Paul Bloom 1: The origin of pleasure

TED 2011

Paul Bloom 1: The origin of pleasure (transcript)

Summary

The previous talk of the speaker was about prejudice.

This time, he tells us the origin of pleasure. It comes from our beliefs that I think it's like our prejudice.

Human beings are essentialists who are the people who strongly have a belief: a doctrine that certain traditional concepts, ideal, and skills are essential to society.

Thus our belief is changed by the history of an object how we experienced it. It appears not as a simple illusion but as a deep feature of what pleasure and pain.

The beliefs the speaker tells us are, for example, the art must be expensive and an expensive bottle wine must be delicious. Those lead you to feeling happiness without thinking what arts are and what taste is or even if you can't tell the difference. Thus feeling happiness is different from each other. This is the origin of pleasure.

OMG! Essentialism of human is that human doesn't see the essential qualities of a thing. Then we are pleased and we are suffered.

I think that people who feel happy from cheaper copy products will be increasing more than from expensive true one. Is it better for our society?

Words in this story

empirical /adj/ based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.  experiential, practical

malevolent /adj/ having or showing a wish to do evil to others.

extravagant /adj/ gorgeous, wonderful, luxurious, lacking restraint in spending money or using resources.

essence /noun/ true nature, reality, the intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something, especially something abstract, that determines its character.