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Why aren't smart people happier?

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Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#101

Post by bell-cot »

codyklimdev wrote: post #15

I think beyond a certain level surplus IQ begins to cause problems. While still useful, the amount of self-sabotage and thought spirals the brain can generate with the extra power can cause neuroses and unhappiness on a larger scale than those less intelligent are capable of. Combine it with higher societal expectations and it's no great mystery to me why smarter people seem unhappier. Just my thoughts anyways. I'm a…

> I think beyond a certain level surplus IQ begins to cause problems.

YES, with an emphasis on the idea of "surplus IQ". If you are similarly blessed with high EQ, great social skills, athletic talent, etc. - not much of a problem. Vs. if you're nothing special (or worse) in some of those other areas, while having a metaphorical Mjölnir in your IQ toolbox - Big Problems. "Solve it with IQ" becomes your go-to strategy in far too many situations, you tend let other skills type atrophy...and treating everything as a metaphorical nail really doesn't work well.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#102

Post by ranger_danger »

qgin wrote: post #74

I don't think I have ever seen someone change their long-term average happiness more than a small amount with maybe two exceptions: 1. Someone trapped in a truly off-the-charts stressful environment and then removing themselves from it 2. Psychiatric drugs

Leaving my long-term relationship was the best decision I ever made. It has been 3 years and it still makes me smile every day just realizing how much happier I am now.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#103

Post by esseph »

vorpalhex wrote: post #65
esseph wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is easily proven incorrect. Ancient Rome worked on an 8 day workweek, and traditionally the 8th day was a rest day. Ancient Greeks didn't have weekly days off... but they had up to 120 festivals a year where shops and businesses would be shut down.

Nundinae was only for the ruling class to go shopping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nundinae So sorry, you still get to bake bread all day. And Greek festival days involved.. lots of food, baths had to be hot, etc. So someone has to run the event. It wasn't the common people getting a day off.

What do you think the Hebrew Sabbath is, exactly?

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#104

Post by impossiblefork »

badpun wrote: post #91
supportengineer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Bay Area, I feel surrounded by such people. They solve imaginary problems to get a promotion. But they are competing with thousands of other, equally smart people, to also get promotions. So it's non-stop change for no reason, and wasting resources.

Sportsmen compete in imaginary competitions with equally physially gifted people just to win a prize. And yet, many are fulfilled by it. For some people, competing is what drives them.

Yes, but then you know it's a game, so there's no self-deception that you're actually doing something meaningful. This realization thus gives the whole sportsmanship concept.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#105

Post by cosmic_cheese »

burningChrome wrote: post #93
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been a somewhat popular line of thought in internet circles for a while and I'm inclined to agree. I also believe the threshold past which these problems begin to crop up may be considerably lower than commonly thought… One doesn't need to be a chart topper to fall into these cognitive patterns. That said, it probably doesn't need to be this way and I would suggest that the root issue lies with the way that…

>> which is greatly exacerbated when one has the mental acuity to zoom out and see the bigger picture. Do you think this comes with age, or are some people born with the ability regardless of age to see the bigger picture? For myself, I just plodded along through high school and then things started to click more when I was in college, contemplating life in the real world. Many of my classmates in HS seemed to have th…

I think it’s one of those things that varies wildly from person to person.

In my case, I was almost completely unconcerned about anything except my hobbies/interests in high school and didn’t have the foggiest clue about where I might be headed. It wasn’t without its stressors but overall it was a carefree time. It was maybe some time about halfway through college when reality began to sink in and that all changed. The ability to zoom out might’ve been present early on but if it was, it didn’t kick in until a threshold of some sort had been reached.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#106

Post by marginalia_nu »

esseph wrote: post #61
vorpalhex wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's trivially false. Ancient people were always working, and we can see this in people who maintain primative lifestyles. Take bread. You start the oven at 4am. By 5am it is hot enough for your meats. By 7am extinguish, by 8am start your bread and go until 6-7pm. Now you get to start your dough for tomorrow, typically working until 11pm. Historically bakers were known to sleep in flour hoppers as they were spared…

This is easily proven incorrect. Ancient Rome worked on an 8 day workweek, and traditionally the 8th day was a rest day. Ancient Greeks didn't have weekly days off... but they had up to 120 festivals a year where shops and businesses would be shut down.

Someone has to do all the unpleasant work. In antiquity, that was generally the slaves. Today, it's everyone who isn't independently wealthy and wants more out of life than living out of a shopping cart.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#107

Post by CrzyLngPwd »

We humans are never happy. We might be content for a while, but that is it.

Smart people see farther than the end of their noses, and so they can effectively project out into the future, and that future always involves work and hardship, and neither of those things brings happiness.

Smart people also know that happiness is a mere moment, not a state one can be in. You have it, and then it is gone. It's like trying to grasp smoke to save it for later.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#108

Post by lordnacho »

A few thoughts on the matter:

- Happiness is fixed, perhaps. Short-term, it isn't (coke and hookers work!). Long-term, it is. People fall back to a baseline. So then, being smart doesn't help you.

- Dumb people might be misreporting their happiness. So smart people are making themselves happier, but all the studies are done on self-reported happiness, and the dumb people report that they are happier than they really are.

- There's a difference between intelligence and wisdom: if you're intelligent, you have good models. If you're wise, you make good decisions. You might think that you need to be intelligent to be wise, but you also need wisdom to navigate uncertainty, ie you need to exercise your decision making for when you don't have a good model. Dumb people have to do this a lot.

- It may just be that you can make yourself happier, but being intelligent doesn't give you differential access to the levers that you need. Eg to be happy maybe you need an active social life. Well, there's no particular reason having high IQ would help that. We generally have a tendency to think that IQ is a kind of magic substance that can do anything, but why would that be?

- Being smart could actively harm your happiness. I told my kid he needed to wait for his friends to grow up, they will stop only caring about football (luckily the prophesy came true and they are having a great time in their little nerd group). Another friend has the same problem with his kid, they just don't have the social ties available yet. BTW, I really do think there's something to this one, you need the social side to be happy. There's a few HN people who also give me that "finally found my tribe" vibe when they write. I met a guy on the train who saw me coding, and he had the same story.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#109

Post by kstrauser »

kaicianflone wrote: post #60

This answer might upset some people, but it’s really about balance. Spiritual healing is something many intelligent people quietly need. Too often, “intellectuals” dismiss the Bible outright. Relying on arguments they half-remember from TikTok or high-school debates instead of actually reading it and forming their own conclusion, like they would with any other subject. I’m just a developer, but I think intelligence c…

I tend to agree, although I wouldn't limit it to one religious tradition, or even to religion at all. For example, mindfulness meditation doesn't require any spiritual believe whatsoever. (In before: "But isn't that Buddhist?" Reply: "Who invented it is irrelevant. The practice itself is areligious, unless you go out of your way to make it otherwise for yourself.")

I find that being mindful of the world around me, and wishing well for the people around me, and even people I dislike and am predisposed to not wishing well upon, makes me a happier person. I think we all need that, or something like it: a reminder that the world is larger than ourselves, and that we're just one part of the whole, whether that be our relationship to the god of our belief system, or to our secular existence on a living planet in a tiny corner of an immense universe.

That stuff's good for us. I'm convinced of it.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#110

Post by ranger_danger »

malkocoglu wrote: post #2

Because there are lots of stupid people around them that make life miserable for everybody, not only themselves ! Note: I wrote this comment after reading just the title...

I disagree, I think it's more about a person's emotion intelligence. You can choose to be happy even if everyone else around you is not. It might not be easy, but I think it's possible.
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