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Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)
11–20 of 452 posts
Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)
#12Horrors beyond your comprehension are mild compared to the horrors you can understand but cannot fix.
Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)
#13Wisdom is where happiness comes from, not intelligence.
Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)
#14Because we are depressed by the realization of how stupid we are.
We aren't optimized for smart, for happy, or for truth - we are optimized for getting our genes into the next generation.
Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)
#15I live by "everything is grey". I am interestingly smart in some niche domains that I have a hard time communicating exists. I also insist on not fitting any template. Pretty dumb, right?
Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)
#16Because we're depressed at being surrounded by stupidity. Or at least I am; I won't speak for everyone else.
Stupidity in the sense of doing nothing good for themselves or anyone else, yeah. People are mostly a collection of local context clues about overly emotional nonsense.
Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)
#17[deleted]
Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)
#18Horrors beyond your comprehension are mild compared to the horrors you can understand but cannot fix.
When you look into the void, the void looks back into you. When you start empirically testing the void, the void says "Hey, what are you doing, stop touching me there".
Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)
#19Lots of reasons, I suspect.
Smart people are smarter than stupid people, but not that much smarter. They are subject to thinking they’ve got it all figured out, when really they don’t. Warren Buffett spoke several times about this, saying that he’d much rather deal with a person of middling IQ and some humility rather than a person with very high IQ but not as smart as they think.
Then there are other attributes like discipline. A very smart person with little discipline could easily end up in a worse state than someone with good discipline and less intelligence. Sort of the Forest Gump model, if you like.
Superior intelligence is absolutely a gift. But not the only kind of gift, and not necessarily the best one. Ask someone like Stephen Hawking.
Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)
#20Likewise, rich people don't seem to be happier - sampling the few thousand people I have spoken to in my life.