People are happier when they meet their own expectations, and people who are "smart" have higher self expectations.
There may be some transfer of parental expectations ("you are smart, you can do anything when you grow up"), but I suspect (apologies, I cannot cite anything) that even if you remove the external expectations, smarter people have higher standards for themselves. Thus, they are less happy.
The second argument is a variant on:
ignorance is bliss
... which is pretty well supported in literature. I am not sure if the futility/frustration causes unhappiness more than just increased awareness of issues, but it falls in line with that general theme.
Just my 2 cents, as someone who often falls into this category.
That's a tough idea to shake when people connect their self esteem and meaning in life to it.
The solution is to re-discover what you want your life to be about and then get to it. People usually either figure it out somewhat by the time they're 30 or they get burdened by self-imposed obligations to a point where they give up trying and just go with the flow.
So really, a temporary hurdle in the scheme of things :)
I like to think I'm much happier knowing how wonderfully magnificent the universe is, rather than staring at the ceiling.
We went from inventing powered flight to landing on the freaking moon in less than 70 years.
In any case, I suspect that you may not be satisfied no matter want reality was. If you had interstellar travel you wouldn't be happy without intergalactic travel.
Even if you only see your own planet, creation is beautiful. (FYI, you happen to be living on the most amazing planet known.)
Not only do I routinely see right through the benign bullshit designed to keep most people fat and happy, I also often see past the second layer designed to let the people who see past the first layer think that they can actually "fix" anything.
Without the illusions, I'm just a terrified ant scurrying around in a world filled with uncaring stomping boots and sadistic kids with magnifying glasses.
Being intelligent and ethical is a great advantage in the secondary mythic version of life, but it seems in the real, un-glamoured world, the only quality that has value is the ability to excise essential bits of your own humanity and trade them away for power. Intelligence also helps there, obviously, but without principles, the smartest person becomes the worst monster of them all.
The United States is a corporate oligarchy pretending to be a two-party dictatorship pretending to be a representative democracy.
That's the sort of thing meant, I think. There are layers and in this quote the implication is that the fat and happy people are at the outer layer (they think the levers of power of a representative democracy are still valid ways to control the country), and others can see past that into the other two layers behind it.
Most people are happy just to vote. Some people try to channel the overall direction of the vote via party politics. A handful of people know that the election is merely to choose between different means to exactly the same end.
The people can vote to name the ship Boaty McBoatface. The owner will name it something else. It will steer the same course without regard to its name or to the orientation of its deck chairs.
"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads" - said by Jeffrey Hammerbacher in 2011 is still incredibly poignant today.
>It can make it seem like sinking time and effort to make meaningful changes is just futile because of how many things are messed up. And that kind of mindset saps happiness in a hurry.
If you're aware of all the problems in the world, of all the places that have issues, how do you decide which one to apply your time and talent to?
So smart people should be dumber?
So instead of wasting their time on individual efforts that go nowhere or have no lasting effect, smart people should contribute their resources to a collective organization. Either by assembling such an organization and managing it, or by being a part of such an organization and providing skills/competency to it.
1) Smart children are raised with expectations of doing great things because they are smart. If you have two children and one is obviously smarter than the other, the burden of your hopes and dreams will naturally fall on the smarter one, and equal accomplishments between the two will not have equal praise. Later in life this turns into being unhappy because you feel like you could do more because you are smart. It's a constant burden.
2) Being smart brings with it a certain level of ability to "peer behind the curtain" so to speak, and see just how dirty the real world is. It can make it seem like sinking time and effort to make meaningful changes is just futile because of how many things are messed up. And that kind of mindset saps happiness in a hurry.