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Why aren't smart people happier?

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Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#261

Post by aleph_minus_one »

BrokenCogs wrote: post #86
zdragnar wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I heard someone say, happiness is your reality minus your expectations. Smart people see more variables that could be changed, more components that could be modified, and are less likely to accept things as they are. This creates a false sense of ease by which reality could be modified, and thus higher expectations for the world around them. I suspect this misplaces happiness and contentment, but the two are also…

That's a good quote, but it suggests that unhappy people are those who overthink and have unrealistic expectations, whereas truly happy people have expectations that match their reality. so in the end, maybe smart people are those who are better at setting their expectations compared to others (maybe more ambitious type A folk)

> whereas truly happy people have expectations that match their reality

By your hypothesis people who are poor, at the bottom of society, and told that they have no chance in life are the most happy ones.

Additionally, it imples that a great way to make people happy is to brainwash them all the time that they have no chance in life, and additionally suppress them so that their expectations match their reality.

This whole idea feels deeply wrong and dystopian to me.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#262

Post by Induane »

rawgabbit wrote: post #238
Ardon wrote: post #53

Might be useful to ask a different question: What makes people happy? It's things like relationships, satisfying work, accomplishment. (and many, many more) Then the real question emerges: How many of those happiness 'sources' are made better by intelligence? What percentage? Relationships? Seems like no. Work? Also seems like no, lots of work doesn't make use of a high IQ that people enjoy nonetheless. Accomplishmen…

> Might be useful to ask a different question: What makes people happy? This is the age old question. For me at least, the quest for meaning lead me to reason. Reason and logic, then led me to two choices. First is there is no meaning, no purpose, and life is what you make or not make of it; this is more commonly known as nihilism. The second choice is a literal leap of faith; this argues that humans are incapable of…

It might be the case that the nuance is insufficient (false dichotomy).

Suppose someone asks the [emotionally loaded] question:

"Is abortion wrong?"

Technically this is a yes or no question; a binary.

One can quite easily answer that it depends, and then all the nuances can try to be enumerated in more detail. The fact is that the information presented was not actually nuanced enough to answer yes or no despite being worded as such.

You performed some similar gymnastics here. You assume it must be the case that it is one or the other when it may not be. Maybe meaning is local. Maybe it is real but subjective. Maybe it isn't a meaningful term (lol). Maybe it contains an intrinsic paradox!

A perhaps alternative question might be: "What is it that wishes to know the answer to that question?"

Figuring that out might be a necessary prerequisite.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#263

Post by FloorEgg »

Satisfaction is reality minus expectations.

"Smart" tends to be used in a way that includes intelligence (rate of learning) and knowledge (how much is known).

Satisfaction comes from accepting what is outside our control (accurate expectations), and making continuous progress/improvement on the parts of our reality that are within our control (our own perceptions and actions).

Intelligence and knowledge maybe don't correlate as much with wisdom as one would expect. I have met people who learn slow and don't know much but are very wise, and satisfied.

Lastly, happiness is always fleeting. Happiness can't be enduring, but it can be blocked by ego and high expectations. Satisfaction can be enduring, but correlates with virtuous actions, not intelligence.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#264

Post by borroka »

curmudgeon22 wrote: post #178
borroka wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Asking why smart people aren't happier is a bit like asking why people who can jump high aren't more empathetic. There's no direct link between the two" - I disagree. If we consider happiness, as we should, as something that can be achieved and not simply granted (for example, the ability to walk is granted, it is not something that humans, apart from pathologies and special cases, have to develop through conscious…

I agree with this. I quibble with the wording "enjoy" thinking. It's probably also true, but it's not always the enjoyment of it, but a general propensity to overthink or dig into the weeds more, with the resulting less actual doing. And if you dig into the weeds enough, you can find alternatives and counterarguments which can lead to analysis paralysis.

I add that most problems are solved, assuming possessing the average (maybe even sub-average) intelligence needed to execute on them.

Think about weight loss: it's a solved problem, except in extremely rare cases of particular pathologies. Or think about being more attractive to the people we want to attract.

But you can't help but notice that the smartest people are the ones who invoke the laws of thermodynamics and the problems that arise from them, that a calorie is not a calorie in humans, for example, instead of simply eating less, as many less intelligent people intuitively know they should do, and do.

The most intelligent are those who refer to the findings of evolutionary biology, or to largely irrelevant social trends and mores, when pondering why they cannot get laid, instead of working to be more assertive, confident, outgoing, and fit, as the less intelligent are more likely to do, without thinking about it too much.

