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Why aren't smart people happier?

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Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#301

Post by badpun »

naasking wrote: post #231
badpun wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one thing, after your children have grown up and moved out, most people are really glad they've gone through parenting, have an adult child they are in relation with, potentially grandchildren to enrich their lives with etc.

To claim that having kids makes you happier in the long-term requires comparing against the control group of childless adults. Last I checked, there was no appreciable difference in happiness between these groups in middle age.

The study I read about claimed the opposite - in later stages of life, parents are happier than childless people.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#302

Post by dist1ll »

nickelcitymario wrote: post #108

I actually would not expect smart people to be happier. In fact, I wouldn't expect any group of people to be particularly happier than anyone else. Happiness and suffering are two sides of the same coin and we evolved these feelings (or they were bestowed upon us by God, either way) in order to guide us. We do more of what feels good, less of what feels bad. If we're happy all the time, happiness loses its intended p…

This entire comment is full of mistakes and logical errors.

> We are hard wired to feel both in roughly equal measure, regardless of our circumstances [...] So our minds are constantly adapting to our circumstances and rebalancing things so that we come back to the center.

Citation desperately needed. This sounds like pure pseudo-science. There definitely exists a bio-chemical mechanism that attempts to normalize the numbers of hormone receptors w.r.t. the level of released endorphins, but it's in no way a simple zero-sum mechanism like you're describing.

> Stop chasing things and you may not be happier, but you'll probably be less miserable and experience fewer bouts of crippling depression and anxiety.

Your conclusion isn't consistent with your premise. Didn't you just claim that "our minds are constantly adapting to our circumstances and rebalancing things so that we come back to the center". By your logic, everything we do is futile, and nothing will change the feeling of anxiety and depression.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#303

Post by nickd2001 »

BeetleB wrote: post #238
nickd2001 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can guarantee, that trying to make someone else happy, will never ever fail to make you happy :). Even in the unlikely event you fail to make that person happy, the effort of trying is fulfilling. Now the problem is, most of us , myself included, forget to direct our efforts to making others happy. I imagine God up there like an exasperated parent : "If only you guys would actually listen to what I suggested, you k…

> I can guarantee, that trying to make someone else happy, will never ever fail to make you happy : I can guarantee that there exist several data points that refute this. Definitely can guarantee many cases where doing this to excess for some people is a net negative. Can certainly show cases which led to divorce (i.e. always trying to make spouse happy was unstable, and the marriage would have been much better off w…

I agree 100% with your last line ;). OK, my statement "trying to make someone else happy, will never ever fail to make you happy", perhaps needs a footnote such as "in moderation, obviously. does not include sacrificing your entire life for someone determined to remain unhappy or suffering from severe depression". Then again, its surprising even someone with depression who doesn't give a lot back, you can still go around thinking "well I tried" and your friends respect you, perhaps they emulate you. Good begets good, and all that. That's the idea of the pay it forward movement etc

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#304

Post by jlarocco »

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…

On the other hand, I don't think it's "smart" for a person to ruminate and dwell on problems they can't change, especially not to the point that it has negative effects on their life.

The way I see it, we're all going to be dead in 100 years, and life will go on without us. It's not my place to solve every problem in the world, and in the grand scheme of things, my life is very unimportant, so I might as well relax and enjoy it.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#305

Post by nickelcitymario »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #124
nickelcitymario wrote: post #108

I actually would not expect smart people to be happier. In fact, I wouldn't expect any group of people to be particularly happier than anyone else. Happiness and suffering are two sides of the same coin and we evolved these feelings (or they were bestowed upon us by God, either way) in order to guide us. We do more of what feels good, less of what feels bad. If we're happy all the time, happiness loses its intended p…

> That's why, no matter what financial windfall you may experience, give it 6 months and you'll be just as miserable (or worse) as you were before. But because you got a high off of it initially, you keep pursuing more and more, always convinced the next upgrade in your life is what will do the trick. But it doesn't. All you're doing is raising the bar for what it takes to make you momentarily happy. I am pretty sure…

You and others are quite correct and I misspoke: It's hard to experience happiness if you're worried about your basic survival. A few years ago, it was found that an average of $70k in North America was the cut off, where anything above that has little to no impact.

While I stand by the contention that virtually nothing will provide sustainable happiness in the long-term, existential problems (lack of food, shelter, or love) can certainly get in the way.

