Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)

rationalist

Because we're depressed at being surrounded by stupidity. Or at least I am; I won't speak for everyone else.

1attice

Speaking only for myself: you can't be tortured by thoughts you're not having, and I, sadly, am having thoughts.

snovymgodym

Why should being smart make you happy?

AQuantized

I think the essay has the implicit assumption that if you're 'better' at doing things, you'll end up happier. Since intelligent people aren't happier, the conclusion becomes that intelligence is mostly only relevant to a subset of well-defined abstract problems that don't represent the real messy problems of life. I think the reality of human happiness is that being in better material circumstances, or being better at solving problems practical or not, doesn't necessarily improve long term happiness. Adaption to circumstances, the 'hedonic treadmill', means most people aren't going to obtain some very high level of happiness and sustain it indefinitely, regardless of station.

geoka9

Maybe because they are not that smart? :)

gmuslera

"Ignorance is bliss" - Cypher

ultrarunner

Intelligence is a slippery term, as plenty of smart folks have made dumb decisions. That said, I’ve noticed that many people who don’t understand why their choices are subpar tend to blame others, i.e. life happens to them. Someone more aware might internalize their failures. Plenty of mutations of this mechanism.

Telaneo

Horrors beyond your comprehension are mild compared to the horrors you can understand but cannot fix.

nemo

Wisdom is where happiness comes from, not intelligence.

tomComb

Because we are depressed by the realization of how stupid we are. We aren't optimized for smart, for happy, or for truth - we are optimized for getting our genes into the next generation.

arbirk

I live by "everything is grey". I am interestingly smart in some niche domains that I have a hard time communicating exists. I also insist on not fitting any template. Pretty dumb, right?

RickJWagner

Lots of reasons, I suspect. Smart people are smarter than stupid people, but not that much smarter. They are subject to thinking they’ve got it all figured out, when really they don’t. Warren Buffett spoke several times about this, saying that he’d much rather deal with a person of middling IQ and some humility rather than a person with very high IQ but not as smart as they think. Then there are other attributes like discipline. A very smart person with little discipline could easily end up in a worse state than someone with good discipline and less intelligence. Sort of the Forest Gump model, if you like. Superior intelligence is absolutely a gift. But not the only kind of gift, and not necessarily the best one. Ask someone like Stephen Hawking.

londons_explore

Likewise, rich people don't seem to be happier - sampling the few thousand people I have spoken to in my life.

darth_avocado

Im not smart (maybe average), but a lot of my unhappiness starts from just having access to information. And then more I process the information, the more unhappy I become. Smarter people than me probably have more information and are able to process it faster, uncovering effects that are not readily perceived by normal folks like myself.

slowhadoken

Because we’re social animals and 84% of the population can’t do calculus or understand any meaningful statistics. It makes honest discussion and cooperation with the average person nearly impossible.

boricj

Because being smart doesn't mean being wise. Lack of wisdom can fuck up your life far, far worse than lack of intelligence... and I for one am not wise when it comes to people.

amatecha

When people talk about being happy (or not), I always wonder -- why does it matter? I don't expect to be happy, and I don't strive towards it. I DO strive towards making my life better in terms of engaging in enriching and rewarding experiences, spending time around people I care about, perhaps trying to ensure future stability to the degree I can, and generally growing as a person. Never do I consider the pursuit of "happiness". Interestingly this seems to kind of correlate with the premise of the post, where a lot of commonly-accepted definitions of "intelligence" often recognize only narrowly-defined scopes of intelligence, but not broad/overall multi-tiered general intelligence that translates to "having a good life".

ausbah

i’m sure everyone replying to this thread has a level headed and unbiased assessment of themselves

sajithdilshan

Smart doesn’t mean they are necessarily emotionally intelligent or mature. Emotionally intelligent people know how to regulate their emotions and not to lose sleep over factors that are out of their control. Everything happening in and around the world is not your problem or concern most people are just unhappy because they focus on negativity

cmiles8

I think it’s a combination of: 1. “Smart” people tend to constantly see patterns others are missing. So they’re fretting about problems others are blissfully unaware about. Sometimes these “problems” matter and somethings they don’t. 2. Contrary to popular belief, the smartest people in the room typically despise being the smartest person in the room. They typically are starving for someone to challenge them, to debate them, for them to learn something from others. That lack of stimulation is typically depressing to a “smart” person.