I'm really excited to be here;
I'm excited to talk with you all,
share some of what I know, some of what I've learned.
But I'm also kind of confused.
Because in my mind, TED Talks, TEDx Talks, TEDxYouth Talks,
they're given by people with a path and a vision.
And I still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up.
I've been putting off having to choose.
When I was very small, I was told that I was smart.
And not just any kind of smart:
I was told that I was scientifically and mathematically inclined,
as opposed to someone like my brother
who was deemed talented in things like language and art.
I was told, "Girls can too,"
which was a phrase meant to inspire me
to keep studying mathematics and go into the hard sciences.
I was told about my dad's work for the Air Force,
about how he always wished he had completed his pilot's license,
and how when he was a kid, he used to build rockets.
I was told bedtime stories of Shannon Lucid and Sally Ride,
and if I wanted to stay up late to watch a shuttle launch,
my parents let me.
It's no surprise that I wanted to be an astronaut.
At five,
I could have told you I wanted to earn my bachelor's degree from Annapolis,
become a jet jockey,
and then apply to NASA.
Everyone was so proud and so impressed at this little kid
with this well-thought-out and well-researched life.
But when I was 14, I stopped really caring about school.
Our country was two years into a new war,
and as I started to learn more about the military,
I realized I didn't want to be a part of that system.
Despite being one of the most common paths to becoming an astronaut,
I started to find I didn't want to go Annapolis,
I didn't want to be a jet jockey,
I didn't want to become an astronaut.
This thing,
this goal that I had been pointed at by parents and teachers and friends,
this piece of my identity,
was suddenly gone.
I had lost my destiny.
I felt like such a disappointment,
like whatever I did for the rest of my life,
no matter how well I did it,
it would always be in the shadow of this monumental failure,
a failure to even get started.
Luckily, the grownups weren't completely wrong.
I still depend on mankind's number one evolutionary advantage:
our brains.
We don't have the biggest brains in the animal kingdom,
not by a long shot.
But this is the prefrontal cortex,
and we've evolved to have really big ones when compared to the rest of our brains.
The prefrontal cortex is responsible
for everything that we think that make us different from other animals.
It's responsible for executive function.
It's responsible for our ability to empathize,
our ability to think ahead and plan,
predict what's going to happen in the future.
It's responsible for social control.
Our really big prefrontal cortexes makes us problem-solving machines.
We're decisions makers.
When presented with a list of options,
we're not only able to quickly and efficiently make a choice,
but we're able to generate new options
from outside of the originally defined set.
Think of all of the choices that you're making right now,
just sitting in this theater.
You're choosing not to get up and start dancing.
You're choosing to listen.
You're choosing not to wet your pants,
(Laughter)
I hope.
(Laughter)
Most of these choices
your brain makes without you having to devote any conscious awareness to them.
But some choices, like what to be when you will grow up,
are a much, much bigger deal.
Since closing the door on being an astronaut,
my education background has been in economics, political science,
mathematics, neuroeconomics and neurobiology.
Which basically means
when I was presented with a list of majors in college,
I just refused to make a decision
and looked for the box marked "All of the above."
(Laughter)
But I'm going to let you in on a little secret.
It turns out that economics, neuroscience and political science
all actually study the exact same thing,
which is, Why do people make the decisions that they make,
sometimes even working against their own best interest?
We see people working minimum-wage jobs voting against minimum-wage hikes.
We see parents refusing to vaccinate their otherwise healthy kids
despite the fact that that is evolutionary disadvantageous
at both the individual and societal levels.
We see teenagers who've been bombarded with anti-smoking information
their whole lives,
who know the risks associated with smoking,
start anyway.
And we as a society are so confused about why people would do these things
that we use science and social science
and TED Talks and crystal balls and mathematics
to figure out why.
Why would people do these things?
And everybody does this.
No one is immune from these breaks in what economists call "rationality."
We all have things that can show us predictably biased choices.
I'm going to give you an example.
Let's play a game.
I'm going to flip a coin - it's a fair coin.
If the first flip comes up heads, you get two dollars.
I flip it again;
if it comes up heads a second time, you get four dollars.
A third time, eight dollars.
Fourth, 16, until the coin comes up tails.
And then I pay you your money.
So if the coin comes up heads five times in a row before the first tails,
you get 32 dollars.
If it come up 20 times in a row before your first tails,
you get over a million dollars.
So think to yourself,
how much would you be willing to pay to play this game?
If you're like most people,
you'd be willing to pay less than 25 dollars.
But if you played this game forever,
you would be expected to make an infinite amount of money,
no matter how much you paid per game.
This game has an infinite expected value,
and yet everybody has a point, a number usually really low,
that they'd no longer be willing to pay to play.
Here's another one.
It's like getting your eyes checked at the eye doctor:
I'm going to present A or B, and you'll tell me which one you think is better.
So A, I give you a million dollars,
just like that.
Cold million, you walk away, go home, it's wonderful.
Or B,
you can take a gamble.
There's an 89% chance of winning a million dollars,
a 1% chance of winning nothing - you walk home empty-handed -
and a 10% chance at winning five million dollars.
Which would you choose?
If you're like most people, you'd actually choose A -
no risk, no gamble,
you just walk away with the cold million.
