Why aren't smart people happier? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#431

Post by mikkergp » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 8:45 PM UTC

People seem to conflate "intelligence" and like "all good qualities/effective goodness". I suspect that that's partially because that was a goal of a search for general intelligence, and partially because intelligence (or lack thereof) is a primary way people have marginalized people, but maybe intelligence is not correlated with "all the things" maybe it's just sort of a neutral factor that may or may not be as important as things like creativity, or empathy or discipline or having good vision or whatever. Why instead of empathy do we talk about "emotional intelligence" why instead of artistic or musical do we have spacial intelligence or musical intelligence. You're not a dancer, you have Z"Bodily-kinesthetic Intelligence"

I prefer the idea that not everyone has to be intelligent, or that intelligence is not in fact correlated with "goodness" or "selfesteem" because it makes understanding people like Elon Musk a lot easier. It also makes understanding the self a lot easier when in fact strengths in one area do not correlate to strengths in another area.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#432

Post by matheusmoreira » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 8:48 PM UTC

kinos wrote: post #429

matheusmoreira wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t see what the problem is. The problem is the transaction is unbalanced. They got help when they needed and refused to help when called upon. Someone took more than they gave and there's no real way to address the issue so the only sensible thing to do is to avoid putting oneself in such a position in the first place.

Maybe stop having transactional friendships?

Sure, I'd love to have real friendships where friends stay by my side through the good and bad times. Unfortunately it turned out to be difficult to make good friends like that. So I've decided to never do anything that leads to these expectations and "you owe me" situations.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#433

Post by migro23 » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 8:52 PM UTC

bobsmooth wrote: post #426

migro23 wrote: post #415

Many people conflate hedonistic pleasure with happiness. This is a big mistake that leads to addiction, selfishness and inevitable dissatisfaction. Even happiness as a sustainable state may be an unrealistic or unattainable goal. For me the answer to this puzzle is a finely tuned balance between self growth and contentment with perhaps a heavier emphasis on contentment. Regular and consistent periods of reflection an…

I disagree, hedonism is underrated.

Some elaboration on your opinion would provide a greater contribution to the discussion. As an aside however, 'Henry' in Oscar Wilde's A Picture of Dorian Gray provided the most beautiful and articulate defence of hedonism I have ever read. But I am still convinced that in relation to the project of the promotion of ones long-term well-being hedonism is a philosophical and psychological dead-end.

In my own experience the more I satiated my hedonistic desires the more I wanted and the less pleasure I attained from doing so. Furthermore it promoted a sense of selfishness in me that made the experience of living less fulfilling. Couple that with my own observations working in a variety of medical settings encountering a wide range of people from all walks of life. Without exception I noticed that the people who were selfish were unhappy and the people who were the most selfish were the most unhappy (correlation not causation I know but pertinent none the less). Generally the people who were most concerned about others well-being were gifted with a light and pleasant demeanour that gave me the strong impression that they were experiencing life in an altogether different (and to my eye more desirable) way than those that were selfish.

And the pattern running through all of that was that selfish people were always unhappy with what they had or what they were given, invariably showed little or no appreciation for anything. Selfless people were always appreciative of everything and anything.

The above is anecdotal but from my prospective not inconsequential. And for me at least, intentionally practising appreciation, when I manage to do so, never fails to have a positive impact on how I feel in the world. Just my two cents.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#434

Post by 77pt77 » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 8:54 PM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #419

throw__away7391 wrote: post #272

I have noticed that a lot of/majority of "regular people" tend to coast along on the back of others as a way of life. If "smart people" are perceived by friends and family as being problem solvers, many will route their problems to a "smart friend", someone who seems to have their life somewhat in order or always have the answer to everything. I used to get an endless stream of requests for everything from technical…

> it comes at a high cost In addition to what you mentioned, there is a hidden cost of responsibility. Once we advise people, they start holding us responsible for the result. Something goes wrong? It's now our fault.

And if your advice was good it was their idea all along.

Kind of like fixing computer stuff.

6 months later something completely unrelated breaks and it's obviously your fault because they can do no wrong and you were the last person messing with it.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#435

Post by hbrn » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 8:57 PM UTC

If consider yourself one of those people who are smart, but not happy, ask yourself these questions:

Would you sacrifice a portion of your intelligence for an equal (whatever that might mean) portion of happiness?

There are people that you would consider very dumb and very happy, do you desire to swap places with them?

