Pride. Regardless of intelligence the most miserable people I know are the ones who can't get over themselves trying to survive in a world that is not about them.
Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)
381–390 of 453 posts
Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)
#382At the risk of sounding arrogant, I will out myself as being incredibly smart and also incredibly unhappy in a general sense (although content with my life). The answer is very simple and mundane: I observe and understand problems that have simple solutions that will never be applied because the mass of people cannot understand the problem and solution or are unwilling for social reasons from implementing the solution. This creates a sense of powerlessness and futility, and if you aren't careful can cause you to spiral into nihilism.
Finding stoic philosophy was a major turning point in my life, because it helped me gain the perspective to understand that I should invest my mental efforts on things that are within my control. That's helped me be happier in my 40s than I was in my 20s.
Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I refuse to believe the average person here is any more intelligent than the average person on the street. This is a website of words. The average person looks almost exclusively at moving pictures. I'd suggest we're at least top 5% of some key things that make up intelligence: like curiosity and intellectual bravery.
I directionally agree, but i suspect your 95th-percentile anchoring is wildly optimistic. Embarrassing admission: I'm probably much closer to the middle of the open-mindedness chart than i pretend. (I wish i was Bertrand Russell.) Indictment: so are very many commenters here.
I don't think its wildly optimistic at all. Coming here, reading stuff and commenting is such a self-selecting process that it leaves you mostly with people who have extremely high cognitive function and intellectual curiosity and bravery. This is so far away from the fold and is an extremely aggressive filter.
The dread is that even this suggested "5%" contains many idiots (this idea of 5% also being rather idiotic). But if you think 5% is wildly optimistic then I fear you don't appreciate what the baseline is like. People are proper stupid and uninterested in thinking when it comes down to it.
To get a mild appreciation of the bar, at least in technical ability. My source is the OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), specifically its assessment of “problem solving in technology-rich environments.”
Around 5% of the sample on average (116k) got to the top level. A top level task was as scary as being able to successfully reschedule a meeting in an email client with multiple participants. That's the sort of bar 5% can clear, which gives me the anchor. So think about that, well over 90% of people really struggle with that level of task, which I'd imagine all of us could clear (even our idiots). Sure its an annoying task, but its really not _that_ hard.
Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)
#384Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)
#385Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many people, including myself, just know that we don't want to have children. Our outcomes won't have the same distribution as those of people who always wanted to have children, no matter how "smart" we are about it. Another factor is that when you have children and regret it you can suffer a lot more than just "-1" of misery - I'd say the scale is more like -10 to +1 (centered around 0). Furthermore if you end up r…
I've never met anyone who was sorry they had children, but I've met a lot of people who missed the opportunity (to be fair, I've never met the parents of a violent criminal). Kids can be hard, especially if you're not a natural, and especially when they're young, but-- it's impossible to describe the fulsome love I have for my kids. I'm not a sentimental person, and probably wouldn't have had them without my wife (wh…
"I've never met anyone who was sorry they had children"
I've met my parents for 18 years before I moved away.
Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)
#386> This large, nationally-representative study from the UK finds that people who score the lowest on an intelligence test are a little less happy than everyone else, but that’s pretty much it There’s a rational explanation here: IQ is not an absolute or proportional scale, and the happiness data actually is reflecting the true absolute difference in intelligence, which is smaller than the authors and many people assum…
> There are good reasons to assume IQ works the same way
What are these reasons? For most abilities not tied to physical limits of the body (reading speed, musical skills, memory, bow/gun shooting, bowling, bull riding, knitting), the top 1% are at least several times better than an average person, and the bottom 1% are several times worse. Why would intelligence be constrained to +/-20% range unlike all those other things?
Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)
#387> This large, nationally-representative study from the UK finds that people who score the lowest on an intelligence test are a little less happy than everyone else, but that’s pretty much it There’s a rational explanation here: IQ is not an absolute or proportional scale, and the happiness data actually is reflecting the true absolute difference in intelligence, which is smaller than the authors and many people assum…
> There are good reasons to assume IQ works the same way What are these reasons? For most abilities not tied to physical limits of the body (reading speed, musical skills, memory, bow/gun shooting, bowling, bull riding, knitting), the top 1% are at least several times better than an average person, and the bottom 1% are several times worse. Why would intelligence be constrained to +/-20% range unlike all those other…
Because intelligence is a physical attribute, and everything you listed is not a physical attribute and depends almost entirely on learned skill. None of those are physical limits of the body, and they change dramatically with practice. Most (all?) human physical attributes have relatively narrow ranges of distribution, which is why we should assume physical intelligence capacity does too, until proven otherwise. Assuming that an IQ of 160 is way way more intelligent than an IQ of 130 is a unsupported and incorrect assumption, that is simply not what IQ measures.
Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)
#388Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you have preferred another label? If so, which one? Asking because...
