Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why aren't smart people happier?

theseedsofscience.pub

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

641–650 of 651 posts

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#641

Post by staticman2 »

somenameforme wrote: post #636
staticman2 wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is "What do you think is the ideal number of children for a family to have? ?" Not "Do you want a family?" Or "Do you want children?" So it seems to me it will not measure the preferences of Americans very well. Since it did not ask about those preferences.

Here [1] is a poll on desire to have children. The percent of Americans that do not want children is negligible, about 6%. So asking about the ideal number of children to have and comparing that against the number of children that people end up having is a very valuable datum. Because it may be that somebody sees the ideal number as e.g. 3, but only expect for themselves to be able to have 1. [1] - https://news.gallu…

Thanks for sharing that.

I'm not sure if you cited that because it's the first to come up in a web search but the fact that "undecided" was not an option is a red flag in my mind.

What do you think of this one:

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/among-you...

"When asked about having children, 51% of young adults who are not parents say they would like to have children one day. Three-in-ten say they’re not sure, and 18% say they don’t want to have children."

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#642

Post by Rayhem »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #640
Rayhem wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I came across narcissism. The idea that you’re smarter than everyone else. Comes from a grandiose sense of self importance. This may be the colloquial description of how narcissism manifests, but it isn't even close to (and possibly completely opposite) clinical narcissism. The grandiosity isn't so much a belief as it is a "false self" put on to garner caretaking from others. It's not "I got all the toys as a kid,…

That’s interesting. So from this viewpoint what happens in childhood or afterwards for the kid to end up a narcissist?

Disclaimer: I'm just an...interested layman, but as far as I know we don't really know. It looks like there's both genetic and environmental components to it; your genes have a big impact on your "temperament" and more volatile temperaments correlate more strongly with cluster B disorders. But it seems like neglect, a failure to recognize a child as their own independent person (basically "my needs are your needs"), from parents/caregivers who are often themselves narcissists contributes pretty strongly, too.

The Little Shaman[1] has been one of the most comprehensive-yet-approachable resources I've found for understanding these kinds of high-conflict personalities. In particular [2-4] are pretty relevant to your question.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/@thelittleshamanhealing/videos [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJZeXxU7QTg [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TokWBgMQIZ4 [4]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5Hq_xNxrOg

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#643

Post by somenameforme »

staticman2 wrote: post #641
somenameforme wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here [1] is a poll on desire to have children. The percent of Americans that do not want children is negligible, about 6%. So asking about the ideal number of children to have and comparing that against the number of children that people end up having is a very valuable datum. Because it may be that somebody sees the ideal number as e.g. 3, but only expect for themselves to be able to have 1. [1] - https://news.gallu…

Thanks for sharing that. I'm not sure if you cited that because it's the first to come up in a web search but the fact that "undecided" was not an option is a red flag in my mind. What do you think of this one: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/among-you... "When asked about having children, 51% of young adults who are not parents say they would like to have children one day. Three-in-ten say they’re…

The survey questions [1] have more details than the article. They offered a 'no opinion' choice which was rarely taken. As for what you linked to, you have to be aware of studies of small samples. The number I gave (about 6% not wanting kids) and what you referenced are probably not incompatible. It's just that when you filter down to people aged up to 34 with no children, you're obviously going to artificially inflate that percent because you're excluding everybody having children.

In other words, imagine if 70% of people that want to have children have had at least one child by the age of 34. So we start with e.g. 100 people where 6 don't want to have children (appealing to the 94/6 ratio from the older study). Then we remove 70% of the 94 that do and we're left with 28 that do and 6 that don't, so now the 'don't want' group make up 18% of the total sample. And I think 70% of people that want to have children, having had at least one child by 34, is a very reasonable ballpark.

Check out the questions [2] they asked, in the study you linked, and you can see that you end up with a highly unrepresentative sample of society: 33% live with their parents, 19% are unemployed, 44% receive financial assistance from their parents, and they're democrat:republican at a near 2:1 ratio.

[1] - https://news.gallup.com/file/poll/164630/Fertility_130925.pd...

[2] - https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/wp-content/uploads...

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#644

Post by staticman2 »

somenameforme wrote: post #643
staticman2 wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing that. I'm not sure if you cited that because it's the first to come up in a web search but the fact that "undecided" was not an option is a red flag in my mind. What do you think of this one: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/among-you... "When asked about having children, 51% of young adults who are not parents say they would like to have children one day. Three-in-ten say they’re…

The survey questions [1] have more details than the article. They offered a 'no opinion' choice which was rarely taken. As for what you linked to, you have to be aware of studies of small samples. The number I gave (about 6% not wanting kids) and what you referenced are probably not incompatible. It's just that when you filter down to people aged up to 34 with no children, you're obviously going to artificially infla…

That makes sense.

