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Dan Gilbert's TED Talk

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Dan Gilbert, a Psychology professor at Harvard University, begins his TED Talk by telling the audience about the development of the prefrontal cortex in the human brain, calling it an “experience simulator”. Gilbert then discloses more information about the prefrontal cortex to the viewers and elaborates on its flaws, focusing on how humans often misjudge how happy they would be in several circumstances. The example that Gilbert utilises to demonstrate the human brain’s inability to predict happiness is, if given a choice, would the average human be happier winning the lottery or losing his or her legs. Naturally, one would assume that winning the lottery would make a person happier in the long term; however, people reported being equally

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