And finally, would you sacrifice all of your intelligence for eternal bliss?

If the answer is no to all, then you simply don't value happiness that much, which is totally fine. Society/culture might force you to think that happiness is the ultimate goal, but you don't have to accept that.

YMMV, but what worked for me is accepting happiness as a resource, same as food or sleep. You don't need too much of it, just enough be healthy and get through without dying.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#436

Post by 77pt77 » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 8:57 PM UTC

nomel wrote: post #430

matheusmoreira wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it comes at a high cost In addition to what you mentioned, there is a hidden cost of responsibility. Once we advise people, they start holding us responsible for the result. Something goes wrong? It's now our fault.

I stopped helping people with basic computer problems the second or third time I was told that I broke something. I realized that the interactions were basically always unpleasant. People seem to be much happier just calling geek squad, or whomever.

If they don't pay they just assume the value of your work is zero and therefore crap.

Anything that doesn't do what they expect it's clearly your fault because you messed with it 8 months ago.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#437

Post by soheil » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 8:59 PM UTC

> We sometimes condescendingly refer to this kind of wisdom as “folksy” or “homespun,” as if answering multiple-choice questions is real intelligence, and living a good, full life is just some down-home, gee-whiz, cutesy thing that little old ladies do.

I'm not going to address the condescending tone, but is it possible that for the grandma what otherwise seems like a poorly defined problem is actually pretty well defined because of exposure and the experience that comes from living a long life?

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#438

Post by matheusmoreira » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 9:10 PM UTC

nomel wrote: post #430

matheusmoreira wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it comes at a high cost In addition to what you mentioned, there is a hidden cost of responsibility. Once we advise people, they start holding us responsible for the result. Something goes wrong? It's now our fault.

I stopped helping people with basic computer problems the second or third time I was told that I broke something. I realized that the interactions were basically always unpleasant. People seem to be much happier just calling geek squad, or whomever.

Exactly. People can be so ungrateful sometimes. You help them enthusiastically, talk to them about good computing habits like not opening spam email links and not installing 20 untrustworthy browser extensions (the modern day toolbars!) only to get blamed when their computers fall into disrepair for the exact same reasons. It got to the point I'll pretend to be technologically illiterate just to avoid these situations.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#439

Post by DiffEq » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 9:12 PM UTC

migro23 wrote: post #433

bobsmooth wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, hedonism is underrated.

Some elaboration on your opinion would provide a greater contribution to the discussion. As an aside however, 'Henry' in Oscar Wilde's A Picture of Dorian Gray provided the most beautiful and articulate defence of hedonism I have ever read. But I am still convinced that in relation to the project of the promotion of ones long-term well-being hedonism is a philosophical and psychological dead-end. In my own experience…

I don't want to speak for him, but I suppose I am until he pipes up, but I think bobsmooth was being sarcastic.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#440

Post by nonameiguess » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 9:16 PM UTC

hbrn wrote: post #435

If consider yourself one of those people who are smart, but not happy, ask yourself these questions: Would you sacrifice a portion of your intelligence for an equal (whatever that might mean) portion of happiness? There are people that you would consider very dumb and very happy, do you desire to swap places with them? And finally, would you sacrifice all of your intelligence for eternal bliss? If the answer is no to…

I wish this view would gain more currency in the zeitgeist. Who do we grow up idolizing? I can't speak for everyone. Maybe somebody grows up looking at a Bob Ross or Tommy Chong or someone who seems to be happy all the time and thinks that is what they want to be. Not me. I was watching someone like Michael Jordan win over and over again, dominate competition, achieve at the top of his field. Did it make him happy? As far as I could tell, no, but so what? Happiness is incidental to your personal temperament, not the point in itself. The point is to win. Set goals and achieve those goals. Maybe it's a nice afterthought if achieving those goals makes you happy, but just achieving the goals at all is the objective of your actions. It's at best orthogonal and maybe even counterproductive to the extent that being too happy risks making you less driven. The world's greatest winners all seem to hate losing more than they enjoy winning.

Is this really supposed to be a bad thing? The humans in WALL-E all seem pretty happy. The central premise of Brave New World is everyone is happy. Yet these are seen as dystopias. Why? Clearly, humans value other things more than happiness, and these other values have driven us to dominate the world and build civilizations. So why does so much of our self-actualization literature seem to assume happiness is some kind of supreme value and the ultimate goal of all other action? It isn't.