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 have heard before, I found the OP argument to be novel to me, and find really thought-provoking:

The model of "well-defined" vs "poorly-defined" problems, and that what we call "smart" is skill at solving "well-defined" problems, but that happiness actually depends on skill at solving "poorly-defined" problems. Which is probably not correlated to skill at solving well-defined problems at all, that being "smart" at solving well-defined problems doesn't help or hurt happiness, it just doesn't matter.

This rings really true to me, and isn't quite as depressing as the oft-heard theory that you're saying here, that smart people are more likely to be miserable because they see the awful. Not what OP is saying, OP is even disagreeing, really.

Problem is there is no real evidence provide to back the assertion. Is the ability to solve well-defined problems really different from the ability to solve poorly-defined problems?

"One way to spot people who are good at solving poorly defined problems is to look for people who feel good about their lives" seems like a circular definition. So people that feel good do so because they are better at solving poorly defined problems? How do we know?

I'm positive it is a different skill and I even think that those two skills can be at odds at times.

Poorly defined problems often come down to things like creativity and your ability to handle emotions. Sometimes you have to follow a seemingly senseless curiosity to find the right path forward. Sometimes it is about finding beauty where it isn't expected. Also these problems have multiple valid and fundamentally different solutions and can be highly subjective. Think art.

Well defined problems are about juggling multiple things in your head, high concentration, relying on fundamental knowledge, heuristics etc. All of that possibly under pressure. There might be multiple solutions but they are typically on a scale (good enough vs perfect etc.) or are choices between measurable tradeoffs. Think engineering.

Intuitively sure, but would be nice to have some data to back it up; my intuition could say otherwise. Also, even if they're different how do we know how the correlation works? The article claims there is either no correlation or negative correlation. How do we know that?

There's even less evidence for the idea that smart people see how bad reality really is... Even dumb people know there are "kids starving in Africa", and people beat their wife and kids in their home town.

Yes, but dumb people think those problems can be easily solved, and smart people think about the second and third order effects. A dumb person will think sending free food will solve the problem, and a smart person will realize that will negatively effect food production as local farmers cannot compete with free

> and a smart person will realize that will negatively effect food production as local farmers cannot compete with free

Or it'll be seized and hoarded by corrupt governments or militias.

Then the best we can claim is we don't know why smart people aren't as happy.

> Is the ability to solve well-defined problems really different from the ability to solve poorly-defined problems?

It seems plausible. For instance, would a good accountant (well defined problems) necessarily make a good physicist (poorly defined problems)?

Well at least I didn't see any evidence that says a good accountant would make a worse physicist than a bad accountant. So the assertion that people that are good at solving well-defined problems are not as good at (or at least has no correlation with) solving poorly-defined problems is not well supported.

So, there's some known correlation between IQ and creativity/divergent thinking ability. This article: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.0025...

Seems to indicate that the threshold hypothesis (IQ helps creativity/divergent thinking up to a point, then levels out in correlation) is largely correct

Good points, and I would even go one step further and cast doubt on the notion that "dumb" people don't see the awful. That is not my experience at all.

> That is not my experience at all.

I think we have different experiences then. Or, maybe, your interpretation of 'seeing the awful' is different.

I see 'dumb' people fall for pyramid schemes/MLM which seem obvious to me. They will only see the awful after they've lost money. We both see it, but there's a period where they don't, while I do.

I see people fall for sales tactics and which are transparent to me. Getting a €400 discount on an €800 delivery package for a second hand car that has €150 in actual value, does not seem like a deal to me. Others are very happy and are happy the sales person gave them the fake discount.

When other people are happy that the government reduces taxes on gas due to rising prices, I see rising corporate profits that were paid for with public funding.

When some people get angry about the conspiracy they read on Facebook, I get angry about the manipulation going on that caused that conspiracy to spread.

In the end, in my experience, the 'dumb' people see awful more on the micro level, while I see it more on the macro level. That probably probably makes us just about as unhappy about the stuff that happens around us, just from completely different perspectives.

The only real difference I see, is that I seem to have a harder time finding people to discuss things with than the average person seems to. Where 'dumb people' just seem to be able to repeat talking points and opinions they've heard somewhere, I often prefer more in depth discussions and conversations on the why and how, causing me to be an outsider (sometimes).

The isolation is horrible. All I can see is bickering between interest group/partisant politics when the solutions require neither or in fact require the best of both. Any sane person would agree with both sides but get rid of all the rent seeking. Hence you are now stuck in this position where you hate everyone for their horrible, pointless and counterproductive actions and love them for all the good ideas they have.

Because you aren't picking sides, you will be accused by every side to be siding with the "enemy".

They are more likely to be religious though. Which brings lots of happiness benefits because of the extra community and pro-social activities

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

OP suggests:

> Wisdom comes the closest, but it suggests a certain fustiness and grandeur, and poorly defined problems aren’t just dramatic questions like “how do you live a good life”; they're also everyday questions like “how do you host a good party” and “how do you figure out what to do today."

