We haven't established that intelligence should imply happiness. We haven't even established that intelligence should imply the desire to be happy. If intelligence enables a person to identify problems, and problems make a person unhappy, then an intelligent person will have at least one factor that tends to increase unhappiness.
This is surprisingly one dimensional…
There are many studies that have shown higher levels of intelligence (ie, IQ or some other measurement if intellect) tends to be correlated with higher levels of self-reported “unhappiness,” due to a variety of covariates (eg, higher level of introspection, neuroticism, etc). Which is why looking at something like EQ is important.
There aren’t really great measurements of these things but the mental model is what’s most useful imo—especially the notion that we need to develop intelligence of many types to lead a “happy” well-rounded life. If only it was as simple as a “culture” or IQ problem.<p>As a sidebar: I rarely understand the purpose of these types of blog posts. Perhaps they’re a manifestation of the SV/VC/PG culture to push out content and “get your voice heard,” which has merit but the amount of work required to provided a well rounded, incisive and pithy blog (eg, old PG blogs) is rarely done.
"When you get what you want, you’ll naturally be more happy."<p>Oh, the babe! Oh, the pure, innocent child!<p><a href="https://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Fyodor_Dostoevsky/Notes_from_the_Underground/Part_I_Chapter_VII_p1.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Fyodor_Dostoevsky/Notes_from...</a>
Intelligent people see the truth of the world, the universe. If the truth, if it were good, that we lived in a wonderful society with wonderful people in a universe that cared about us, smart people would be so happy.<p>But being smart is merely a conviction of your enlightenment to the awful reality of things. Bravo, you learned about all these awful things you can’t do much to fix, and the reward is to languish in existential dread. Congratulations, you have learned the history of humanity and how our society functions, and your reward is sullen remorse in the unending cacophony of injustice.
I also think "getting what you want" is less important than "knowing what you want", the fables and folklore of every culture has cautionary tales that boils down to "be careful what you wish for".<p>True happiness (imho, and I am no expert here) is about resonating with a moral philosophy you truly believe in, and then acting in a way that you believe truly aligns with it. I think the more people around you who validate your philosophy and actions the more happy you will be.<p>The consequence here is that smart people are less likely to resonate with the existing philosophies around them and end up having to make sacrifices (either social or moral) leaving them less happy than they would have been otherwise.
Buddhism principles do not lock you in their system if all you want is to understand how happiness works and why you are not happy.<p>But people just ignore it anyway. Which is precisely the problem. Why address things when you can either ignore them or you can fight against yourself, but in both scenarios you always go round and round in the same loop.<p>In the current global consciousness, happiness is attributed to material possessions, which ironically is also what makes you unhappy.
Was intrigued by the title, disagree completely with the content.<p>You can have a rewarding job and still be unhappy, you can have no job at all and be the happiest person out there. Happiness is not one-dimensional...<p>I still think it's a fascinating topic, anyone got any better recommendations for reading up on this?
Maybe this is too simplistic, but pretty much no one is happy. Everyone has problems, even if those problems seem minor from another's viewpoint. I'm not sure smart/stupid has much to do with it.
For me, as I try to step out of myself and look candidly at my own life experience, it goes something like this:<p>As a “smart” person in high school, that led to various “rewards” such as respect, adulation, advancement, affirmation, etc. These things feel good and so my naive self equates being smart with being happy.<p>When less naive self perseveres, he realizes that the connection between smart and those feel good rewards is more arbitrary than I’d like, and I have experiences more like my current situation where I’m the “smart guy that holds this product together and understands this domain best” but that has led to others being suspicious and trying to take control and to being sidelined.<p>So in the end, it just so turns out that smart can go with happy situations or unhappy situations. Our selection bias confirms the happy ones as causal and is offended/confused when it’s not.
Those things are annoying and upsetting to deal with but aren't the root cause of unhappiness. I believe it is the lack of a sense of purpose that is the main culprit, and I believe this drives much of the modern malaise as the traditional sources of purpose: religion, family, survival, etc disappear. A lot of people here seem to find purpose in building great technologies, and they generally seem happy despite working (sometimes) crazy hours.
“I don’t much believe in the happiness of animals, except when I want to use this conceit as a frame for highlighting a particular feeling. To be happy, it’s necessary to know that one’s happy. The only happiness we get from sleeping without dreaming is when we wake up and realize that we’ve slept without dreaming. Happiness is outside of happiness.<p>There’s no happiness without knowledge. But the knowledge of happiness brings unhappiness, because to know that you’re happy is to realize that you’re experiencing a happy moment and will soon have to leave it behind. To know is to kill, in happiness as in everything else. Not to know, on the other hand, is not to exist.<p>Only the absolute of Hegel managed to be two things at once, but in writing. Being and non-being do not mix and meld in the sensations and laws of life; they exclude one another, by a kind of reverse synthesis.<p>What to do? Isolate the moment like a thing, and be happy now, in the moment we’re feeling happiness, thinking of nothing but what we’re feeling and completely excluding everything else. Trap all thought in our sensation..”<p>Excerpt from The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa
There's a famous poem written by a Nepali poet Laxmi Prasad Devkota: O Lord, Please maketh me Sheep.<p>It's too heavy to translate entirely but a succinct summary is that to not have intelligence is the only path towards happiness.
Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.<p>Intelligence is worthless without a heart to use it lovingly, and even then, it has no direct correlation to wisdom. It is wise to use intelligence lovingly, but it is also wise to use money lovingly. Intelligence is simply a resource while wisdom is a quality.<p>Furthermore, you must define "happiness." Happiness is simply a feeling, while joy is a quality, like wisdom. Intelligence and happiness are circumstantial and transient while wisdom and joy are qualities that can be nurtured and cultivated in one's character.
>>“If you’re so smart, how come you’re not happy? How come you’ve not figured that out?”<p>There is a default assumption here that being smart should eventually end in some sort of success. Whereas being smart has only mild correlation with being successful. Lots of other things(health, luck etc) matter in success, and eventually people kind of look at optimising one single variable and hope it leads to significant gains in all aspects of life. Which is impossible.<p>Even if we keep things like luck outside the discussion. Things like good health and fitness play a huge role in happiness, this follows from definition. Unhealthy people can't be happy and lack of fitness effects people's perception of their own-self. Most smart people tend to look at exercise oriented habits as something dumb people do.<p>Other thing is taking risks. Taking risks, demands being either risk averse or at least being slightly dumb enough to take risks, which smart people wouldn't.
The headline of this post rings a bell in a weird way.<p>I don't really know how to define "smart" or "happy" and I'm not really anxious to label myself with either of those terms either, but I have noticed that for whatever definition of the terms that I seem to observe at various points of my life I also recurrently observe people who I believe to have significantly less of the "s" term combined with significantly more of the "h" term - so much so that I have accepted it as a trend. The world according to me seems to work like that: more brains = more problems.<p>Add money to the mix and it seems to blur the picture as independent of (definition of) "s" and "h" more money seems to also equal more problems.
Happiness comes from sudden and unexpected improvements in quality of life.<p>It's 2022 and at least for those who are living in the West there is no sudden anything anymore.<p>Einstein theory is more than 100 years old and we still don't know what to do with it except for GPS which isn't really a big deal and could be re-created with mapping + sensors on the side of the road.<p>We fuck around less and less, hence we discover less and less. And when we do it takes centuries to turn theoretical discoveries into practical quality of life improvements.<p>We will never be as happy as the tribes who first discovered fire or the wheel. Not because there aren't discoveries just as consequential to be made but because of lack of urgency and too much smarts.<p>Nature only reveals its secrets to humans when we decide to throw our bodies at it.
Disappointing content. Those drawn in by the title might be more interested in this: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32409811" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32409811</a>
I studied two courses on the Coursera, The Science of Well-Being and the Psychology of recognition and self-employment. And I can say that the real happines value is not in work-job achievements or money - but in recognition and social interaction with worthy people. There are excellent lectures by Russian professor Oleg Lukyanov where he criticizes the psychology of achievements that drive people into stress and offers in return the psychology of recognition. And of course happiness it generally depends on other things
If you're smart and unhappy, it seems like the best next step is to read some books on the topic of <i>Positive Psychology</i> written by researchers that study it. Two great starts: <i>The How of Happiness</i> and <i>Stumbling on Happiness</i> but there are many more.<p>ps - <i>4DWW</i> (Four Day Work Week) would be an amazing improvement to happiness to anyone who gets it. Let's all work on making it the norm!
A forgotten dimension of this problem is that you’re never happy if you care too much. Intelligent people care too much. If you don’t care enough you’re probably causing trouble for other people. I’d rather hurt myself than other people.
Unhappiness mostly comes from boredom as i see.<p>How smart people become boring ? Because they have no enough interesting resources/knowledge to discover ?<p>How to pursuit knowledge ?<p>To be happy or not to be happy? That's the choice.
The smarter you are, the more unhappy and lonely you will be. Been known for millenia; doesn't have to stay this way.<p>edit/ sorry got shadow banned over this post. cant reply to anyone.
the more 'actionable' Naval-ism that helps me is<p>"If you can't be happy with a coffee, you won't be happy with a yacht."<p>somehow this makes me naturally gauge if I'm enjoying the present as a question "am I enjoying this coffee / new fountain pen / crunchy leaves?" and I actually feel the happiness bubble up in sensory focus.<p>Doesn't last long yet works for me.
I think a lot of us are unhappy a lot of the time because we’re all at least a little bit insane. Either we don’t see the cause of our unhappiness because we’re insane or we see it but don’t fix it because we’re insane.<p>Perhaps “insane” is too strong but “lacking sufficient sanity” is too long.