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Why aren't smart people happier?

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Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're focusing on how socially valued your creative work is (and how it ranks relative to others), which is an external factor. I tend to find that if you justify doing creative work on whether it'll be better/more interesting than others or you think it'll increase your status somehow (popularity/wealth), it's not as fulfilling and you'll probably never create anything. What I find more fulfilling is creating for i…

> Creating things that I find interesting But I don't find the things I create to be interesting, that was my point. To me things aren't interesting just because I create them, but that seems to be the case for you, you think that the things you create are interesting somehow, I don't understand that. Do you mean you find it interesting to learn how to create things? I can agree with that, but once I've learned to cr…

I think there a few aspects to whether something can be 'interesting' to me with regards to creation (i'm probably missing some):

1. Is the broader topic/activity interesting to me? (interesting in of itself, not for the other reasons listed below)

2. The act of doing is interesting to me in of itself (as opposed to consuming)

3. The act of growth/learning/getting better is interesting to me

4. How good the output of my creation can/will be

5. How will the output be socially valued in a way beneficial to me (whether status/wealth/whatever)

I will say as I've gotten older, I've started to really decrease focus on #5, as I've found it to be the most empty for me (not to say I haven't achieved success there, but it's just a never-ending treadmill when you compare with others).

I try to really focus on #'s 1-3, as they give me the most joy.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#362
My suspicion is that low birth rates and blazingly fast cultural evolution (is anybody here single and working from home?) have more to do with unhappiness than intelligence / computational ability / etc.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#364

For me it is quite simply because I lack the human touch. Due to a multitude of compounding factors I cannot manage to find a soulmate, and life alone is miserable. I don't see how being smart would help in this situation. If anything it makes it harder to connect with someone, because the pool of compatible people is smaller.

> because the pool of compatible people is smaller.

Why?

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#365

I suppose I'm quite the idiot because for a big portion of the time, I'm happy. In a way, I learned to distance myself from things and people that made me unhappy; this was already a huge step towards happiness. Another thing was to learn to appreciate even the smallest things most people deem insignificant: a ride through town, the way the light breaks through the glass in the shower, an interesting pattern on the s…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wise_fool

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foolishness_for_Christ#Holy_fo...

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#366

For me it is quite simply because I lack the human touch. Due to a multitude of compounding factors I cannot manage to find a soulmate, and life alone is miserable. I don't see how being smart would help in this situation. If anything it makes it harder to connect with someone, because the pool of compatible people is smaller.

I consistently find that people who are unhappy/unsuccessful and also identify as "smart" are generally very good at rationalizing why things don't work out for them in a manner that protects their ego.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I can see the argument. I hope I'm not mischaracterizing is by saying your position is something like: because I can look up the best and what that looks like it is boring to strive for it. The difference for me is I haven't experienced what it is like to be good. You know how an olympic gymnast makes insane feats of body control appear easy? I have no idea what that feels like. (and I never will, in my upper 30s I a…

People have treated me like a genius wherever I go. I got invited to do research in my freshman year in college. To me being among the best at something isn't very interesting, its just going through the motions, have gone through it many times. It gets boring quick, instead of focusing on one area I just went into new ones because it isn't fun to be among the best. But that gets tiring as well. Made lots of money working for Google, so now I don't even have a good reason to work so quit and spent time just learning whatever and now I don't have anything left I care to learn really.

Not sure what to do, maybe people who learn faster run out of things to learn faster and therefore aren't as happy? I can see life being much more interesting if you learn much slower, since then there are more interesting stuff left to explore. Basically, the better you are at predicting stories the more boring movies and books will be, etc.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#370
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…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism
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