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Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)

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Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)

#391

When people talk about being happy (or not), I always wonder -- why does it matter? I don't expect to be happy, and I don't strive towards it. I DO strive towards making my life better in terms of engaging in enriching and rewarding experiences, spending time around people I care about, perhaps trying to ensure future stability to the degree I can, and generally growing as a person. Never do I consider the pursuit of…

It sounds like you're always in the pursuit of happiness, you just don't frame it that way. You are always trying to make your life better than it is, which either leads to less misery or more happiness. 2 sides of the same coin.

Yeah, maybe! I def don't frame it as "happiness", because I don't expect to be especially happy, but hopefully content or accepting of what my life "is". I actually have worked throughout my life to accept bad/difficult things, and just "work with what I have", because there are always some pretty bad things in life, and I know the badness level will probably increase as I get older (already had numerous friends pass away, family members, etc.)

Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)

#393
post #387
post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are good reasons to assume IQ works the same way What are these reasons? For most abilities not tied to physical limits of the body (reading speed, musical skills, memory, bow/gun shooting, bowling, bull riding, knitting), the top 1% are at least several times better than an average person, and the bottom 1% are several times worse. Why would intelligence be constrained to +/-20% range unlike all those other…

Because intelligence is a physical attribute, and everything you listed is not a physical attribute and depends almost entirely on learned skill. None of those are physical limits of the body, and they change dramatically with practice. Most (all?) human physical attributes have relatively narrow ranges of distribution, which is why we should assume physical intelligence capacity does too, until proven otherwise. Ass…

> Because intelligence is a physical attribute

I question this assumption. Especially considering you can train intelligence.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)

#394
post #63

I will speak from my experience. When I was younger, I considered myself very smart, and I was pretty unhappy. As I grew, I met people much smarter than me; I stopped seeing myself as "the smart" one, and now I am pretty happy. It's not that I became happier because I became less smart; I became happier when I stopped thinking my value was based on my intelligence, so I stopped trying to be recognized by my intellect…

i was humbled by peers smarter than me fairly early so i havent seen myself as the smart one since i was 13

now ive discovered i have a social issue where i assume everyone is on the same page and assume that if i spell out a logical conclusion than i would be patronizing a person who i assume would find my remark obvious and pedantic. its only in the past few months my therapist pointed out im still in the 9xth percentile or whatever based on standardized testing and education and most people are nonplussed by my expectations

in very simple, rude terms, im now treating others much more helpfully. but internally i feel like im treating adults like theyre children which feels gross and bad. people receive me MUCH better now so it seems to have solved my social issue, but now im noticeably a bit more depressed at the state of the world

Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yeah, that's Musk's propaganda outlet. That's not synonymous with "news" though.

Potato, potahto. X is the same as Instagram, that’s the same as reddit, that’s the same as HN. The difference is in what flavour of propaganda are you most interest in and what type of bullshit are you willing to swallow. Let’s not pretend X is bad because of Musk alone. HN can be just as terrible too.

> Let’s not pretend X is bad because of Musk alone. HN can be just as terrible too.

I am yet to see racial slurs, hateful speech, scams, porn (consensual and non consensual) or any of the endless things that are okay on X but not on HN. So no, HN can not and will not be just as terrible. The two platforms aren’t even close in terms of the health of the discourse.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I got labeled "smart but lazy" at a pretty young age (high test scores, didn't do any homework) Same experience here. I could find just about anything else I wanted to do except homework. Spent all night coding many times. Went to school and aced all the tests, skipped all the homework, did not get good grades as a result. My dad actually arranged a visit with a psychiatrist who did an official IQ test (wooo! I'm a…

>> My dad actually arranged a visit with a psychiatrist who did an official IQ test (wooo! I'm a genius! yay!) One must love the irony that those tests are mainly use as a way to pat yourself on the back (you and your dad) more than any possible actionable item out of it. Funny how most people that take an IQ test come out as "geniuses"

I agree, I am in fact an idiot. Thank you for reminding me.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)

#397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I got labeled "smart but lazy" at a pretty young age (high test scores, didn't do any homework) Same experience here. I could find just about anything else I wanted to do except homework. Spent all night coding many times. Went to school and aced all the tests, skipped all the homework, did not get good grades as a result. My dad actually arranged a visit with a psychiatrist who did an official IQ test (wooo! I'm a…

What does real happiness look like to you?

That is a complicated question. There is probably a dictionary definition, and a lot of personal opinions.

For me, I would count happiness as a meaningful reduction in anxiety and some ability to feel content. A full night's sleep that isn't interrupted by a couple hours at 2am of lying awake lamenting life choices, lack of achieving goals I had wanted when I was young, missed opportunities, etc. Worrying about the future, are the kids doing okay, are they happy, will they be successful, could I have done a better job raising them?