Not really sure. The ADHD/"Gifted"/Twice Exceptional labels were even worse. I really wish my parents had made sure to always praise effort more than they praised me for the exam scores I got without studying. There was more focus from them on the final exam grade than on the process of showing my effort to the school system, and it created a sense of pride in how lazy I was. I guess, don't praise your kids for lucky…
Thanks for sharing. Parenting is hard.
It sounds like you have found useful tools in adulthood.
Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)
#389Earlier quoted context omitted.
It really isn’t. I haven’t watched the news on tv in probably 20 years, I haven’t had any social media accounts ever, and at this point I use the internet as part of my day job, to do my job. It is absolutely amazing to be so disconnected and I encourage everyone to try it. People at work tell me about interesting things happening in the world, and my role and my spouses role at her job have the (mis) fortune of keep…
You're on HN, that's social media.
A web forum is not social media. Full stop.
Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)
#390Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know, except for Luis Alvarez and William Shockley who were deemed too unintelligent to be included in Terman's study. Yet, both of them later went on to independently win Nobel Prizes.
> and William Shockley were deemed too unintelligent to be included in Terman's study So I’m one of his few remaining descendants and.. funny story, though likely for the best, despite knowing his professional history and subsequent legacy of “Doc Shock” I didn’t even consider to ride the coattails of our family name. It wasn’t until a decade into my career when I found myself in a founding engineer role of a small d…
I am constantly amazed by the people I interact with on this site. We live in a large universe, but a small world.
So, how are you related to Mister Transistor?
> did the idea to leverage the family name as a pseudo appeal-to-authority dawn on me
Did it work? I have the opposite problem. It takes a room full of engineers to get me to stop talking. I've been told I am very charismatic (though Dyslexia hinders my writing severely). Though perhaps like Icarus, my strengths are my weaknesses. I am, let's say, not a very serious person. I like to have fun and I am goofy, hyperactive, immature, and obnoxious. It makes people love me, but makes me Hell to work with. ;)
Good for you for being a self-made man. I know very little about your ancestor, but he was likely self-made, so I imagine he would appreciate the same traits in you.
> I can confidently say the “genius” apple doesn’t fall far from the tree in regard to Shockmeister’s sub-genius status.
I am too asymptotically close to stupidly to understand what you are implying. I am confused because you use genius and sub-genius in the same sentence.
Also, the 'eugenics bug' doesn't work that. Shockley likely experienced something in his life that made him that way. I do not think it's some innate trait. I grew up 45 minutes away from where the KKK was founded. I have heard words out of people's mouths that would make Shockley sound like Mother Teresita. I did not acquire any of those wretched views.
> Based on my relationship with intelligence, it’s not been my sheer intelligence that’s been my greatest asset. It’s actually the inverse!
Say it louder for the people in that back. Real life is based on the game Dungeons & Dragons (except life is a much shitter, boring game). Everyone has various amounts of 'skill points' in their stats. Intelligence is one stat, and while necessary, it ain't enough on its own.
> spending ‘innovation tokens’ wisely, to quote Choose Boring Technologies. Concretely, the latest investment I made was in standardizing my current startup around Mise. Not because it’s a great DX, but because I believe the primitives mise provides are a key enabler for agentic development in a distributed org and team context
I am sorry, I have no idea what any of this means. I assume AI tokens? What is "Choose Boring Technology?" What is "Mise" and what does "DX" mean? In my world, DX means "diagnosis."
> he was already estranged leading up to his infamous public television appearances.
Why?
> while navigating recognition of the harm he caused has done to affect me
What harms? Is the harm not fulfilling his legacy or rather his eugenic views or something else? If so, may I offer some unsolicited advice? Well, you can't really respond in real-time, so I am just going to offer it anyway. I took me many years on this rock to understand that we are responsible for our own joy and suffering. The mind can easily poison itself via attachment. Or more aptly, as Zen Master Ts'ao-shan once said:
Student: Whenever there is any question, one's mind is confused. What is the matter?
Master Ts'ao-shan: Kill, kill!
In a similar vein, my grandfather was also a "genius." Definitely of no notoriety like your ancestor. However, he definitely held his own. He worked on the Manhattan Project (met Oppenheimer, Von Neumann, etc.). My grandfather also was an performed Opera at the NYC Metropolitan, was supposed to compete in the 1936 Olympics for weight lifting (pulled a hernia on his way to Germany, thus he couldn't compete), and helped program the computer system for the Apollo 13.
My cousin is the like the 4th or 5th highest rank in the U.S. Navy and a combat experienced Navy Seal. I am just some underpaid pawn wasting my life away building boring CRUD apps for my local government. To say I fell short of any legacy would be an understatement. However, I am not truly bothered by it.
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair..."
I learned in my young adulthood to appreciate and enjoy whatever it is that you have, because no matter what it is, you’re going to lose it one day. You might lose it in death, or like von Neumann, you might lose it in life.
The Wheel of Time turns and everything is crushed beneath it.