Part of the problem IMHO is that we make out wisdom to be this grand thing, rather than simple and effective thinking (that cannot be put into a short list of rules).

“How do you host a good party” might be ill-defined to OP, but I’m sure this is a well defined question with a good answer for a lot of people. (Let’s call that “social quotient”)

I came here to make the same points that you made so eloquently. The only thing I’ll add is that I wonder if there is some correlation between the traits that make someone so good at solving “well defined” problems and mental illnesses. You can’t be “happy” if you’re paranoid (as one of the OP examples- a 9/11 conspiracy where his own theory- Cognitive Theoretical Model of the Universe, or CTMU- is under attack.

I forget where, but I read somewhere that people are good at recognizing patterns are susceptible to conspiratorial thinking because they see patterns everywhere.

And one of the components of intelligence is pattern recognition.

Basically they fall for the social version of pareidolia.

This is an aspect of Taleb's argument against the usefulness of IQ measures

Weird, I thought smart people are those who are good at solving poorly defined problems.

Have you read the OP?

It's less about making an argument for the "correct" definition of "smart"; and more about saying that the way psychologists measure "intelligence" (eg when trying to study things like "are smarter people more or less happy") is measuring success at solving well-defined problems. That things like IQ tests as well as academic success are about solving well-defined problems.

You can think "smart people" are whatever you want, it's not about any "true" definition of what "smart" means, it's just a word that means different things to different people -- often probably not very rigorously defined or consistently applied. The OP is in fact about investigating what some of these different meanings may be with relevance to correlation to happiness.

I don't think academic success only involves well-defined problems even if your work doesn't involve research and just teaching. Being able to convey properly ideas, concepts and information to students is not a well defined problem...

Oh, I think OP is talking about success in school as a student, particularly children in "lower" education (K-12), not adults in post-graduate academic careers.

Oh makes much more sense. Thanks.

Serious question - how old are you? Anecdotally I’ve noticed smart people tend to have this attitude until their late 20s when it starts mellowing out.

Now I’m a bit older I see my smarter friends happier than anyone and the less smart just about the same as always

That's been my experience as well.

I'm much happier in my 30s, having enough experience that I've learned to let go and accept existential dread for the useless bother that it is, than I was in my 20s. Truly realizing that nobody's that special also was a qualitative leap.

Not that I'd call myself « smart » with a straight face, but I certainly used to care a lot about things outside of my control.

Same, but part of that is I realized how much I didn't know about things which I was originally quite certain about. Epistemology is a field which is sadly usually confined to religious schools. It's pretty eye-opening when you start applying it to things you think you knew.

It was more than a little disturbing when I started reading the methodology sections of scientific papers that make the headlines and I realized at LEAST 90% of them were absolute bullshit.

> Epistemology is a field which is sadly usually confined to religious schools.

Funny that you're mentioning that, the Epistemology classes I took in university while I was studying History were some of my favourites.

You have the life experience to know what will and won't affect you, and you've found an equilibrium of control and impact that apparently makes you happy.

That's very you specific, not really related to your age, other than that it took you until your 30s to find that equilibrium.

There's nothing at all written down anywhere that ensures such an equilibrium for everyone, however. Especially for folks who represent a minority in their society, life is a lot more threatening and a lot less controllable for them, typically.

For some, that equilibrium may never come, and while that doesn't invalidate your experience, it certainly doesn't support the idea that "you'll calm down when you're older".

> You have the life experience to know what will and won't affect you, and you've found an equilibrium of control and impact that apparently makes you happy.

I think some people have too much empathy to ever reach that point.

I have a few friends that literally broke out in tears when Russia began the invasion of Ukraine. They don't know a single person in Ukraine. Nothing about the war truly has an effect on their day-to-day lives. They don't even have investments that got clobbered.

Yet they shed tears over innocent civilian lives being lost.

These people have been on the verge of nervous breakdown ever since COVID hit.

Seeing people on such an extreme end makes me feel like I might be slightly sociopathic because I read the news and just think "Well that sucks" and then move on with my day, knowing it makes no difference to me and my life.

What you're feeling is selfishness, not sociopathy, for what it's worth! I don't think a sociopath would wonder what you're wondering here, but I'm no expert.

Not just selfishness... I'd describe it as a healthy amount of selfishness, and the others he's mentioned probably don't have enough.

I think of selfishness and I think of taking deliberate actions to serve ones self at the detriment of others. Things like hoarding limited resources or taking a second slice of cake before everyone has had their first.

I will never forgive you, John. You denied me cake.

So inaction can't ever be selfish?

Ding! At a certain point constant existential dread becomes tiring. You spend years mulling on it and the answer continues to be there’s nothing you can do, so what’s the point in worrying? Might as well go do something else and enjoy yourself.

Precisely! In the end, life will kill all of us at some point. Until then we have two choices: We either do what we can with what we have, or we don't.

