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Why aren't smart people happier?

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Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#501

Post by M3L0NM4N »

lostboomerang wrote: post #443
M3L0NM4N wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds pretty intuitive, that smarter people should have better lives in general.

Why? I'd think the opposite. Smart people will on average probably be better of financially, but that doesn't transfer directly to happiness. A characteristic of "smart people" is the ability to identify and solve problems across a range of domains. That works well when the problem is some programming task, drawing a new house, gathering data for a report you write or whatever. But what if you identify problems you c…

I'm not sure, it anecdotally appears to me that not-so-smart people tend to get angrier over political problems, for example, and just problems in general.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#502

Post by elmer007 »

nickelcitymario wrote: post #311
elmer007 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wouldn't expect any group of people to be particularly happier than anyone else Interestingly, there is at least 1 group (to my knowledge) that is particularly happier than most everyone else. When surveyed, nearly 99% indicate that they are happy with their lives. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3740159/

That is indeed fascinating. Not sure what to take from that at the moment, but it does seem like a finding with potentially big implications.

I agree, and am currently looking for additional studies about this group. I have found one that was conducted in Japan [1]. I would be very interested to see how reproducible the results are, especially across a variety of demographics.

[1] https://europepmc.org/article/med/29449634

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#503

Post by landryraccoon »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #424
landryraccoon wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see what the problem is. If you have helped someone a lot, and then call in a favor and the ghost you, you didn’t lose a friend. You lost a parasite. It’s like when you lend money to someone and they avoid you to never pay you back. Depending on the amount that can be money well spent.

> 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.

Yeah, I agree. It's a problem with the world. But it's not generally a problem you can solve.

The problem that you solve is information. You don't know who's trustworthy and who isn't. If I can give a small amount of help to someone in exchange for knowing if they are trustworthy or not, that's probably worth it.

The people that reciprocate you can keep in your life and they become valuable friends. I am more than happy with the tradeoff of sometimes giving people some help that they don't reciprocate in exchange for finding the ones that will.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#504

Post by deltasevennine »

Sebb767 wrote: post #404
bena wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably in the 110 range. The average programmer IQ is 110. And I don't think the average HN user is better than the average programmer. You have to figure that from 85 - 120 (depending on the scale) is a huge chunk of the population. Considering that the average HN commenter is involved in programming in some fashion, and that programming is practical math in some fashion, it does stand to reason there's a higher f…

Around 110 would've been ny guess, too; maybe a tad lower - we have some exceptionally gifted people, but also a lot of non-programmers, which probably moves us a bit towards the population average.

Standard Deviation from a 100 average IQ is 15 points. So basically, more or less you agreed with me.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#505

Post by necovek »

davidguetta wrote: post #486
necovek wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would strongly doubt that they correlate tbh.. where would the "virgin math genius" cliché would come from ? Article talks of scientific studies supporting that claim: you doubting it and sharing your anecdotal experience does not change what the stats say. I do welcome you to challenge those studies (that's what science is all about), but that's not done with "doubting" them on HackerNews. (Oh, and cliches are j…

I mean I understand and welcome you enthusiasm about science and research papers, unfortunately it's largely misguided in my opinion. Even in actual scientific fields like computer science (In particular machine learning and reinforcement learning academic environement in which I work and hold a PhD) 'doubting' is necessary, since a large percentage of papers are unreproducible and largely biaised for publication...…

I am fine with doubting any particular study, and I certainly have my reservations about social science studies in particular (most of them try to categorise "poorly-defined problems").

But we can either doubt the entire scientific process and throw our hands in the air, or we can work to improve it and look at it critically. At the moment, it's the best thing we've got.

Thus, I dislike the generic "I don't believe results of any study disagreeing with my anecdotal evidence", which is exactly what our scientific process is set up to dispell with. Proper argumentation is about misinterpretation of data, misapplication of statistical methods, insufficient sample size, outright data fabrication or anything along those lines.

Eg. in all your anecdotal examples, you are misinterpreting what "correlates" means. In particular, all intelligences correlating does NOT mean that "some will have all" (a famous statistics observation that there is no representative ever matching your average/median result in any complex measurement: eg you can have an average height of a group of people being 170cm and nobody being exactly 170cm — yet you can still claim how people in the group are 170cm tall on average, and then we can debate if that makes sense depending on the distributiin, sample size etc).

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#506

Post by Phileosopher »

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…

In some ways, I have to disagree partly.

Each person is responsible to solve their own problems, but I see intelligence as a type of "strength". A 30-year-old is far stronger than a 75-year-old, so it's nearly a moral duty to help them get a fridge through their door (provided, of course, that the older person isn't being a jerk about it).

In the same way, a tech-savvy smart person should help a less-than-gifted person with things like setting up their email or figuring out an ideal flow system for their small business.

Granted, this must all be driven by love for people. Without that, it's worse than just pushing them away.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#508

Post by amai »

ramesh31 wrote: post #300

Smart people understand that “happiness” is not the point of life, and thus do not seek it out as much. I could move to Hawaii, teach surf lessons, live in a shack, and smoke weed all day. That would probably make me “happy”. But what the hell is the point?

You are right. Instead of happyness better strive for usefulness. It makes one more happy when you know your work, your life, your comment on HN or your existance is/was useful for something or someone.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#509

Post by nazgulnarsil »

jyscao wrote: post #371
nazgulnarsil wrote: post #342

This question generally presupposes a misunderstanding of the physiological purpose and phenomenological experience of happiness. Happiness by its nature is not sustainable. Contentment and well being with a high happiness surface area and a low suffering surface area is sustainable. This does not look very dramatic from the outside, and is poorly captured by many metrics. Neuroticism might be one of the best psychom…

>Neuroticism might be one of the best psychometrics, with most people experiencing only a small decrease over a life time, with some experiencing a very large one. Would you say this is more of a nature or nurture effect? I.e. some people naturally decrease in their neuroticism levels as they mature and most people don't, OR a small percentage of people stabilize their lives and statuses in their respective societies…

Don't know. Not aware of any research on it.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#510

Post by I-M-S »

LoveMortuus wrote: post #481
vorpalhex wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Randomly say no. Not always, but occasionally roll a die and if it comes back a one, decline to help them and give a polite excuse. You still benefit others without them consuming all your time.

This actually sounds quite fun! Like actually rolling a dice in front of them and telling them that if it's a 1 or a 6 you won't be able to help them. And if they ask why, you could just say that they saw the dice, the Gods have spoken and they don't want you to help them. I might actually try this, could be fun!

A friend did this to me once. He stopped being my friend that day. There's little more insulting to a man than to make him feel like a plaything.
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