Here's the next one: choice C.
There's a 89% chance of getting zero dollars
and an 11% chance of getting a million,
or D, there's a 90% chance of getting zero dollars
and a 10% chance of getting five million.
This time, if you're like most people,
you'd pick D and hope for the five million.
But if we do some quick math,
we actually find that the first two choices are equivalent.
and that when it's framed one way,
you pick A,
and when it's framed another way,
you pick D.
Just based on how the information is presented to you,
I can get you to pick door number one or door number two.
And the weird thing is that making any other decision
probably feels really wrong.
It turns out that intuition and economic rationality
don't always agree.
So these are just two economic examples of biases in decision making.
It turns out that there's actually a lot of factors
that can predictably bias what we choose.
The first was an example
of inappropriately weighting small probabilities.
There's less than a 3% chance
that you'll win at least $32 in the quarter-flipping game,
and as a result, we have a hard time even taking into account
the chance of making a million.
This same bias is seen in people who fail to vaccinate their kids.
If your unvaccinated child only has a 5% chance of getting sick,
it's really hard to take into account
the possible consequences of them not being vaccinated,
which could be as high as the child's life.
The second example is of a framing effect.
This affects everything from what cereal we buy at the store
to how we report judgments of our own emotions.
For example, you're much more likely to report being happy
if I ask, "Are you happy?"
than if I ask, "Are you unhappy?"
Other biases include aversion to uncertainty
and making choices that try to avoid it.
We can miss out on some really great opportunities
by trying to avoid unknown unknowns.
We're also biased by the number of options that are presented to us.
Having a wide range of options, it turns out, isn't always better.
It can make deciding harder
and actually affect both our levels of happiness and anxiety.
So how do these biases affect big decisions
like what to be when you grow up?
We're going to do some quick audience participation.
Raise your hand if you've ever been told
that you can be anything you want to be when you grow up.
Yeah? You can put your hands down.
Being told that you can be anything you want feels pretty good.
It feels like you can live your life
according to your own rules, your owns wants, your own goals.
Like you can become the person you want to be:
proud, successful, happy.
It give you a feeling of agency over your life,
a feeling of freedom.
Life is an open field,
and you can go anywhere you want to go.
But humans don't have infinite time.
While you may be able to do anything you want,
you probably won't be able to do everything you want.
Having to choose between so many options
can be anxiety inducing and detrimental to our happiness.
We as humans hate eliminating options,
even if we know that that's not a path we want to choose.
We feel like we're losing out on something
simply by giving up the possibility of something.
I want you to raise you hand if you're even been told
anything similar to one of the statements that I'm about to say.
Just put your hand up and leave it, okay?
If you put your mind to it, you could be really great at blank.
Whatever that is for you.
If you dedicate your life to it,
you could help cure cancer
or do some other difficult and yet very specific feat.
If you really try,
you could win a Nobel Prize or an Olympic gold medal or an Oscar.
How about this one?
You'd make a really great astronaut.
(Laughter)
You can put your hands down.
These statements are very different from the first statement.
Well, both are meant to motivate and inspire.
The first instills a sense of freedom and agency.
The second implies a responsibility to the path that's been laid out.
If this person is right,
and I could help cure cancer if I just devote my entire life to it,
then is it bad if I want to become a professional cellist?
If I truly could win a Nobel Prize,
am I depriving the world by focusing on painting?
If I can be the next Meryl Streep,
is it wrong that I want to code for a tech startup?
If we're told that we can be anything we want to be,
then we make our own decisions,
bearing the stress and the anxiety that come with that.
When someone else sets our path,
we don't have to worry about closing doors,
but we lose a sense of autonomy.
And taking any other path than the one laid out for us
feels like we're letting someone down or doing something wrong.
The pressure that comes with being told that you could be great at something,
that you have the potential to win a Nobel Prize
or save the polar bears or be an astronaut,
can actually prevent you
from doing something that you really want to do.
Almost every smart, talented or hardworking person I know
has felt this pressure at some point in their lives.
Even if they don't know exactly what they want to be when they grow up,
being told that they could be great at a specific thing
makes them feel responsible for achieving that goal.
It's a responsibility that is placed on them,
often accidentally, by parents or teachers or friends,
and if it's internalized, it can be destructive,
fueling anger or resentment.
The possible anxiety of having too many choices
doesn't seem so bad when it comes with the freedom to set your own path.
I don't have the answers
on how to decide what to do with your life,
what doors to close or what opportunities to pursue.
But it can help to recognize that you have choices,
no one sets your path but you.
But in case the anxiety does start to get paralyzing,
I want to leave you with this:
No matter what you choose to do with your life -
and you can do anything, including nothing at all -
you are still important,
you are still worthy of love,
and there will still be people who love you.
Being smart or talented is a privilege.
It allows you to do something, possibly multiple things,
better, faster or easier than the average person.
But being smart or talented is not a responsibility.
It's not your job to save anyone;
it's not your duty to fix anything;
it's not your responsibility to create.
You, just like everybody else in this world, have only one job:
love.
Love yourself,
do your very, very best to love others,
and whatever it is you decide to do with your life,
do it for love.
If you follow that, you can't go wrong.
Thank you.
(Applause)