Ariely's TED Talk made me question all of my past decisions.
He opened up the talk with a discussion about optical illusions and how in our minds, we're unwittingly influenced by the illusion's surroundings to see things that aren't actually accurate.
The illusions were supposed to represent the way the human mind is easily manipulated. This directly led into the discussion of how our surroundings can influence our choices such as the Economist subscription choices. When there was both the online only and the print subscriptions next to each other, survey participants were more likely to choose the option with both the print and online subscriptions and less likely to choose only the print or online. However, when one of the print/online options was taken away, more people chose the single option. This proved that surroundings have influence on our choices, even if we aren’t aware. Another example was the case of ugly Tom and ugly Jerry. The presence of either one of the ugly options made their respective normal option more desirable (which is why you should apparently always go to the bar with someone uglier than you.....).
The flexibility of the human mind illustrated in these examples ties into tragedy because often times, no matter how hard we try to prevent something from happening, the inevitable will still happen if our surroundings can manipulate us enough. For example, no matter what Oedipus tried, there was nothing he could do to not kill his father and fricklefrackle his mother. It was destined and inevitable. The same can be said of many other aspects of tragedy.
He opened up the talk with a discussion about optical illusions and how in our minds, we're unwittingly influenced by the illusion's surroundings to see things that aren't actually accurate.
The illusions were supposed to represent the way the human mind is easily manipulated. This directly led into the discussion of how our surroundings can influence our choices such as the Economist subscription choices. When there was both the online only and the print subscriptions next to each other, survey participants were more likely to choose the option with both the print and online subscriptions and less likely to choose only the print or online. However, when one of the print/online options was taken away, more people chose the single option. This proved that surroundings have influence on our choices, even if we aren’t aware. Another example was the case of ugly Tom and ugly Jerry. The presence of either one of the ugly options made their respective normal option more desirable (which is why you should apparently always go to the bar with someone uglier than you.....).
The flexibility of the human mind illustrated in these examples ties into tragedy because often times, no matter how hard we try to prevent something from happening, the inevitable will still happen if our surroundings can manipulate us enough. For example, no matter what Oedipus tried, there was nothing he could do to not kill his father and fricklefrackle his mother. It was destined and inevitable. The same can be said of many other aspects of tragedy.