[10/25/22] Are intelligent people less happy?

[Dominic]

Are intelligent people less happy?

 

I'm a huge fan of this question, however it's a super, super layered one with a lot of things to consider so I've never fully committed myself to answering it thoroughly despite having written about it multiple times. I fully believe it to be true though, I think extremely ignorant people are naturally happier than very intelligent and self-aware people.

 

I may delve deeper into this later but I'm super curious to hear some of your responses.

[Poke]

Ignorance is bliss

[ThRza]

If so then Takuto is the happiest motherfucker on earth.

God bless that man.

[Acer]

Tbh this is probably true to a certain point with obvious outliers.

 

I’d like to bring up the counter point though that in this area of mass media and news, where scare tactics and horrible stories are how to get people watching I think someone who blindly follows this stuff and then not understand the concept around it and how there is much more to the world than the shock stories constantly running on the news would actually have a much worse world outlook.

 

I say this yet I still think the opposite just off of personal experience. Visiting to the south is quite an interesting experience and while I don’t want to say much about the shit that went on there, I can say everyone did always seem way happier and way more welcoming lol. 

[All Ts]

If anyone immerses themselves in a field to the point where they're intermediate at or where it was worth learning in the first place, you're going to find things that are deeply depressing to you however that doesn't mean it will make you clinically depressed. Whether or not we would categorize that as intelligence either is really up to personal choice. The IQ test can be studied for and many of the ways people find it to be inherent to a person are actually things made up by our environment. We could also confuse being misinformed for intelligence. I see a lot of serial social media users who have 1000 strongly held, wrong opinions that come from 0 evidence. I've also seen successful people, who are immersed in their field, who completely miss some of the things I believe an intermediate learner would pick up on.

 

I believe intelligent people being depressed is a trope with some cases where the disability/mental illness/environmental situation bringing about their depression is actually what gives them a perceived edge in intelligence. As of recently it's been more common to use the terms neurodivergent or neurotypical. I think it's sad and inhumane but if you lived in someone's shoes you'd get to see more of a holistic approach to how someone is created and people don't like to consider environment because it's painful to empathize on that extreme of a level. It's also easier for people to associate what they're feeling at the time with something tangible rather than a lack of serotonin in their brain- even for our most intelligent and ego driven.

 

My final answer is probably no significant correlation.