That’s exactly my strategy for shutting down the existential dread mill. Whenever it bothers me too much I’m pointing my attention to how it all eventually turns to dust. The effect of that enables me to try to enjoy the now.

To me it is mostly that life is boring. At some point you have seen everything interesting and anything you see hence are just fitting into the same basic patterns. Discussions, tv shows, books etc. Living is still better than not living, but every time you experience something new the things left to experience becomes smaller. A few romance movies and you have seen all of them, a few action movies etc, or even psychology papers or math papers etc.

You haven't seen all of them, but the more you see the less value you get from seeing another. So we can conclude that living for an eternity wouldn't be particularly more interesting than living for 100 years, as 100 years is more than enough to see many things in each category. You might not become a world expert in everything, but experiencing the things worth experiencing in the categories doesn't take particularly long to do and after that life is just padding.

The main reason to live now is that there are new interesting things coming out still, since computers are still young. That adds new things over the years. But interesting progress isn't really the norm, it isn't like physics or math has gotten any more interesting over my lifetime and I expect computers to get there before I die and then there isn't much left.

Edit: For example, everything we produce today is based on the same math and physics my grandfather learned in college. There has been no practical progress since then there. Main thing since is new tools enabled by computers that are more precise or automate things, that is interesting but the discoveries enabled by more automation/precise tools will run out at some point.

True when you focus solely on consuming.

Turn to creating (art, science, a better mousetrap), and there’s no end in sight.

No end?

Spider Robinson, Melancholy Elephants:

http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200011/0671319744___1.htm

I'd agree that at some point being "creative" feels like just another kind of killing time with minesweeper or crossword puzzles or whatever.

I think you need bias for the things you create for that to work. For me, if I create something then it isn't more interesting than if someone else created it, and creating something that is really interesting is really hard, people who can do that get rich.

You're focusing on how socially valued your creative work is (and how it ranks relative to others), which is an external factor. I tend to find that if you justify doing creative work on whether it'll be better/more interesting than others or you think it'll increase your status somehow (popularity/wealth), it's not as fulfilling and you'll probably never create anything.

What I find more fulfilling is creating for its own sake and for myself. Completely abandoning the thought of whether what I'm making will have utility for the whole world and I'll be lauded for it. Creating things that I find interesting, and also abandoning the view whether others will find it as interesting or high quality. For me, I've realized that I feel more fulfilled if I'm doing/creating more and consuming less. The mere act of doing/creating something in of itself is the end I try to seek.

> Creating things that I find interesting

But I don't find the things I create to be interesting, that was my point. To me things aren't interesting just because I create them, but that seems to be the case for you, you think that the things you create are interesting somehow, I don't understand that.

Do you mean you find it interesting to learn how to create things? I can agree with that, but once I've learned to create something then I don't see why it would be interesting anymore. That feeling ends very quickly once you've created a few things and understand how to create most related things. If you have programmed games, web, low level and ML at a professional level there isn't much more fun things to learn in programming, and so on. And you get there very quickly if your goal is to learn those things and not to make the most money you can. And even learning more domains and more things gets boring after a while, as the process isn't that different between learning different things.

I think there a few aspects to whether something can be 'interesting' to me with regards to creation (i'm probably missing some):

1. Is the broader topic/activity interesting to me? (interesting in of itself, not for the other reasons listed below)

2. The act of doing is interesting to me in of itself (as opposed to consuming)

3. The act of growth/learning/getting better is interesting to me

4. How good the output of my creation can/will be

5. How will the output be socially valued in a way beneficial to me (whether status/wealth/whatever)

I will say as I've gotten older, I've started to really decrease focus on #5, as I've found it to be the most empty for me (not to say I haven't achieved success there, but it's just a never-ending treadmill when you compare with others).

I try to really focus on #'s 1-3, as they give me the most joy.

> So we can conclude that living for an eternity wouldn't be particularly more interesting than living for 100 years

It should be. As you get to see the heat death of the Universe. Or at least experience its beginnings; or at experience an ice-age or something.

As another commentator pointed out you seem entirely focused on consuming. Yes, I can see where this gets boring. I am less apt to visit Reddit because I've seen the same posts dozens of times. I am not apt to watch many movies or shows for the same reason.

But life boring because consumption becomes boring? Nothing could be further from my experience! Instead of a focus on consumption, or even a focus on creation, I find a focus on skill-building to be where it is at. This summer I have taken up beekeeping, keeping chickens, and learning to fish. (We also got a second puppy which is also an adventure in getting to know this dog's way-of-being and how we can train her to be one of us even as she changes us by her inclusion.) Even though I've put hours and hours into all of my projects I am a novice and I recognize that. I have more questions and ambitions now than when I began. With fishing I've caught 9 different species so far this summer. Now I want to catch another set (pike, walleye, perch, catfish), try new lures and learn how to use them, explore new places to fish, and learn how to clean and cook them. (Catch and release solely so far.) I haven't harvested honey yet from my hives nor dealt with mite infestations. With my chickens I'm still learning their patterns and waiting for the first eggs. The chickens also forced me to upskill my building abilities so I could make them a coop and run.

