
comments loom so large.
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The vast, vast, vast majority of you were
so helpful, and
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kind of, I felt, came to the rescue, then
basically tried to even out
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the forces of ev--- no, tried to even out
the negative comments.
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And I really appreciated this, you know,
this is an effort that we're doing
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out of our feeling of camaraderie
and participation and helpfulness
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and we are delighting in participating
in this community
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that formed together for a few weeks
to study together social science
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and learn and reflect and think together,
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and it's been a great experience.
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And there is no question
that I'm paying much more attention
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to the negative comments,
and there is no question
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that they've impacted my well-being
in the last few weeks,
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and all the people who have been involved
in the class for the last few weeks
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to a larger degree, but I do think
incredibly fondly about
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the people who have been positive
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and I think, this has been
such a force of good and you know,
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I think this is one of the things
that is incredibly important:
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how do we create a community?
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How do we create a community that,
even when there's some outliers
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who try to make things not as good
for everybody,
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how do we make sure the community strives
and continues and so on?
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And you know, we do learn from the bad,
so that's good,
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but I do want to remember the positive.
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So, what is the big positive positive?
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I'll tell you, when I look
at the activity around,
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I feel that we've created a community
of people who care about research
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and people who care about each other,
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and people who are interested
in the same topic:
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we gathered around the world, and
people spent a substantial amount of time
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listening to me, talking to each other,
reading papers.
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And that kind of activity,
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that kind of ability for people to get
together across the world and do something
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together in social science
is really exciting.
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And that, for me, is the biggest positive
impact, and I thank you all
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-- save for a few of you --
for participate in it.
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So thank you very much.
Now I'm going to sleep for a few days
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and hopefully, we'll see you online
at some point.
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Bye for now.
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♫ Wise men say: only fools rush in♫
♫but I...♫
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[cah Center for Advanced Hindsight
an advanced insight production]