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If you’re so smart, how come you’re not happy?

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Re: If you’re so smart, how come you’re not happy?

#61

Post by travisgriggs »

For me, as I try to step out of myself and look candidly at my own life experience, it goes something like this:

As a “smart” person in high school, that led to various “rewards” such as respect, adulation, advancement, affirmation, etc. These things feel good and so my naive self equates being smart with being happy.

When less naive self perseveres, he realizes that the connection between smart and those feel good rewards is more arbitrary than I’d like, and I have experiences more like my current situation where I’m the “smart guy that holds this product together and understands this domain best” but that has led to others being suspicious and trying to take control and to being sidelined.

So in the end, it just so turns out that smart can go with happy situations or unhappy situations. Our selection bias confirms the happy ones as causal and is offended/confused when it’s not.

Re: If you’re so smart, how come you’re not happy?

#63

Post by malux85 »

nimbius wrote: post #50

Intelligent people see the truth of the world, the universe. If the truth, if it were good, that we lived in a wonderful society with wonderful people in a universe that cared about us, smart people would be so happy. But being smart is merely a conviction of your enlightenment to the awful reality of things. Bravo, you learned about all these awful things you can’t do much to fix, and the reward is to languish in ex…

Congratulations, you can observe and complain and be a bloodless intellect, someone with no skin in the game,

Once you're past wallowing in self pity because of the burdens of the great intellect you have been given, then it's time for you to develop some wisdom.

Wisdom is accepting the limits of your being and mortality AND THEN DOING YOUR BEST ANYWAY. Wisdom and intellect is acknowledging the fact that you cannot fix everything but using your gifts of intellect to generate multipliers (processes, automations, repeatable IP, free software, open papers, sharing knowledge).

** Use your intellect to magnify your intellect and maximise the amount of good you do. **

Intellect and courage is carrying forward the light, speaking up against injustice, patiently educating and inspiring the young and reducing tyranny.

The weak intellects have undeserved lazy entitlement (they think simply because they are smart everything should be given to them, not true) or wallow in self pity because taking action brings about the possibility they might fail which would demonstrate their inadequacy and therefore hurt their self identity. These people have a disease and should be helped overcome their limits

Re: If you’re so smart, how come you’re not happy?

#64

Post by dimmke »

Towaway69 wrote: post #54
dimmke wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Most people desire to be happy. I don't believe I need to prove this. Happy isn't a long term state of being. It's a short term emotion like anger or sadness. If you expect to feel that way all the time, and think you can achieve that through some kind of changes to your life you are setting yourself up for failure. You should aim to build a life that is in line with your values, and accept that you're going to have…

> And therapy. Therapy really helps. I think everybody should go to therapy Friends. I think everyone should have good friends they can talk to. If not, then go to therapy.

I think therapy provides benefits that friends don't/can't. Your therapist shouldn't be your friend. They're an objective outsider that can help give you new ways to think about your life.

Re: If you’re so smart, how come you’re not happy?

#65

Post by mantas »

yboris wrote: post #49
mantas wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather say that if you're smart, so-called Positive Psychology seems like a fraud. Fulfilling and meaningful life > „positive“ life. Although it may bring less „happiness“ in short term. „Dopamine Nation“ is a good easy read.

Seems like you have a narrow view of what Positive Psychology is focusing on. While you're right that many authors focus on "happiness" as commonly understood, the concept of Eudaimonia (a life well lived) is also a focus for some researchers. A great read for you may be The Good Life: Unifying the Philosophy and Psychology of Well-Being by Michael Bishop. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00YD26TIS/

IMO there's too much baggage behind this term. It may be better to recommend „Eudaimonia“ itself and skip „Positive Psychology“.

Although I'm not sure about „Eudaimonia„“ part itself too. IMO many people in that field focuses on „positivity“ too much. While I prefer more balanced approach. IMO there's no happiness if you don't feel pain. Otherwise it's too easy to get sucked into looking for more and more bigger and bigger happiness triggers.

Re: If you’re so smart, how come you’re not happy?

