How to explain something complicated transcript

What if you need someone to understand an idea that's difficult to explain? Explaining a complicated idea so that someone can understand it is one of the ways society moves forward. Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert came to TED with a difficult task. In just a single short talk, he planned to explain a complicated concept called “Synthesized Happiness,” and why it leads us to make incorrect predictions about our own futures.

Let's see how he goes about his task. When you have 21 minutes to speak, 2 million years seems like a really long time. But evolutionarily, 2 million years is nothing. And yet in 2 million years, the human brain has nearly tripled in mass; going from the one and a quarter pound brain of our ancestor here, Habilis, to the almost 3 pound meatloaf that everybody here has between their ears. What is it about a big brain that nature was so eager for every one of us to have one?

Do you feel a little spark of curiosity? That's the first step to a successful explanation. Once a mind is curious, it opens up. Gilbert continues to spark our curiosity. Well, it turns out when brains triple in size, they don't just get three times bigger, they gain new structures. And one of the main reasons that our brain got so big is because it got a new part called the frontal lobe— and particularly a part called the prefrontal cortex.

Now, what does a prefrontal cortex do for you that should justify the entire architectural overhaul of the human skull in the blink of evolutionary time? While keeping us interested, Gilbert introduced the first concept he’ll be building on: prefrontal cortex. Turns out the prefrontal cortex does lots of things. But one of the most important things it does is an experience simulator. Pilots practice in flight simulators so that they don't make real mistakes in planes.

Human beings have this marvelous adaptation that they can actually have experiences in their heads before they try them out in real life. This is a trick that none of our ancestors could do, that no other animal can do quite like we can. It's a marvelous adaptation. It’s up there with opposable thumbs and standing upright and language as one of the things that got our species out of the trees and into the shopping mall.

Gilbert just slipped in a second new concept: experience simulator. That’s another key building block in the big idea he’s planning to explain. The metaphor— that of a flight simulator— helps us understand what an experience simulator is. Now how about an example? All of you have done this. I mean, you know, Ben & Jerry’s doesn’t have liver and onion ice cream, and it’s not because they whipped some up, tried it, and went yuck!

It’s because, without leaving your armchair, you can simulate that flavor and say yuck before you make it. Gilbert uses a single strong example of how the experience simulator works, and then you totally get what it is. But now the talk takes a turn. Gilbert asks the audience to use their experience simulators to imagine going through two very different life events: winning the lottery and becoming paraplegic— which means losing the use of your legs.

He asks everyone which of these life events they would prefer to happen to them. Then he shares a truly amazing piece of information. Interestingly, there are data on these two groups of people, data on how happy they are. And this is exactly what you expected, isn't it? But these aren’t the data, I made these up. These are the data. You failed the pop quiz, and you’re hardly five minutes into the lecture. Because the fact is that a year after losing the use of their legs and a year after winning the lotto, lottery winners and paraplegics are equally happy with their lives.

What? That can't be right. This new concept of the experience simulator has suddenly taken you to a place you didn't expect. A confusing place. You’re in what’s called a knowledge gap. There’s more information you need in order to understand the facts Gilbert has just presented to you. He goes on to fill in that gap. He and his coworkers have been researching something called impact bias, which is the tendency for our experience simulators to work badly— to make us believe different experiences are more different than they actually are.

By putting a name on it, impact bias, the mystery of the information we’re struggling to make sense of starts to become more believable. Our curiosity is now burning more brightly than before. Gilbert uses our curiosity to reveal the big idea of his talk. In fact, they really are, from field studies to laboratory studies, we see that winning or losing an election, gaining or losing a romantic partner, getting or not getting a promotion, passing or not passing a college test, on and on, have far less impact, less intensity, and much less duration than people expect them to have.

Now, in fact, a recent study— this almost floors me— a recent study showing how major life traumas affect people suggests that if it happened over three months ago, with only a few exceptions, it has no impact whatsoever on your happiness. Why? Because happiness can be synthesized. Sir Thomas Brown wrote in 1642, “I am the happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty to riches, adversity to prosperity, I am more invulnerable than Achilles; fortune hath not one place to hit me.” Kind of remarkable machinery does this guy have in his head?

Well, it turns out it’s precisely the same remarkable machinery that all of us have. Human beings have something that we might think of as a psychological immune system, a system of cognitive processes, largely non-conscious cognitive processes, that help them change their views of the world so that they can feel better about the worlds in which they find themselves. There it is, Gilbert’s big idea: something called Synthetic Happiness.

He goes on to describe how this works. It's like an immune system for the mind. Just as the immune system protects our bodies from infection, synthesized happiness protects our peace of mind. Our brains build happiness for themselves, even when things don’t go as planned. Gilbert got his audience to understand synthesized happiness by building on the concepts of prefrontal cortex, experience simulator, and impact bias.

And to make it clear, he used another metaphor: the immune system. Gilbert didn’t try to explain his complicated idea in one big leap. He got there piece by piece. After giving us some examples of synthesized happiness in action, He goes on to show how you can live a wiser, happier life if you remember synthetic happiness exists. At the end of the explanation, the way we see the world has been upgraded. It’s richer, deeper, and truer.

There is a lot of evidence out there suggesting that this is how understanding must be built. Like a tower, each new block of information supports the next new block of information. Each bit gets stronger thanks to metaphors and examples. The metaphors show us the shape of each new idea so that the mind knows how to recognize it. If the core of your talk is explaining a powerful new idea, it’s helpful to ask: what do you think your audience already knows?

What are the building blocks you need to explain your idea? What metaphors and examples can you use to help listeners understand things they may not be familiar with yet? It can be tricky to spot what things an audience may need help understanding. We all suffer from something economist Robin Hogarth calls “the curse of knowledge.” Basically, we find it hard to remember what it feels like not to know something that we ourselves do know.

This might be the most important requirement for clear communication. You can’t give a powerful new idea to an audience unless you can figure out how to explain it. That can only be done step by step, fueled by curiosity.