Name: 【TEDx】TEDxWoodsHole - Dan Ariely - Temptations and Self-Control
Uploaded: 2015-01-23T06:13:13.000Z
Duration: 17 min 30 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Future simple

I'll tell you a little a bit about irrational behavior --

To-infinitive

I want to talk about one particular problem  which is self control.

There were two sisters, in Northern Carolina,

and when the youngest of them got to be 100 years old

they asked her "What was your secret for longevity?"

-- they had an interview with the New York Times --

The first one was that they said  they decided never to get married.

They said they did not want a husband  to drive them to an early grave.

so I am going to skip this particular insight,

but the second thing they said  was that they did not want to go to hospital

because hospital is a place where you get diseases.

And there is a lot of wisdom in what they said.

and like many other people I got some new diseases

I got burnt, I was in the burn department,

and I got a disease as a consequence of that.

It's bad enough to be in hospital, in general,

it would affect my recovery,  it'd slow down the operation,

it rejected transplants,  all kinds of bad things,

but it was also the case that the doctors  didn't know where it came from.

They didn't know what was the essence of the problem.

Fast forward years  from time to time my liver would act up,

about seven years later  I have some kind of episode.

I check myself into hospital  and they tell me the good news:

they know what the problem is,  it was hepatitis C.

It that was a particular virus  that I got at the time

and they did point they had -- they've isolated the problem

and not only that.  It that was a new FDA trial for that;

call Interferon, to see  whether this would work on hepatitis C.

And they ask me whether I want  to join the clinical trial.

who would want to die from liver cirrhosis?

was how annoying and difficult Interferon really is.

And here was that -- for me these injections of Interferon

kind of symbolize the complexity of human life.

Imagine that you are standing there with an injection,

three times a week, for a year and a half.

And you knew that if you did it for a year and a half,

you might not have liver cirrhosis 30 years from now.

But you also knew that if you did it right now,

you will be really miserable for the next 16 hours:

now think for a second whether you would do it?

Like, would you do that? Would you be able to take on

for a potential probabilistic long term gain?

If you think about it this is kind of an ancient problem

for human behavior: It's this question, Adam and Eve.

"Who would give eternity in the garden of Eden for an apple right now?"

But here's the modern version of this question.

"Who in their right mind  would risk their life while texting?"

Please rise your hands  if you have texted while driving.

I'm guessing that most of the rest of you  are just lying!

There was a study a couple of weeks ago  that asked the question of

"What happens in states  that restrict texting while driving?"

Because instead of texting like this,  people start texting like this!

Think about dieting, really good for the long term,

Exercising, not so good now, good for the long term.

Financial savings, not fun now, good for the long term.

And it turns out that when we face these problems

we just fail regularly, systematically and consistently.

Imagine I offered you a choice between half a box of chocolate right now

Half a box of chocolate now, and a full one in a week.

And imagine that you actually have a sample.

but you could see it and smell it and feel the chocolate.

how many of you would wait another week  for another half of a box of chocolate?

Rise your hands. Ok! We have a few patient people here,

maybe 20% and I am sure if it would be for real  there would be less of you that would be --