Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Happiness and Genius


Happiness: Sometimes we are not very good at figuring out what we really want; or, our perceptions of what will make us happy or unhappy are unreliable. Implications? Think economics. An old article by James Surowiecki in the New Yorker

Expertise: A review of Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (Cambridge University Press, 2006). Bottomline: Genius (interpreted here as experts or expert performers) are made, not born.

4 Comments:

  1. abhinav said...

    link pointing to your blog

  2. Abi said...

    Yikes! I guess this is what happens when I post things in a hurry ...

    Thanks, Abhinav, for pointing out the lack of links. The post is fixed now.

  3. gaddeswarup said...

    Abi,
    Just wondering whether it is possible to have an open thread off and on where people can either ask questions or point out interesting topics. Regards,
    Swarup

  4. Saurabh said...

    i remember malcolm gladwell saying a very similar thing during his talk "lessons from spaghetti sauce". he said "People don't know what they want... It's a mystery. And a critically important step in understanding our own desires, and taste, is to realize that we cannot always explain what we want deep within ourselves..."