Free Beer: And Other Forces That Get Us to Misbehave

Why don't we act in our long-term best self interest? It's because we were not designed for that. So the title free beer is misleading because There's no beer and there's no free beer. But it's supposed to capture a few elements of human irrationality Think about something like emotions. What are emotions? Emotions get triggered by the environment and when they get triggered we just go into execution mode. Overeating, under saving, procrastinating, not exercising, having unprotected sex, drinking too much We know most of those things are stupid, we know that they're dangerous But nevertheless, this long-term thinking about what's right and wrong is not the one that governs our behavior. My main excitement with this class is this idea that we will take a few topics. One every day and try to experience it in a very deep way. So we'll have some lectures, we'll have some discussions but we will also have the opportunity to personally go and explore it. And say not only what have we learned but what does it mean for society as a whole. By understanding where we thrive and where we fail We will be able to re-engineer environment to get the best out of us and not the worst. Appreciating the mystery of human nature and trying to figure out what do we do with this information and trying to experiment with their own lives. Those are kind of the ingredients of the class. I'm Dan Ariely and this is my Spring Breakthrough.