Or the endless conversations and debates, mostly online because in real life basically nobody cares, about God and religion and atheism, leading, as usual, to nowhere, while the less intelligent intuitively believe or not and that works for them.

As usual, there are selection effects at play, and we notice what we want to notice, ignoring, for the most part, other portions of the distribution of outcomes.

Nowadays, it is fashionable to say "you can just do things". And what some of the intelligent people miss is that they can just be happy. "But how can I be happy if nobody looks at me?" -- See above.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#265

Post by aleph_minus_one »

nashashmi wrote: post #99
Ardon wrote: post #53

Might be useful to ask a different question: What makes people happy? It's things like relationships, satisfying work, accomplishment. (and many, many more) Then the real question emerges: How many of those happiness 'sources' are made better by intelligence? What percentage? Relationships? Seems like no. Work? Also seems like no, lots of work doesn't make use of a high IQ that people enjoy nonetheless. Accomplishmen…

You could also ask the same question to why dumb people are happier. What is it about intelligence that robs people of joy?

> What is it about intelligence that robs people of joy?

A hypothesis: intelligence makes it possible to realize how unfair you are treated by other people and society.

This is also a premise in the respective part of the well-known science-fiction novel "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#266

Post by koakuma-chan »

chermi wrote: post #125
koakuma-chan wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happiness is just chemicals, it has nothing to do with that.

Computers are just electrons moving. Biology is just phyics. See how little that explains? The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, even if it's still encoded in the parts.

Except happiness is a well-known thing, and there are substances like alcohol, cocaine, etc, that are optimized for it.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#267

Post by mapcars »

> The rules aren’t stable: what makes you happy may make me miserable

Thats not true, and so all the conclusions article makes. Happiness and all other human experiences have chemical base to them, its just unconsciously people create these experiences based on their memories and background.

There are ways, explored in the easter spiritual traditions, to create any sort of experiences by taking charge of certain processes in the body. There are records of people sitting in caves and experiencing states of utter blissfulness that the richest and most powerful will never know.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#268

Post by flaterkk »

ryanmerket wrote: post #233
kderbyma wrote: post #231

It’s because everyone else is dumber than them…. So they constantly see avoidable mistakes and misunderstandings that could have been avoided…. Yet they cannot make the other people understand….because they think differently about it, and the people who don’t have that intelligence will not necessarily even be able to reorient their brains for the new information to be absorbed correctly. I constantly get demoralized…

my whole life in a nutshell. except for when i worked at fb and reddit in the early days. and to some extent AWS in the early days.

make sure you're not the dumbest person in the room... no wait... make sure you're not the smartest person... somethin', somethin' right?

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#269

Post by anyfoo »

mym1990 wrote: post #203
chermi wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computers are just electrons moving. Biology is just phyics. See how little that explains? The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, even if it's still encoded in the parts.

I get the sentiment though. Happiness is a mix of the right hormones firing, so the question is: how does intelligence affect different types of hormones, if at all. Given how sensitive our hormones are, it would be difficult to control only for “intelligence”.

By that logic, "How does loved one dying affect different type of hormones, if at all. Given how sensitive our hormones are, it would be difficult to control only for 'loss of a loved one'".

If you have depression or another condition affecting your affect and your emotions, sure. Otherwise it's pretty obvious to anyone that concepts on orders of magnitude higher levels than hormones being correlated with happiness, or if you prefer, those concepts having a significant effect on the overall action of those hormones.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#270

Post by dvsfish »

rawgabbit wrote: post #238
Ardon wrote: post #53

Might be useful to ask a different question: What makes people happy? It's things like relationships, satisfying work, accomplishment. (and many, many more) Then the real question emerges: How many of those happiness 'sources' are made better by intelligence? What percentage? Relationships? Seems like no. Work? Also seems like no, lots of work doesn't make use of a high IQ that people enjoy nonetheless. Accomplishmen…

> Might be useful to ask a different question: What makes people happy? This is the age old question. For me at least, the quest for meaning lead me to reason. Reason and logic, then led me to two choices. First is there is no meaning, no purpose, and life is what you make or not make of it; this is more commonly known as nihilism. The second choice is a literal leap of faith; this argues that humans are incapable of…

Reason and logic lead you to only two choices, where one choice immediately begs you to abandon reason and logic and just believe what feels right? I think reason and logic can take you further than that. We can explore a spectrum of ideas without committing immediately.
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