Has anyone caught this fascinating talk on experience versus memory on the TED site?  This one is a bit longer (20 min) than the usual video I post to the blog.  But the subject is fascinating. If you take a peek, you’ll hear from Daniel Kahneman, who is said to be one of the most influential living psychologists. He and his former partner, Amos Tversky, won the Nobel Prize for their pioneering work in behavioral economics.

Kahneman starts by telling a story of a guy who goes to a “glorious” concert.  But at the end, there is a loud noise, that the guy describes as so bad it ruined the whole concert.  Kahneman argues that the concert wasn’t ruined, just the memory of the concert.

“What this is telling us, really, is that we might be thinking of ourselves and of other people in terms of two selves. There is an experiencing self, who lives in the present and knows the present, is capable of re-living the past, but basically it has only the present…And then there is a remembering self, and the remembering self is the one that keeps score, and maintains the story of our life…Those are two very different entities, the experiencing self and the remembering self and getting confused between them is part of the mess of the notion of happiness.”

If I’ve piqued your interest, then hit play below.

I’m curious what photographers and artists would have to say about this notion of the experiencing and remembering selves.  How does photography or the visual arts play into this concept and the cognitive trap of measuring experiences and emotions that Kahneman mentions (want to weigh in, Mike?)  What do you think, reader?  This has got my brain churning.

Saludos,

Megan