I also have in my wheelhouse of fun-to-me (ie not work) skills house repair (remodeled a bathroom last year), my own car repairs, woodworking, reading and writing, baking, sourdough, kombucha, beer-making, yogurt making, gardening etc. I am no where near a master in any of them and I don't do them all all the time. There is so much fun in learning a new skill, and seeing over time how I become better at it. I am a master of none of those, but I keep growing in all of them. There's always someone else better than me at an aspect of each of those. There is always a new thing to learn to do, something to be better at, feedback to receive. Any one of these could keep me extremely busy for several years trying to master them.

And there are definitely more skills than anyone could learn in a lifetime. Off the top of my head I have on my to-learn list leatherworking, blacksmithing, circuitry, furniture building, 3dprinting, basic microbiology and chemistry, cnc machining, publishing a book, photography, guitar, piano, singing, hunting, target shooting, skeet shooting, and on and on. This is my list, I'm sure other people have their own list with really cool things I've never thought of. (And once I do they get added to my list!)

I think the difference is the mindset. It isn't about whether or not someone else cares about the end product. It isn't even about whether the end product is really any good. It is about me being able to do it adequately. It is about growth and change in myself. If I judged myself by Hollywood, YouTube, or Instagram portrayals of any of my hobbies I would despair. I'm not as good a fisherman as Richard Gene. I'm nowhere near as capable with hand tools as Paul Sellers. My sourdough is pathetic compared to Maurizio of The Perfect Loaf. I don't have the teaching/communication skills of someone like Feynman. But that isn't the point. The point is I'm better at something today than I was yesterday. The point is I did something successfully, even if it isn't perfect. After enjoying that success I can always find more areas to improve which is a new challenge to accept.

Boring? Only if I gave up my personal drive to improve and find things to do.

edit: I focused entirely on skill here. There are also interpersonal relationships that take time and effort and can be richly rewarding. Even without all of the above my life would never be boring because of the people in it.

But isn't it boring knowing roughly where you will be in a year or two? It isn't like fishing or cooking are unknown territory, the skill curve is very easy to look up so you know roughly what you will be able to cook or what kind of things you will do when you go fishing. When I learned physics or programming that altered my worldview, many other things I've learned like play tennis didn't give me anything like that at all. Its just a list of things to practice, and then you have built the skills to execute them and that is it you can now serve properly or whatever you practiced, doesn't give any satisfaction since you knew the outcome even before you began.

So at least to me there aren't many things left worth learning. Maybe chemical engineering could be interesting to learn, as it isn't entirely clear to me how people work with chemistry, I have no idea what I'd be able to do with a few years learning chemical engineering.

I can see the argument. I hope I'm not mischaracterizing is by saying your position is something like: because I can look up the best and what that looks like it is boring to strive for it.

The difference for me is I haven't experienced what it is like to be good. You know how an olympic gymnast makes insane feats of body control appear easy? I have no idea what that feels like. (and I never will, in my upper 30s I am beginning to lose flexibility needed, not to mention I have no desire to put in the effort in that area.) I don't know what it feels like to fight a 70lb halibut in the north pacific. Sure I can watch someone do it, but to have the skill to do it, to have the experience of catching a massive fish is entirely different than watching someone else do it.

yeah, someone else does it better. (In fact I'm watching Richard Gene the Fishing Machine on Youtube as I write this. I'll never be a fisherman like him. ) The difference is doing as opposed to watching. I have all sorts of second-hand fun watching youtube. But I have so much more fun when I make my own accomplishment. My fish may be smaller and objectively less interesting than the one I saw caught on YT. But the experience of doing is radically different than the experience of watching. I find doing much more engaging.

If I were you I'd look for something that you like to do. Doesn't have to be fishing, that's me. Maybe you like to crochet or program, cook or build. Whatever it is, find something that makes you say "hey, I did that. cool." and go with it. That's where living is!

People have treated me like a genius wherever I go. I got invited to do research in my freshman year in college. To me being among the best at something isn't very interesting, its just going through the motions, have gone through it many times. It gets boring quick, instead of focusing on one area I just went into new ones because it isn't fun to be among the best. But that gets tiring as well. Made lots of money working for Google, so now I don't even have a good reason to work so quit and spent time just learning whatever and now I don't have anything left I care to learn really.

Not sure what to do, maybe people who learn faster run out of things to learn faster and therefore aren't as happy? I can see life being much more interesting if you learn much slower, since then there are more interesting stuff left to explore. Basically, the better you are at predicting stories the more boring movies and books will be, etc.

Seems you’ve resigned yourself to “default boring”. That’s your prerogative, but it’s no different from the “existential dread attitude shift” which spurred the conversation.

You have the means to meaningfully improve the lives of others and are focusing on how to entertain yourself. Do something for another, like teaching them your skills or donating your money. Heck, start a non-profit which does both! It’s not as easy to be the best when your success depends on the outcome and performance of others.