I will day that I'm struggling to align these survey questions with human nature as I understand it.

I have a friend who "wants kids" and two different women, when they reached a certain age in their 30s, signaled they wanted to marry him and have kids.

But they both exhibited red flags that caused him to decline. One woman didn't act like she liked him, even though she was also saying she wanted to settle down together.

The other woman was unwilling to discuss how they'd raise the children given the fact they were from different religious backgrounds.

Given he's now in his 40s he'll likely never have kids.

I suppose if he was super passionate about kids he'd enter an unhappy marriage and make sure he got some kids out of it, before possibly ending up divorced.

So wanting children was more a conditional thing than a binary thing, and I don't know if these surveys can capture that.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#646

Post by dvsfish »

samscully wrote: post #467
dvsfish wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reason and logic lead you to only two choices, where one choice immediately begs you to abandon reason and logic and just believe what feels right? I think reason and logic can take you further than that. We can explore a spectrum of ideas without committing immediately.

The point is that you actually cannot explore a spectrum of ideas without committing immediately because you are forced to live and living forces you to commit and make moral decisions every day.

I subscribe to the notion that morals are emotion based propositions and thus aren't quite as grounded in pure logic. As in there is not an objective morality, just things we know to be good and bad that are abstracted away from direct experience. Nothing wrong with that, but as feeling beings, we don't need to hugely ponder the vast spectrum of ideas to determine within ourselves what is "good" and what is "bad". Always worth thinking about second and third and x order effects of a certain moral judgement, and this is where logic comes in to the picture, but definitely trust your intuition in the meantime and don't put yourself into a box. You're welcome to not commit to a concrete worldview until you're comfortable, while still being a decent person.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#648

Post by [deleted] »

staticman2 wrote: post #644
somenameforme wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The survey questions [1] have more details than the article. They offered a 'no opinion' choice which was rarely taken. As for what you linked to, you have to be aware of studies of small samples. The number I gave (about 6% not wanting kids) and what you referenced are probably not incompatible. It's just that when you filter down to people aged up to 34 with no children, you're obviously going to artificially infla…

That makes sense. I will day that I'm struggling to align these survey questions with human nature as I understand it. I have a friend who "wants kids" and two different women, when they reached a certain age in their 30s, signaled they wanted to marry him and have kids. But they both exhibited red flags that caused him to decline. One woman didn't act like she liked him, even though she was also saying she wanted to…

[deleted]

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#649

Post by somenameforme »

staticman2 wrote: post #644
somenameforme wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The survey questions [1] have more details than the article. They offered a 'no opinion' choice which was rarely taken. As for what you linked to, you have to be aware of studies of small samples. The number I gave (about 6% not wanting kids) and what you referenced are probably not incompatible. It's just that when you filter down to people aged up to 34 with no children, you're obviously going to artificially infla…

That makes sense. I will day that I'm struggling to align these survey questions with human nature as I understand it. I have a friend who "wants kids" and two different women, when they reached a certain age in their 30s, signaled they wanted to marry him and have kids. But they both exhibited red flags that caused him to decline. One woman didn't act like she liked him, even though she was also saying she wanted to…

I can't say too much about that exact scenario, but I think a practical issue for people is waiting for the perfect conditions. And in general, those perfect conditions never come, yet the years fly by so incredibly fast.

And for women this is particularly true. Because in practical terms you're going to have at least a couple of years between kids. At the minimum this is because their cycle is suppressed while breast feeding, and then it generally takes a number of months to get pregnant, even moreso if somebody is in their 30s, let alone 40s. And so if you want to have 3 kids, it's a practical necessity to start very early - that's pushing towards a decade of time.

So modern society is really rather a lie in this regard, and I think that's been quite harmful. Because this lie is encouraging all of us (male and female alike), to push parenthood out later and later. And that dramatically increases the odds that 'later' eventually becomes never.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#650

Post by pizzafeelsright »

bilsbie wrote: post #647
pizzafeelsright wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sent. check spam sometime in the next 12 hours

I never got anything. Would you want to put a temp email in your profile and I’ll try that?

miyhkhqe@grr.la

send me a phone number to text?

Post reply on HN