Likewise, experiencing chronic pain will continue to impact your ability to enjoy life.

But!

The mind does have an incredible ability to adapt. Ask anyone experiencing chronic pain and you'll find they have a higher pain threshold than most. Likewise, those who have been poor their whole lives find poverty to be less traumatic than those who've had a "fall from grace" and have to adapt to sudden poverty. But adapt they will.

The mind is constantly trying to return to the middle. So if you're trying to maximize happiness and minimize suffering, know that you're working against your own biological wiring. Good luck with that!

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#307

Post by torginus »

komali2 wrote: post #170
lostmsu wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's wish-washing the answer where none is needed. I bet you smarter people are better at answering all of the questions you listed. Cursory search on IQ vs marital status confirms that.

> I bet you smarter people are better at answering all of the questions you listed. The article has this paragraph that seems to contradict your position: > This is exactly the situation we’re in with tests that claim to measure people’s “reasoning” and “problem-solving ability.” Christopher Langan, a guy who can score eye-popping numbers on IQ tests, believes that 9/11 was an inside job meant specifically to distrac…

I found this part of the article a bit hair raising, especially the examples -

Bobby Fischer was mentally ill - is not being schizophrenic a form of intelligence?

I read the article linked about 'Christopher Langan' - the guy lost out on a scholarship and got kicked out of college because of circumstances related to his poverty and uneducated single mom. Is having loaded parents also a form of intelligence?

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#308

Post by Jensson »

whatsreal wrote: post #285
Jensson wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it is mostly that life is boring. At some point you have seen everything interesting and anything you see hence are just fitting into the same basic patterns. Discussions, tv shows, books etc. Living is still better than not living, but every time you experience something new the things left to experience becomes smaller. A few romance movies and you have seen all of them, a few action movies etc, or even psych…

As another commentator pointed out you seem entirely focused on consuming. Yes, I can see where this gets boring. I am less apt to visit Reddit because I've seen the same posts dozens of times. I am not apt to watch many movies or shows for the same reason. But life boring because consumption becomes boring? Nothing could be further from my experience! Instead of a focus on consumption, or even a focus on creation, I…

But isn't it boring knowing roughly where you will be in a year or two? It isn't like fishing or cooking are unknown territory, the skill curve is very easy to look up so you know roughly what you will be able to cook or what kind of things you will do when you go fishing. When I learned physics or programming that altered my worldview, many other things I've learned like play tennis didn't give me anything like that at all. Its just a list of things to practice, and then you have built the skills to execute them and that is it you can now serve properly or whatever you practiced, doesn't give any satisfaction since you knew the outcome even before you began.

So at least to me there aren't many things left worth learning. Maybe chemical engineering could be interesting to learn, as it isn't entirely clear to me how people work with chemistry, I have no idea what I'd be able to do with a few years learning chemical engineering.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#310

Post by nickelcitymario »

slothtrop wrote: post #298
nickelcitymario wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Don't try" was his take on a lifetime of trying. He failed in all areas of his life until he hit it off as a writer in his 60s (after decades of rejection). In other words, his biggest regret was all that effort he made. All it did was make him a miserable misanthrope. It was only when he let go of his expectations and stopped trying so hard that he started finding success.

The success was incidental, but ultimately not trying didn't make him happy. That's the point, they're the words of a miserable man. I don't think misery scales with effort. It might with a sense of entitlement to monetary success or self-perception of failure for failing to reach arbitrary heights that have nothing to do with the art. The antidote is perspective not inaction.

"Don't try" != "inaction". It means letting go of expectations.

The wind blows to and fro with incredibly amounts of energy, but there's no "try". The lion doesn't try to hunt. It simply hunts, and sometimes that results in a meal. It doesn't sit around wondering why it's such a failure as a lion. And it doesn't gather trinkets to prove how successful it is. In other words, it doesn't obsess about its own happiness.

Would you say Yoda believed in inaction? Do or do not. There is no try.

The "words of a miserable man" were his take on why he was miserable. My interpretation, in any event, is he was saying that all that effort and caring about success and worrying about what others thought... all of that made him miserable and he wished he hadn't bothered with any of that.

In other words, I didn't bring him up as an example to follow. I brought him up as a word of caution. "Try" too hard and you might become a miserable misanthrope obsessed with all your perceived failures.

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