Have you ever tried getting an addict in a bad place to straighten their life? Frustration is the opposite of boring. There is no formula for that problem or a myriad of other societal issues. There is no right answer for you to arrive at and be objectively the best. In the off-chance that you do crack it, you would have revolutionised at least one field, solved some of humanity’s problems, and gotten a challenge for a while.

You should have gone to a college where that wasn't special.

This view is really interesting to me.

It seems like you are hyper-focused on ends/outcomes. And if an end/outcome of a pursuit isn't completely novel, unpredictable, or result in you being the best at the pursuit, then what's the point? Is that an accurate summary?

I wonder whether there's a higher level view that really prioritizes status seeking, and that a life should be valued based on outcomes/production. And if you can't produce things at the level of the best, what's the point?

If that is the case, I've certainly had those thoughts when I was younger, and I would offer to consider giving yourself a break. Release yourself of expectations of being the best/most novel/etc. Give yourself permission to be a flawed human. Focus on enjoying the little things, focus on the present. Focus on the journey, not the end. We're the self-aware universe, we're so lucky we get to experience things as we do, let's enjoy the ride while we can. And contrary to what you're hinting at, there are an infinite number of possibilities/knowledge to gain. To think us humans have answered all of the questions of conscious experience and the universe (and what may lay beyond) is incredibly naive.

You sound like a fun person to go fishing with :) at least one of us has figured out how to live!

you may be too deep into your grindset to appreciate the unquantifiable value of creating art only for creation's sake

Not sure. I've done original contributions to math, physics and did some significant work as a software engineer. It was fun, but then the void hit where you look back and realize the end result wasn't really interesting. And then you go look for that feeling again, but it gets harder to find every time, just like everything else. Not sure how art would make a difference here, it isn't like art is more interesting than those things, will likely just meet a void again.

In Buddhism, they advise against spending time pondering "unanswerable questions." [1]

If you know a question is unanswerable, and mulling it over makes you unhappy, then it's foolish to continue thinking about it. You can just leave it be and move on with your life. I think most people eventually figure this out on their own some time in their late 20s.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_unanswered_questions#Sabba...

I thought Zen Buddhists pondered unanswerable questions, like what is the sound of one hand clapping.

I'm not too familiar with Zen, but questions like these are often meant to be nonsense questions with no answer. They push you to think harder and harder until you realize the futility of doing so, at which point you've found the "real" answer.

Previous poster either got this subtly wrong, or phrased it badly, or belongs to a tradition that I'm not familiar with, but a good story on this is the parable of the poisoned arrow: Someone gets shot by an arrow and his friend tells him they have to get to a hospital - the person shot starts worrying about what kind of poison it is, who shot him and why, if the hospital they are going to is any good, etc, etc - really he needs to go and get it treated RIGHT NOW and nothing else matters - he can answer all those questions after he's treated.

And I wouldn't say the zen koans are unanswerable, you can think of them like riddles that force you to think a different way than you normally do.

Yeah this - it just takes time, and some don't reach that point, but it's a natural progression after you get your first glimpse at how things are. I often forget how dark it can get when you first face that dread.

Could it be that 'smart' people have accomplishment or material gain later in life they are satisfied with?

Unsolicited advice from some random guy on the internet:

Don't start down that road. Material success will always be just over the next hill, regardless of how much you already have. Happiness and satisfaction can't come from accomplishment or material gain.

Compared to what it was like when I was working at Walmart...?

Yeah, material gain has certainly made me a thousand times happier. I haven't had to worry about an Electric bill in years. I used to have to navigate and memorize the electric company shutoff routine so I could pay as late as possible while selectively mitigating late fees and disconnect fees in relation to payday.

I can afford to go on vacations now. Take PTO when I want to. When my AC dies I don't have to just suffer until my landlord decides to do something; I can just pay the repair guy $700 to fix it and have AC in a couple hours. Eating healthier is easier; I don't have to stress in social situations about how run down or holey my clothes are. I have the luxury of being able to eat and survive if I am fired allowing me to be more confident in how I carry myself at work. (Meaning I don't have to kiss-ass when I am being mistreated). I have the money to travel if god-forbid my wife needs an abortion, or I can move away from bad neighborhoods very quickly.

The pursuit of wealth in and of itself as a measure of personal worth will not bring happiness, but let's not all pretend that money doesn't bring happiness insofar as it provides individual autonomy over their lives.

I agree with the OPs point that some older people may have just reached a level of material success that grants them the luxury of 1. Processing their existential dread through things like therapy; and 2. Live a less stressful life that comes with a certain level of wealth

> Compared to what it was like when I was working at Walmart...?

No kidding. I wonder how many tech workers have had a job outside the industry. Money solved a whole shitload of my problems.

Whether you like my definition or not, I would argue that you are describing the difference between poverty and sufficiency. This is not wealth or achievement, but our system makes it easy to assume that.

