As somebody whom gets anxiety, my assumption was always that more intelligent people aren't ignorant to the likes of science and such and therefore realize the gravity of possibly scenarios.

Few examples....I got a decent gash on my leg a few months ago. I was going out kayaking with some friends so I shaved my leg around the cut and wrapped it up nice and good with a duct tape bandage and water proof tape over that. I am not about to chance getting a flesh eating bacteria or something weird like that. Practically costs nothing to take a precaution. Another example, wearing a condom, even if you're in a relationship with the same person and you've both been tested. What if birth control doesn't work? What if she had unprotected sex with someone else? Not that I don't trust her, I do, but what if? I also get extreme FOMO when choosing what backend language to learn (still haven't chosen after a few months). Sometimes when looking at the documents for new libraries it takes me a few days to actually sit down to look at them from the anxiety that maybe I'll be too stupid to understand the docs. This leads to me sitting at the computer staring at the docs but not actually reading because my mind is just in one huge clusterfuck looping around these thoughts and thinking what if I follow the instructions wrong? I'll have to start over and would have wasted time. Finally when I actually start typing and doing stuff I have no problem. While I know I just have to learn how to use these things once and I'll know it 'forever' and that just sitting there is actually wasting more time than I would be if I had to stay over 50 times, I just can't help it.

I have a different outlook as someone whose life was crippled by anxiety.

Many times my opinion on varying matters is asked I am met with some derogatory comments about how I only see the grim aspects of a given situation.

When in truth, from my point of view at least, I simply seem to see a large tree of possibilities of things that can go wrong or right. For instance, regarding the positive and negative sides of buying a house, if I point out the price, the distance to school/work and the condition of the roof it seems like people blame me for pointing it out... like I was personally and willingly trying to destroy the happiness the best case scenario would bring if they bought it on the spot. And it rarely fails: my objections are only met with more positive aspects in the form of "but this is okay because...". It's like most people don't want to see the whole picture, only the positive elements of the whole picture.

Now I try to grow up and dodge those situations or let requests for advices pass by.

But it's not about « intelligence », it's more about seeing the whole picture, getting asked about it and being blamed for detailing the obvious (I know next to nothing of carpentry or the real estate market beyond the obvious: "don't buy a house on fire").

Lol I've been there, and being pinned as the Debbie downer or being called paranoid because of it

Some intelligent people know when it's worth to take risks and don't bother themselves about consequences that will probably never happen.

There's a lot of value to just jumping into things. Especially learning new things where there's no risk other than learning something that you might not end up using- but will certainly help you down the road regardless of its actual utility. There has to be a peak for those who may be naturally higher intelligence, and being surpassed by those with lower natural intelligence who have a broad basis to draw on down the road from all the learning experiences they jumped on.

As for the physical stuff, I can't say you're wrong to think this way but reading that gave me a mental image of a boy in a bubble, wearing a body condom.

"Fuck it dawg, life's a risk."

Assuming you like their music too :)

If not you should find rational reasons not to visit a therapist

Your alternate hypothesis is interesting. I wonder if that was considered. As far as why it's on HN though, presumably because many of us find it interesting, despite its drawbacks. (Or even because of them, since it encourages interesting comments like the first part of yours!)

I have a feeling people with high anxiety retreat from overtly social situations and into intellectual matters by reading, doing well in school, and so forth. There's already some studies linking sensitivity to stimulation with introversion.

If you accept that hypothesis then you'd also necessarily have to accept the hypothesis that intelligent people are more likely to have been diagnosed with all sorts of mental disorders because the disorders are more accurately diagnosed in them.

But, the hypothesis that that GAD is more accurately diagnosed as intelligence increases doesn't require the expansion that all (or even a single other) mental disorder be more accurately diagnosed.

Perhaps it'd be better to say "you'd be opening yourself to the hypothesis", which would be more likely to be true. I still don't think the OP's alternative hypothesis is broad enough to support this claim, but it'd be less false on its face.

Given the mean IQ of the participants with GAD was 119 in this study this hypothesis has certainly not been excluded.

It is like 99% of these studies - of limited applicability and almost certainly unable to be replicated in a larger study. There is a name for these sort of studies, but I am trying to be charitable.

Without reading the study I can't be sure, but it should be relatively easy to screen for that bias by factoring into their analysis the ratio of patients presenting with an awareness of their anxiety as distinct from the patients who presented with other reasons than anxiety since this kind of information should be available and makes sense to consider.

This study does not have the numbers of participants to do this analysis. Even if it did you can’t rule out that to be diagnosed with GAD you need a certain IQ or that the higher your IQ the more likely the diagnosis given the underlying condition.

There is an interesting reversal of this effect with schizophrenia. In order to be diagnosed with schizophrenia you have to have social or occupational dysfunction [1] (effectively not be able to care for yourself). You can be completely delusional, but if you are able to care for yourself then you are not considered to have schizophrenia. People with a high IQ you are often able to look after themselves while delusional much more effectively than people with a low IQ and so not meet the DSM criteria. The underlying biology maybe identical, but the diagnosis is different.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnosis_of_schizophrenia