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Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)

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Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)

#281

Post by watwut »

xyzelement wrote: post #139

I think being smart universally trumps being less smart - but the definition of smart needs to be more encompassing. For example take the stereotype of a brilliant man or woman who neglected family for career, and are forever single and childless forever -- while someone less brilliant just "ends up" with a family and ultimately more fulfilled in life. Superficially this is an example of an average person being happi…

The issue here is that if the smart brilliant man decides that he will prioritize his family and friends, creating happy community around him ... you will just say he was not brilliant. Because he earns less money.

As in, your example assumes that if you are brilliant you will neglect family, if you care about family you are not brilliant.

You do indeed need to change the definition of "smart" to not be just "earns a lot of money".

Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)

#282

Post by figassis »

A few observations. I consider myself smart, but far from smartest.

tldr: intelligence lets you control some variables for happiness, but it is not the entire happiness function.

1. We're social and emotional beings beings. Emotions are more powerful than intelligence. We gladly choose something that we enjoy over something that will make us happier long term. All humans do this, mental fortitude is in short supply.

2. Life, and society move the definition of happiness constantly. Either through manipulation, new discoveries, new laws, new constraints. So even smart people need to adapt. If yo were happy last year, maybe today you have to pay higher taxes, or your country gets into a war, or you get a new president, or you're just competing with other smart people in an endless game of chess.

3. We move our own goalposts. Think the rich who thought wealth was the source of happiness, then they get there are are miserable. Or simply spend their time looking for new challenges, infinite growth, etc.

4. Living in a society means your happiness is always, always dependent on the state of that society, and therefore the happiness of others. It's like fluids. You can't be the one drop of water in a bottle that is red. It will dilute, and vice-versa. Maintaining a state of happiness in an unhappy society means building barriers and constantly fighting "them".

5. I have a theory that live is like a wave of ups and downs. The sum of all your highs will equal the sum of your your lows by the time you die. You have some control of when, how much and for how long to be happy/unhappy (unhappiness also means hardship, work, selling time for money, etc, the things we use to pay for happiness), and that controls how the quotas get distributed throughout your life. I have absolutely not tested this, I am still experimenting with my life. Counter examples may exist, I have a sample size of 1.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)

#283

Post by adithyassekhar »

annzabelle wrote: post #107
dnlosx wrote: post #63

I will speak from my experience. When I was younger, I considered myself very smart, and I was pretty unhappy. As I grew, I met people much smarter than me; I stopped seeing myself as "the smart" one, and now I am pretty happy. It's not that I became happier because I became less smart; I became happier when I stopped thinking my value was based on my intelligence, so I stopped trying to be recognized by my intellect…

I got labeled "smart but lazy" at a pretty young age (high test scores, didn't do any homework), and I let that label stick with me for far too long. I took some pride in how I could get the top score in a class without studying, and didn't realize that studying itself was a useful skill. I let this whole mindset drag me down through undergrad (especially once I hit the point where I really ought to have studied), an…

It’s quite telling how most of us have had the same experience, proud of being able to ace without the effort, the smart but lazy comments, all ended up here on the same website.

I just don’t know what it is telling but it’s telling something.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)

#285

Post by sjunginma »

It's practically a disorder. I remember the book, Too Smart to Be Happy by Jeanne Siaud-Facchin. (French)

Gifted people often are top-down thinkers, which has a lot to do with creating connections, so we can gain insight as we keep the bigger picture in mind.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)

#286

Post by a96 »

tokai wrote: post #83

This gets posted here often even though its a complete fantasy. The actual relationship between happiness and intelligence is well known to be the opposite. IQ correlates significantly with happiness. https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/b...

Well, if you look at the comments, there's clearly a ton of users who want to bash intelligence. No wonder a title like this also gets a lot of posts.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)

#287

Post by hliyan »

YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #231
hliyan wrote: post #187

Can the reasoning not be: 1) Our brains are evolved prediction engines 2) It is more beneficial and urgent to predict danger (e.g. approaching predator) than benefit (e.g. approaching prey) 3) There are always more negative outcomes than positive ones (entropy) 4) (1), (2), (3) => the more powerful the prediction engine, the more negative scenarios it will consider

Or: The world could truly be a fundamentally awful place, and smarter people are just closer to comprehending the true nature of reality.

Yes, but awful relative to... our brain's presets, which are an artifact of the world it evolved in. So in my view, there's nothing fundamental about it. Kant would say that the true nature of reality (noumena) are unknowable because our only connection to the real world is our sensory inputs, organized into perceptions within our brain (phenomena).

Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)

#288

Post by dana-s »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #88
darth_avocado wrote: post #23

Im not smart (maybe average), but a lot of my unhappiness starts from just having access to information. And then more I process the information, the more unhappy I become. Smarter people than me probably have more information and are able to process it faster, uncovering effects that are not readily perceived by normal folks like myself.

pretty sure if you're commenting on here then you're way above average. It's not a compliment, its just that you're misunderstanding how low the bar is.

I've seen how low the bar is within my family, it can go lower than the bar I've personally seen, it scares me.
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