The churn at the bottom is intended to motivate your continued activity and striving.

You are perhaps still too close to the stress of poverty to see that what you are describing is not happiness either, but something more like the removal of capitalism’s sharp rocks from your shoes.

Jordan Peterson (I know, I know...) made an interesting remark in one of his lectures recorded long before he became famous:

"Once you make about $60,000 a year for your family, but let's say for you personally, additional income makes zero has zero impact on your quality of life."

https://youtu.be/NV2yvI4Id9Q?t=63

I've definitely gotten better at consciously adding things the list of shit I try not to to think about. Which is pretty long at this point.

I finally tried weed well into my 30s and discovered it's great at making sure I don't think about those things when I'm trying to go to sleep, which is really nice.

In general I'm pretty sure I've got a fair amount of derealization going on all the time now, which... helps?

I suppose that all adds up to some kind of mellowing out.

Yeah, I find that looking at anything space-related helps me remember that our entire species and history are completely and utterly insignificant in the grander scheme of things. All this day-to-day drama just really isn’t that important.

well i mean it's also completely valid to say everything else in the universe is completely and utterly insignificant compared to my decision on what to have for lunch.

just because the universe is big and old doesn't mean it has any special meaning or significance.

Cognitive decline is a natural consequence of aging

Whereas in youth cognition is still developing.

A possible explanation is that the mellowing is due to the loss of acuity with age. The more likely explanation is that it's an evolutionary adaption in response to how ones function in society changes with age.

I think it's just increased wisdom and maturity. Some people need a certain number of years (their twenties) before you start noticing how pointless and bad for you it is to be angry at the world.

I think it is more you start out trying to fix the worlds problems, and then after some years you give up and become happier. I don't think it is wisdom or maturity, many people give up as a kid and just go through the motions from the start, I wouldn't call those wise or mature.

> I think it is more you start out trying to fix the worlds problems,

I can't think of that many young twenty-somethings who want to fix the worlds problems. If anything, younger people are more focused on themselves [1] that people after the 30-35 yo mark.

[1] That's not an accusation or anything. It's natural that, when you're young, you need to figure out who you are and what you want out of life, and that requires a lot of focusing on oneself. Not to mention just growing into being an actual adult is also not easy and requires a lot of trial, error and introspection - something that is not as required when one is older and more formed already.

I think both generalizations are off the mark a bit. A lot of young folks are very idealistic and think they can have a larger impact (i.e. fix the world's problems). You also have those that are self-focused. Some of that is combined - focused on self means you may have an over-inflated sense of what you can accomplish and how your contributions will be received.

A lot of that is why some young entrepreneurs do go on to actually change the world (and we definitely need those people, although it isn't always for the best). But most that think that's what they are going to do fail a few times, and become more realistic in their views of what they can accomplish.

Sometimes the smarter someone is, the more quickly they can think through the possible results and come to those conclusions that they probably aren't going to be one of the few that does succeed to change the world, and that can (to the overall point here) lead to a sense of sadness and loss, maybe without having gone through the effort and failure, even. Which is a bit sad for everyone, because some percentage of those people probably could succeed if they just got out of their own way and stopped over thinking things, also.

Speaking as someone not totally young, and (hopefully) not totally un-smart, I think its true one mellows out with age, also you can "be the change you want to see". That to me is the only thing we can do. If we all do our bit we can make things a bit better. Some people can make a disproportionately large positive difference. Its never too late to do that.

"going through the motions" is a phrase associated with sadness, not happiness. That's not at all what OP was describing.

EDIT: rephrased to not be snarky

Even worse is that smart people see the patterns and can predict the outcome with a reasonable degree of accuracy, however, they can not do anything about it because speaking up usual results in being labelled negative and being shunned.

This is very much like knowing the train is going to fall off the bridge but not being able to stop people from boarding.

Eh no, "speaking up" has varying outcomes in varying environments, this is not a universal constant.

I've chosen the job I have now specifically because I wanted to be able to do something about things I see that could be going wrong. Anyone can do this, but especially smart people.

This is why acceptance is such a key value. Acceptance is both an obstacle to progress and a prerequisite for continued existence. It's the line between Yin and Yang, where the duality of wrong and right is forced to blur.

> But being smart just means you know the awful reality of things.

You don't need to be very smart to get existential dread from "climate change will kill us all and I can't influence much", "the upper class can still fully rule our lives" or "at some point, someone will create an AI that might kill us and there's not much anyone can do about it". Even someone hardly qualified to work at McDonalds can think that, usually in addition to "I can never handle a job to get a living wage", which I'd actually consider to be more serious downers on ones happiness.

If someone is convinced that climate change will kill us all then I'd say they're not exceptionally smart to begin with, and are misattributing to cynial high intelligence that which is the much more common phenomenon of media-induced blind hysteria.

It sounds like you're confusing intelligence with depressive realism and cynicism. :)

Sure, the universe itself is indifferent at best, but that doesn't mean you can't find meaning in life, or that you can't experience happiness. On the contrary, admitting that most things are completely outside one's control seems to be a key to being happy with life.