#66

Post by adamsmith143 »

malux85 wrote: post #63
nimbius wrote: post #50

Intelligent people see the truth of the world, the universe. If the truth, if it were good, that we lived in a wonderful society with wonderful people in a universe that cared about us, smart people would be so happy. But being smart is merely a conviction of your enlightenment to the awful reality of things. Bravo, you learned about all these awful things you can’t do much to fix, and the reward is to languish in ex…

Congratulations, you can observe and complain and be a bloodless intellect, someone with no skin in the game, Once you're past wallowing in self pity because of the burdens of the great intellect you have been given, then it's time for you to develop some wisdom. Wisdom is accepting the limits of your being and mortality AND THEN DOING YOUR BEST ANYWAY. Wisdom and intellect is acknowledging the fact that you cannot f…

Yes you are locked inside a burning building with no way out and no one else will acknowledge the building is burning down. Best thing to do is write pamphlets about random errata and make as many quality widgets as your boss tells you to. This is the true path to enlightenment. Worthless toil as you slowly burn alive.

Re: If you’re so smart, how come you’re not happy?

#67

Post by ahmadmk »

This is surprisingly one dimensional… There are many studies that have shown higher levels of intelligence (ie, IQ or some other measurement if intellect) tends to be correlated with higher levels of self-reported “unhappiness,” due to a variety of covariates (eg, higher level of introspection, neuroticism, etc). Which is why looking at something like EQ is important. There aren’t really great measurements of these things but the mental model is what’s most useful imo—especially the notion that we need to develop intelligence of many types to lead a “happy” well-rounded life. If only it was as simple as a “culture” or IQ problem.

As a sidebar: I rarely understand the purpose of these types of blog posts. Perhaps they’re a manifestation of the SV/VC/PG culture to push out content and “get your voice heard,” which has merit but the amount of work required to provided a well rounded, incisive and pithy blog (eg, old PG blogs) is rarely done.

Re: If you’re so smart, how come you’re not happy?

#68

Post by adamsmith143 »

hinata08 wrote: post #43
welfare wrote: post #26

Was intrigued by the title, disagree completely with the content. You can have a rewarding job and still be unhappy, you can have no job at all and be the happiest person out there. Happiness is not one-dimensional... I still think it's a fascinating topic, anyone got any better recommendations for reading up on this?

Why would you even make the connection between work and happiness ? HR and corporations don't work to make you happy, some just play you to get better job and money themselves. I've just learnt to get happiness and fulfillment in clubs, friends and family, so that some abusive managers don't have the power to make me happy or not. And I've become more minimalist. I should be able to survive, if I change of job.

Yes, it turns out work will NOT make you free...

Re: If you’re so smart, how come you’re not happy?

#69

Post by noNothing »

Towaway69 wrote: post #54
dimmke wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Most people desire to be happy. I don't believe I need to prove this. Happy isn't a long term state of being. It's a short term emotion like anger or sadness. If you expect to feel that way all the time, and think you can achieve that through some kind of changes to your life you are setting yourself up for failure. You should aim to build a life that is in line with your values, and accept that you're going to have…

> And therapy. Therapy really helps. I think everybody should go to therapy Friends. I think everyone should have good friends they can talk to. If not, then go to therapy.

If you go the therapist route, please change therapists until you find one that works well for you. Not all therapists work well with all people. Theoretically they should, but practilally they don't and the wrong therapist can be worse than no therapist.

Re: If you’re so smart, how come you’re not happy?

#70

Post by brookst »

lukas099 wrote: post #25
z5h wrote: post #12

We haven't established that intelligence should imply happiness. We haven't even established that intelligence should imply the desire to be happy. If intelligence enables a person to identify problems, and problems make a person unhappy, then an intelligent person will have at least one factor that tends to increase unhappiness.

> We haven't even established that intelligence should imply the desire to be happy. Most people desire to be happy. I don't believe I need to prove this. The point was that we should be able to use our intelligence to identify and resolve issues that decrease our happiness. I think this is true to a certain extent, but there is an upper limit where solvable problems are not the limiting factor to our happiness.

> The point was that we should be able to use our intelligence to identify and resolve issues that decrease our happiness

It's a nice thought, and maybe it works that way at some higher level of intelligence than what I've got... but for me, what intelligence I've got gets me into a lot of the situations that decrease happiness.

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