Objectively I have no justification for the strength of these worries. I am in a great place and I should be able to enjoy that. And yet. The demons have been chasing me since my earliest childhood memories. At best I have fought them to a draw.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got labeled "smart but lazy" at a pretty young age (high test scores, didn't do any homework), and I let that label stick with me for far too long. I took some pride in how I could get the top score in a class without studying, and didn't realize that studying itself was a useful skill. I let this whole mindset drag me down through undergrad (especially once I hit the point where I really ought to have studied), an…

Makes the transition from secondary (high) school to post-secondary school education particularly brutal since you've never really had to work for something and have no idea what good habits look like. Reading the material before the test/exam and then getting high enough marks that everyone leaves you alone so you can go play with computers/chess was not an effective long term strategy. College (UK meaning not US) c…

>>Reading the material before the test/exam and then getting high enough marks that everyone leaves you alone so you can go play with computers/chess was not an effective long term strategy.

Don't tell my boss, but yes it is.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)

#399
Lots of moving parts on this discussion and wise / smart people have probably all weighed in without solving the problem necessarily

I'll suggest that maybe "biologically" speaking, intelligence makes smart people seek out knowledge which makes them "unhappier"; this would explain why they can't simply use their knowledge to become happier, as "ignorance is bliss" and their native intelligence naturally has them seek "knowledge which isn't bliss".

Along with this, I've experimentally noticed that what we focus on seems to influence our sense of happiness, so then you could hypothetically just try to focus on things that make you happier; with the intelligent, though, they may tend to focus on things that do not make them happier, even though they may trade happiness for a greater sense of meaning and purpose. For example, it's been said that parents are less happy but have a greater sense of purpose in life (according to some studies). Likewise, the intelligent person may try to contend with difficult and troubling intellectual issues, or may become aware of thoughts which have a greater emotional impact on them than a less intelligent person. So again, intelligent people "just happen" to likely make themselves unhappy, by virtue of being intelligent (?).

There is some fuzziness about what it means to be intelligent or happy, and yet at the same time we seem to have an understanding of what those things mean. If it is clear what makes us happy, then the smart person can just do those things. But, basically happiness can be subjective - some people derive a lot of happiness from inflicting a lot of pain on themselves (like a smart person trying to tackle progressively more painful intellectual problems). So... it's also kind of unclear if we know what makes us happy (it might vary per person), and also if happiness is even the goal in life (versus living a meaningful life, although happiness and meaning are often thought to go hand in hand).

The article notes that positive psychology cannot be used to increase happiness; I'm kind of skeptical of this view, but sympathetic to the view as well. What I did was ask AI what makes people happy and to try to do likewise, and the conclusion was kind of like going fishing, like you can go out on the water and show up, but the fish still decide if they bite or not. Happiness is like the fish - still a little outside our control, but we can possibly create some conditions where it might be likely to "bite" us.

Also there may be "multiple happinesses" - kind of again getting at the question of what it means to be happy. I've seen Christian saints describe a kind of internal sense of joy, even when externally they might be in lots of physical or emotional pains. Or by contrast there may be a sense of "inner peace" which a person could have, while their life physically or otherwise is chaotic and might be associated with "unhappiness". A clean conscience can be important and overlap with some of these things.

Anyway, just a quick comment reflection after reading the article and mulling it over a bit - surely more is to be said on such an enduring topic.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got labeled "smart but lazy" at a pretty young age (high test scores, didn't do any homework), and I let that label stick with me for far too long. I took some pride in how I could get the top score in a class without studying, and didn't realize that studying itself was a useful skill. I let this whole mindset drag me down through undergrad (especially once I hit the point where I really ought to have studied), an…

> I got labeled "smart but lazy" at a pretty young age (high test scores, didn't do any homework), and I let that label stick with me for far too long I just never understood why the secondary education system is set up to make smart and lazy people succeed without effort while the hardworking, but less gifted kids struggle. It just gives you an impression that life is much easier than it is, and you can BS your way…

"The 'smart but lazy' adults who stayed that way, who I've encountered IRL have been maliciously manipulative work avoiders, or straight up losers with superiority complexes."

Counterpoint, the "I had to work twice as hard for my A" people are prudish buzzkills who think that working hard has inherent value.

"Being smart won't get you a date, wont get you fit, play an instrument, learn to draw, program, wont allow you to fix the crooked cabinet door etc." I mean...it could? The whole article is about how "intelligent" isn't exactly one thing.

Obvious Smart and Lazy here: Life is easy, and I've been BSing my way through it for over 40 years. I work at one of the largest companies in my field on the planet, I'm well respected by my supervisors and coworkers, I make enough money to keep the lights on (and my artist wife and I both fed). I have friends I see regularly, love an affection, and time to garden and play video games.

There's no "right" way so there can be no "wrong" way, only ways that don't work for your skillset. Also, understanding how to navigate society/hierarchy is a skill and a lot of the try-hards don't realize that so they just brute force for results.

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