Realism is seeing an issue and recognizing that it is a problem.

Intelligence is seeing an issue and recognizing that it is a problem and recognizing the root issues to how it became a problem.

Proper action is seeing both of the above and addressing the immediate issues and the longer term ones so the problem does not happen again.

Cynicism comes from when you are not allowed any sort of action and actively denied the ability to fix cause root issues. Then gaslighted into thinking you are wrong for wanting the change or forced into fixing the wrong things.

Indeed! And accepting that some things are outside one's control is when you move on instead of believing people who say you are wrong.

On the other hand, I don't think it's "smart" for a person to ruminate and dwell on problems they can't change, especially not to the point that it has negative effects on their life.

The way I see it, we're all going to be dead in 100 years, and life will go on without us. It's not my place to solve every problem in the world, and in the grand scheme of things, my life is very unimportant, so I might as well relax and enjoy it.

There are problems that are due to others. And they wreck your life. Being known as a pedophile when you’re not, it’s a problem worth solving. Because you can’t really live your life.

Those who dwell, think that people can change.

Those who don’t dwell on it, just accept the various other accusations, he stole this and that you know because he’s a pedo etc.

I wager that those who believe they don’t dwell on things, have never had real problems.

Basically the conclusion of the Stoics, and why stoicism as a philosophy continues to be useful.

I would argue the opposite.

Smart people are unhappy because they have a whole identity constructed around being smart and in order to be happy they would have to shatter this construction.

Seems a big egotistical to me

I used to have this worldview then I realized “smarter” people self select lives that tend to be more neurotic and tend to overthink things to the point of anxiety

Do you really need to worry over all the things you do? Or have all the years of being schooled and trained and under pressure to constantly juggle multiple things made your brain’s default state anxiety?

> 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.

You also see beauty where others do not.

"I don’t have to be at the Grand Canyon to appreciate the way the world works, I can see that in reflections of light in my bathroom." - John Carmack

Which I think balances it out.

"Without going out of your door, you can know the ways of the world." - tao te ching #47

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.

I very much disagree with this, just look at politics; everyone sees / imagines the "awful reality of things". Whenever the other side is in power the out of power side thinks everything is terrible and the world is ending. Even though objectively everything is pretty much the same. Objectively the world is only getting better over time. Generally the loudest people on each side screaming that its the end of all things are not the pinnacle of intelligence. I like the authors theory that happiness involves "skill at solving poorly defined problems". Think about how many smart people on this board complain about being lonely and unable to find friends. The ability to feel satisfied with one's lot in life is probably much more of a driver for happiness than being able to get a 1600 on the SAT. I consider myself relatively intelligent but was heavily involved in politics when I was younger and worrying about things. As I got older I realized I was wasting my time. I cant change anything and my life is slipping past. It really clicked for me when I went to the parkland anti gun rally in DC because my wife wanted to go. There were hundreds of thousands of people there and at the end of the day, nothing changed and politicians just closed their blinds or left work early to avoid the gridlock. The only way to affect change on a large scale is with very large amounts of money. Short of that, I just focus on my family and myself and things are much better. Took my kid to baseball tryouts the other day after practicing with him all week and it was awesome. Still cant figure out how to get IRL friends though :)

i am not sure if this makes sense, but when i read your comment i wondered if part of the difficulty of finding friends is that smart people find it difficult to associate with people who are not as smart as them or do not have the same interests as them, and thus the problem becomes one of selection.

Maybe, and I could see this for top 1% people but I'm not that smart :) For me its a time management thing, I am unable to figure out how to manage time for my own activities between looking after kids, working remote and just sitting around wasting time.

The article says that incredibly stupid people and people who scored high on a vocab test were slightly less happy. Being intelligent also doesn't mean you are a cynic who laments over history, I would generally attribute that to pseudo-intellectualism and people with shallow understandings of how reality works when the tires touch the road.

Spoken as if you were somehow owed something else than what is.

>low intelligence

Happy because unaware of world situation

>mid intelligence

Unhappy because aware of world situation

>high intelligence

Happy because they apply stoic philosophies to their life and making the lives of their immediate surroundings better instead

Yeah, things look bleak. However you need to realize that there ARE things you can do. Maybe not on the world stage, but in your own community. Sign up for a soup kitchen, clean up a street that is full of garbage, etc. Anything is better than being terminally online and doomscrolling. You will be happier for doing so, I guarantee you.

Smart people are very often terrible people. Being smart exists ok a different axis to being wonderful/awful, well-adjusted, fulfilled or even being successful.

I agree. Intelligence and wisdom are two very different things. Many intelligent people I know are unwise, and act terrible to those they disagree with. It is best to have a healthy dose of intelligence with the wisdom to be able to handle it.

I think it is harder to convince smart people that their illusion of control is just an illusion. When you’re a dope you get smacked in the face by your limitations and you give up, or at least you’re easier to manage by the people around you.

