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Why aren't smart people happier?

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Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#251

Post by nudpiedo »

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #225

I don't understand why people are making correlations between intelligence and happiness. Seems kind of arbitrary. Why aren't smart people taller?

Because they are a group of people who have a set of common problems often not addressed as they are believed to do better in life due stereotypes. In reality many perform poorly in academic results and abandon any studies, the largest majority suffer from bullying and most of them struggle in getting a successful life by social standards.

Why aren’t smart people and their problems studied as a particular subset of society?

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#252

Post by marcodiego »

Apreche wrote: post #40

The smarter people see the truth of the world and the universe. If the truth was good, that we lived in a wonderful society with wonderful people in a universe that cares about us, smart people would be so happy. But being smart just means you know the awful reality of things. Congrats, you learned about all these awful things you can’t do much to fix, and the reward is you get to experience existential dread. Congra…

> But being smart just means you know the awful reality of things. Congrats, you learned about all these awful things you can’t do much to fix, and the reward is you get to experience existential dread.

Ignorance is bliss.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#253

Post by runjake »

Apreche wrote: post #40

The smarter people see the truth of the world and the universe. If the truth was good, that we lived in a wonderful society with wonderful people in a universe that cares about us, smart people would be so happy. But being smart just means you know the awful reality of things. Congrats, you learned about all these awful things you can’t do much to fix, and the reward is you get to experience existential dread. Congra…

I think the truly smart, or perhaps wise people accept their understanding of reality as it is and don't attribute subjective human concepts like "injustice" to it.

Call it "optimistic nihilism", if you will.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#254

Post by okamiueru »

achenet wrote: post #121
okamiueru wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if wisdom really helps. Or, maybe I just feel that way, because I lack it. How would wisdom help with happiness, when you see a likely worsening climate, rampant inequality for really no good reason, which together with the former is bound to cause significant sivil unrest and wars in the coming decades? In my limited version of it, is to strive to be humble, and the happiness for those around you. Find…

> The only thing to hope for is a miracle in both energy production, and a sudden increase in empathy. Humans can work miracles sometimes. We came up with microprocessors, I'm sure we'll think of a good way to increase energy production and empathy. :) > I fear that human nature is stil stuck in a the ape mindset of "I got mine", and will never get out of. Maybe it will. No reason not to hope.

I do have hope for the former. I expect it to come at a high cost, since we are already a bit too late. We did manage to do well with the ozone layer. Prediction models still put as at a likely unparalleled humanitarian crisis, even if we act more and faster than we will.

As for human empathy, much more unlikely. Humans are born flawed, selfish and amoral. It has to be taught away. To reach the point of a world society that can reliably "fix" this, for a large enough percentage, would be a more impressive feat IMO than solving the coming food and energy crisis. If only we had evolved from the bonobos instead of the chimps.

There is still room for hope, I agree. It's just that the rational part thinks the hopeful one is being naive.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#255

Post by mettamage »

pdamoc wrote: post #98
dusted wrote: post #34

I'm not especially smart, or happy, but, personally, I don't know how to be it, or what it feels like. I know pleasure, but being in a constant pleasurable state is not what is meant by happiness as far as I know. Slavoj Žižek (someone who does seem to be especially smart): “Happiness was never important. The problem is that we don't know what we really want. What makes us happy is not to get what we want. But to dre…

Pleasure is not the right goal. Homeostasis, balance, equanimity, peace are much better. Learn to appreciate beauty. Learn to create beauty. Learn how to get better at both.

Favorited your comment. Not sure what the article is about (reading HN comments only atm), but this comment is an article on its own.

Thanks for stating it so clearly

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#256

Post by thorin »

Smart people (and specifically smart technical people) are always looking for problems with a view to solving them. That was the case with me, for example. People with lots of problems are generally less happy! I've approached this more recently, after unpleasant circumstances, by investigating meditation, Buddhism, fitness and relationship management and generally just having more "fun". Works for me.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#257

Post by Sebb767 »

deltasevennine wrote: post #242

The common prevailing theme among many programmers and many HNers is that they think they're smarter than average. That's why posts like this gets voted up all the time. Bad news: Most HNers and programmers have only average intelligence.

> Most HNers and programmers have only average intelligence.

I'm going to need a source for that. I don't think the average HNer is a genius, but it's quite likely that the average IQ on HN is a bit higher than the population average.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#258

Post by yibg »

dgb23 wrote: post #236
yibg wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is there is no real evidence provide to back the assertion. Is the ability to solve well-defined problems really different from the ability to solve poorly-defined problems? "One way to spot people who are good at solving poorly defined problems is to look for people who feel good about their lives" seems like a circular definition. So people that feel good do so because they are better at solving poorly defi…

I'm positive it is a different skill and I even think that those two skills can be at odds at times. Poorly defined problems often come down to things like creativity and your ability to handle emotions. Sometimes you have to follow a seemingly senseless curiosity to find the right path forward. Sometimes it is about finding beauty where it isn't expected. Also these problems have multiple valid and fundamentally dif…

Intuitively sure, but would be nice to have some data to back it up; my intuition could say otherwise. Also, even if they're different how do we know how the correlation works? The article claims there is either no correlation or negative correlation. How do we know that?

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#259

Post by yibg »

googlryas wrote: post #248
yibg wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is there is no real evidence provide to back the assertion. Is the ability to solve well-defined problems really different from the ability to solve poorly-defined problems? "One way to spot people who are good at solving poorly defined problems is to look for people who feel good about their lives" seems like a circular definition. So people that feel good do so because they are better at solving poorly defi…

There's even less evidence for the idea that smart people see how bad reality really is... Even dumb people know there are "kids starving in Africa", and people beat their wife and kids in their home town.

Then the best we can claim is we don't know why smart people aren't as happy.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#260

Post by Enginerrrd »

Bayart wrote: post #77
klik99 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question - how old are you? Anecdotally I’ve noticed smart people tend to have this attitude until their late 20s when it starts mellowing out. Now I’m a bit older I see my smarter friends happier than anyone and the less smart just about the same as always

That's been my experience as well. I'm much happier in my 30s, having enough experience that I've learned to let go and accept existential dread for the useless bother that it is, than I was in my 20s. Truly realizing that nobody's that special also was a qualitative leap. Not that I'd call myself « smart » with a straight face, but I certainly used to care a lot about things outside of my control.

Same, but part of that is I realized how much I didn't know about things which I was originally quite certain about. Epistemology is a field which is sadly usually confined to religious schools. It's pretty eye-opening when you start applying it to things you think you knew.

It was more than a little disturbing when I started reading the methodology sections of scientific papers that make the headlines and I realized at LEAST 90% of them were absolute bullshit.

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