Daniel Gilbert

This general finding–that information acquired after an event alters memory of the event–has been replicated so many times in so many different laboratory and field settings that it has left most scientists convinced of two things.6 First, the act of remembering involves ‘filling in’ details that were not actually stored; and second, we generally cannot tell when we are doing this because filling in happens quickly and unconsciously.7 Indeed, this phenomenon is so powerful that it happens even when we know someone is trying to trick us.

When we have an experience–hearing a particular sonata, making love with a particular person, watching the sun set from a particular window of a particular room–on successive occasions, we quickly begin to adapt to it, and the experience yields less pleasure each time.

time and variety are two ways to avoid habituation, and if you have one, then you don’t need the other. In fact when episodes are sufficiently separated in time, variety is not only unnecessary–it can actually be costly.

(a) value is determined by the comparison of one thing with another; (b) there is more than one kind of comparison we can make in any given instance; and (c) we may value something more highly when we make one kind of comparison than when we make a different kind of comparison.

As much as we all despise racism and sexism, these isms have only recently been considered moral turpitudes, and thus condemning Thomas Jefferson for keeping slaves or Sigmund Freud for patronizing women is a bit like arresting someone today for having driven without a seat belt in 1923. And yet, the temptation to view the past through the lens of the present is nothing short of overwhelming.

The reality of the moment is so palpable and powerful that it holds imagination in a tight orbit from which it never fully escapes. Presentism occurs because we fail to recognize that our future selves won’t see the world the way we see it now.

There are many good things about getting older, but no one knows what they are.

Almost any time we tell anyone anything, we are attempting to change the way their brains operate–attempting to change the way they see the world so that their view of it more closely resembles our own.