I think there are also a lot of smart people that aren’t pegged as smart because they’ve let go of controlling everything, and we mistake lack of engagement for lack of capacity.

We have a friend who has a very aw shucks personality. A mutual friend and I have twice had a conversation about how she might actually be the smartest person we know, and I say that as someone who has a fondness for thinking they are the smartest person in the room. She is scary intuitive, the person people talk to about problems, she is a terrible movie companion because she guesses the ending ten minutes before I do, which is usually ten minutes before anyone else does. But she never made a career out of being clever, which feels like such a waste. I worry that it was beaten out of her at a young age. Girls aren’t supposed to be smart. You should be pleasant instead. If not that then I get some subtle ADHD vibes and it’s a common pathology to desire anonymity, a coping mechanism for passing as normal.

>Congrats, you have learned the history of humanity and how our society functions, and your reward is you get to be angry at the vast amount of injustice.

I think you're imbuing your own value judgements into this. Many of us don't share the same urge to fix everything that's "wrong" with the world or society, and simply learn to accept it and roll with punches. But that still doesn't mean we're happier in life.

Sounds more like midwits than smart people

Let the poor guy cope.

Smart enough to see the bad, but not smart enough to look away.

The world is in roughly the same spot as it was when I was 20, and my body is certainly worse off, but I'm much happier now simply because I don't steep myself in the shittier parts of the universe.

> 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.

Ignorance is bliss.

On the contrary, the more you learn about history of humanity, the more you appreciate the modern world for being uniquely wonderful in historical perspective.

How people see is just a reflection of their minds. If one sees world as awful - that only tells about that person mind. It has nothing to do with the world. And talking about seeing truth is just inflated ego, nothing more. Some of the wisest and most impactful people in history talked about truth being the ultimate ecstasy. That is a smart way to live, I would say.

Ecstasy doesn't make people happy though, the void between highs just gets worse and worse.

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

The other side of this is that happiness is available to you as someone intelligent and aware of societies shortcomings when you use that intelligence at any opportunity to help the life around you. And that's an ongoing journey that requires maintenance not a one time event or goal.

This artwork captures it really well

https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1767679-tfw-too-intelligent-...

I think the truly smart, or perhaps wise people accept their understanding of reality as it is and don't attribute subjective human concepts like "injustice" to it.

Call it "optimistic nihilism", if you will.

Note that there is no such thing as 'optimistic nihilism', though. People at Kurzgesagt probably thought of it as a novel thing, yet it is not. There is already a name for it, that is, existentialism.

Naval Ravikant asks, "If you're so smart, why aren't you happy?".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIht5-FwZUI

But surely even not "smart" people get to experience the awful reality of things, and realize that there isn't much you can do about it?

If you are even smarter you can reprogram yourself.

Best answer. Should have been on Stackoverflow!

Heard this so much as a teenager.

Ignorance is bliss.

I honestly can't tell if I'm smart or stupid any more... It seems that the absolute dumbest schemes are paying their creators out in millions as I struggle to find success in the normally iron clad business methods... I tweet about things that matter to me and often things I think that are of solid comedic value, but it doesn't connect with many others due to it's lack of conformity with what others are posting online... Which constantly tells me there's something I don't know or may be missing. Success tips online are totally generated to make money, and it floods out what once used to mostly be useful and meaningful advice from smart and experienced (intelligent) people.

I also have been working harder than ever on creative things, and they literally seem to only be valued online for 5 seconds until they go completely dead. I know I'm being manipulated and twisted, but my morality makes me not want to hack my way into public consciousness for money and popularity.... I might by citing that, and citing that many others are hacking their way in, be quite stupid.

Are the people that make and hack manipulative schemes smart? Are the people that break the law and get away with it smart? I don't do those things, so maybe I'm stupid.. At least I can admit it I guess.

I think we're living in a time where an entire generation of people born into inherited wealth are buying their way into popularity (which is painting a very weird and false picture of what success and intelligence really means), and when combined with all the smart people trying to climb life's ladders, the ability to succeed is under threat now more than ever.

Intelligence to me has always been based more on overall life survival skills and growth success rather than human engineered IQ tests... I know actual critically acclaimed surgeons and engineers that literally couldn't tell you where a spare tire is on a car when they get a flat, and if no one else is there to help them.

When one has the financial augmentation of being born into vast amounts of wealth, social status, and connection (which often the individuals most deemed as "smart" are) the very ideal of intelligence is turned upon it's head... The lucky ones can literally fail their way into success without anyone knowing the difference.

To me, the most simplified definition of intelligence for an individual is living life fully and well, with ethics and reputation in balance, being free from the control and influence of others, accomplishing notable things, and skillfully overcoming obstacles as they present themselves... I can't really say I'm smart at this point because many of those things mentioned prior are under threat for everyone right now, and it seems like I'm pitted against others for a limited pool of success resources more and more every day. I'm not happy about that at all.