Ignorance, in the sense of ignoring the world around, you is bliss. I sometimes envy those who can live in their own world and nothing seems to affect their happiness.
But more seriously, if you correlate happiness with ignorance and pass that off as something you don't have the power to change, that is a mistake. Happiness and your attitude towards things is something you can work on.
Intelligence, "smartness", and ignorance are all orthogonal.
Even very intelligent and very smart people can approach an issue with extreme bias and blatantly ignore (get it ;) news, facts, etc. that contradicts that bias.
I would argue that William Dembski[1] is both smart and intelligent, but I would also call him ignorant.
[Edit: my point being that people who choose to ignore the things that contradict their bias are happier as a result of their ignorance]
Apologies, I guess that was more of a reference appropriate for Reddit than HN.
> I too am very smart.
is a reference to the subreddit at https://www.reddit.com/r/iamverysmart which points out people describing themselves as very smart, often in ironic ways. I realize now that it may have looked like I was actually making a claim about my own intelligence; I was not.
But more seriously, if you correlate happiness with ignorance and pass that off as something you don't have the power to change, that is a mistake. Happiness and your attitude towards things is something you can work on.