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

Why aren't smart people happier?

experimentalhistory.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 515 posts

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#91

Post by [deleted] »

necovek wrote: post #74
bodge5000 wrote: post #41

I'm not sure theres such a thing as smart people to begin with. Plenty of people know their own domain very well, but it seems only a few domains are arbitrarily chosen as intelligent ones. Seeing as we're still struggling to define what intelligence even is, I don't see how we can start labelling people as intelligent or not. At that point, the question is just "why aren't people happier". I doubt theres any one ans…

It might help to read the actual article. There is a widely accepted definition of intelligence in there, and the article attempts to delineate between problems intelligent people are good at and not-so-good at (at least not better than everybody else).

[deleted]

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#92

Post by bbqbbqbbq »

wanderingmind wrote: post #69

""" Point eight is enough. In fact I've concluded that it's really a good thing for people not to be 100% happy. I've started to live in accordance with a philosophy that can be summed up in the phrase "Point eight is enough," meaning "0.8 is enough." You might remember the TV show from the 70s called "Eight is Enough," about a family with eight children. That's the source of my new motto. I don't know that 0.8 is th…

How would the world collapse? This sounds like mixing up "the world" with "human society". I know I do more when I'm happy because things are enjoyable. No disrespect to Don Knuth and it's obviously good to realize you're not gonna be happy all the time but that line of reasoning is just not true.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#94

Post by marginalia_nu »

Apreche wrote: 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…

I'm not sure if they're actually better at seeing the truth, than building a more complex mental model of the world and its processes. If anything such ad-hoc modeling tends to be an obstacle that obscures the truth, rather something that reveals it.

A lot of very smart people call themselves skeptics and are very keen at questioning what other people believe when it is not what they believe, but are incredibly blind to the fact that they make assumptions on their own that they have very little basis for.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#96

Post by jackmott »

h0l0cube wrote: post #89

The crux of the article: > Spearman was right that people differ in their ability to solve well-defined problems. But he was wrong that well-defined problems are the only kind of problems. “Why can’t I find someone to spend my life with?” “Should I be a dentist or a dancer?” and “How do I get my child to stop crying?” are all important but poorly defined problems. “How can we all get along?” is not a multiple-choice…

Seems like the correlations between IQ tests and life outcomes related to this ill defined questions does imply a degree of crossover in rotating shape skill and dealing with the ambiguities of life. However that is probably genetic or due to early development , not something where practicing shape rotation to improve it further will improve your marriage or relationship with your kids.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#97

Post by mrjin »

Apreche wrote: 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…

Exactly. The more you know, the more you realize that you can't do anything about, and thus less happy of course.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#98

Post by pdamoc »

dusted wrote: post #34

I'm not especially smart, or happy, but, personally, I don't know how to be it, or what it feels like. I know pleasure, but being in a constant pleasurable state is not what is meant by happiness as far as I know. Slavoj Žižek (someone who does seem to be especially smart): “Happiness was never important. The problem is that we don't know what we really want. What makes us happy is not to get what we want. But to dre…

Pleasure is not the right goal. Homeostasis, balance, equanimity, peace are much better.

Learn to appreciate beauty. Learn to create beauty. Learn how to get better at both.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#99

Post by AbrahamParangi »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #79
Apreche wrote: 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…

I was expecting the OP to say that smarter people were less likely to be happy, because that is the sense a lot of us who believe ourselves to be "smart" have. But that's not what OP is about, and it suggests that's not really what the research says either, there's maybe a bit of hint of a small negative correlation like that, but mostly it says: no correlation. Rather than making the argument you are making, which I…

Sometimes people call it wisdom. A concept which has largely fallen out of fashion.

Re: Why aren't smart people happier?

#100

Post by blagie »

Apreche wrote: 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…

> 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.

Relative to 200 years ago, we do. People aren't any happier. That's not how happiness works.

See: Hedonistic adaptation.

Post reply on HN