Understanding How We Think And What Makes Us Happy

Der Speigel provides us with a great interview of Danial Kahneman.  He is a cognitive psychologist who won a Nobel Prize in economics.  I was more impressed with the distinctions that Kahneman makes about experiencing life, and the memories that we have of our experiences, than I was about the weakness of our reliance on intuitions, which was used for the title of the article.  I was also interested in the distinction that he makes between life satisfaction and happiness.  For example, our satisfaction may increase with our income, but our happiness will not increase when our income rises above a threshold.  It is miserable to live with an income below the threshold, but happiness depends upon a lot of variables that are not affected by income above the threshold.  We have an illusion about income, that is like the illusion that we have about people with a severe disability.  We cannot imagine, for example, how a paraplegic can be happy, because we cannot imagine being happy without the ability to engage in certain activities.  Happiness, however, depends upon a complex of things that are constant in life, and may not change with disability.