[codyklimdev]

I think beyond a certain level surplus IQ begins to cause problems. While still useful, the amount of self-sabotage and thought spirals the brain can generate with the extra power can cause neuroses and unhappiness on a larger scale than those less intelligent are capable of. Combine it with higher societal expectations and it's no great mystery to me why smarter people seem unhappier.

Just my thoughts anyways. I'm a dev, not a psychologist.

[azan_]

Not true at all: 1) more intelligent people are happier (author of the blogpost cherrypicked 2 studies, one of which in fact showed that iq is positively correlated with hapiness. 2) IQ negatively correlates with neuroticism. 3) In fact IQ correlates positively with almost every positive facet of human experience - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2212794120

[erikerikson]

Being on the tail can make you feel very alone. Especially as a child you can end up having only sparse, if any, access to anyone that can meet you in conversation. If you happen to be adopted then you can be alone in your family too. In some cases they are not only unmet but ostracized, vilified, or attacked for being "weird", able to see things that make people uncomfortable, or ask questions that break people's ways of thinking and unintentionally leaving them adrift. Teachers and other adults that are responsible for fostering your success commonly cheer your failures, root against you, and sabotage your efforts. Because everything must be so good for you, you don't need support and can be safely ignored. Over time you become a target for control and manipulation by people that believe your agency is their disadvantage and will use violence, subterfuge, and social arrangement to subdue you.

There are many benefits but it can be a real liability.

[grvdrm]

Your reply reminds me of a work situation at a prior start up.

CEO seen as brilliant. On the tail in your words.

I was talking to head of sales about the CEO and his statement was this: these types of people are the easiest to manipulate.

Not exactly what you said but similar idea. It’s stuck with me that the smartest person in the room might also be the most vulnerable in numerous situations. That doesn’t mean I prefer lower IQ. But it’s helped me normalize how I communicate with people.

[Timwi]

What does being adopted have to do with anything?

[erikerikson]

There are high correlations of intelligence between parents and their offspring. Adoption can break the correlation, statistically giving you "normal" parents. Thus, intelligent adopted children can be systemically isolated inside as well as outside their homes.

[jvanderbot]

One thing I really love about that is that since correlation goes both ways, a happy non neurotic person is more likely to solve puzzles, which seems stupidly obvious in hindsight.

[antegamisou]

What makes the linked study not cherrypicked?

[supportengineer]

In the Bay Area, I feel surrounded by such people. They solve imaginary problems to get a promotion. But they are competing with thousands of other, equally smart people, to also get promotions. So it's non-stop change for no reason, and wasting resources.

[badpun]

Sportsmen compete in imaginary competitions with equally physially gifted people just to win a prize. And yet, many are fulfilled by it. For some people, competing is what drives them.

[impossiblefork]

Yes, but then you know it's a game, so there's no self-deception that you're actually doing something meaningful. This realization thus gives the whole sportsmanship concept.

[jacinda]

I think many people in the Bay Area also see careers as a game.

[aleph_minus_one]

> Yes, but then you know it's a game, so there's no self-deception that you're actually doing something meaningful.

I have reasons to believe that many very successful athletes do have this self-deception.

[1minusp]

Can be argued that there is intuitive satisfaction/pleasure/utility that spectators gain from watching sports competitions. The payoff is a lot more obvious/instant. Whereas with a lot of tech these days, what needle are we really moving? Are people truly happier scrolling for two hours, compared with watching an edge-of-seat soccer game?

[jihadjihad]

The idea appears to be to simulate the edge-of-seat sensation and, ideally, to charge for the privilege of the experience.

[impossiblefork]

Some probably do-- McEnroe for example could go rather crazy, but for example, Stefan Edberg and some other people were able to behave very reasonably despite playing for large prizes and despite having presumably participated in tournaments from an early age, knowing that they if they lose a match have to go home and don't get to play any more.

[hopelite]

I don’t get the sense that the participants in a game actually know it’s a meaningless game. We have several domains beyond professional sports in which people have utterly persuaded themselves of their success simply due to external factors, like fans of celebrities and pop musicians who are essentially living in a delusional feedback loop fed by their fanatics. In tech and business in general it is more often how people have convinced themselves of their success based on “successful exists” or revenue growth in an economy that is solely a function of money printing and deficit spending/debt, not some objective measure of improvement. It’s the same kind of thing that on a geopolitical stage has resulted in America with its $1T+ military budget being effectively checkmated by hypersonic missiles, etc.; the delusion that $ = success and superiority and dominance, when all it really did was blind us in all the ways possible.

But if you are truly smart, just telling people the truth, effectively explaining that their disfigured baby is ugly is so jarring to their coping mechanisms that they are browbeat to maintain the fiction of the beauty of the baby. This is also where power and abuse comes in. The ones who will destroy even the smartest people, often specifically because their intelligence threatens those on power and who are abusing humanity. Truly smart people simply have a hard time with lying to themselves though. That’s why they’re less happy in a world of lies, manipulation, and delusion. Truely smart people see the world dominated by the worst kind of narcissistic psychopaths, but they cannot actually let on to that fact or all the narcissistic psychopaths immediately turn on them in the most aggressive and intense way. It’s the nature of dealing with narcissistic psychopaths, and it leads to quite a bit of unhappiness if you are not also a narcissistic psychopath but have to live in the world you see for what it is. It’s probably the origin of the phrase “ignorance is bliss”; the cattle on the ranch are the happiest, until the day they are not at all.

[maerF0x0]

> many are fulfilled by it.

At least in my sampling, I'd suggest the most extremely driven people often have some major sense of lack they're chasing.

[knowitnone3]

No reason? You even stated the reason "for promotion". It's OK if you are not aiming for promotions but don't judge others when they do.

[hurrrpromotions]

Found the treadmill runner whose self worth is defined by their job title.

Lol

We’re not judging you because you want a promotion. We’re judging you because you selfishly make a ton of work for everyone else so you can feel better about your pointless life.

[nevertoolate]

You are saying if promotion makes a person happy it justifies to spend a lot of resources on getting it even if it is harmful for the world (based on unstated ethical framework). GP says it is invalid resource usage - waste of human capital. I think he is hating on the game not the playa (based on unstated ethical framework)

[ajkjk]

no reason in the real world. no reason that matters / makes you fulfilled / makes you feel proud to be doing your job

success in this industry is proportional to your ability to not notice or not believe that your work is pointless

[chermi]

Uhh, money? Supporting a family in the bay area is helped a little by money.

[paganel]

It's ok to judge people for as a frivolous thing as getting a promotion. Just say directly that you want more money, one can respect that, but don't hide it under "I want to be higher on the totem-pole!".

[cosmic_cheese]

This has been a somewhat popular line of thought in internet circles for a while and I'm inclined to agree. I also believe the threshold past which these problems begin to crop up may be considerably lower than commonly thought… One doesn't need to be a chart topper to fall into these cognitive patterns.

That said, it probably doesn't need to be this way and I would suggest that the root issue lies with the way that modern society is structured. It's not really optimizing for happiness on any level, which is greatly exacerbated when one has the mental acuity to zoom out and see the bigger picture.

[burningChrome]

>> which is greatly exacerbated when one has the mental acuity to zoom out and see the bigger picture.

Do you think this comes with age, or are some people born with the ability regardless of age to see the bigger picture?

For myself, I just plodded along through high school and then things started to click more when I was in college, contemplating life in the real world. Many of my classmates in HS seemed to have the majority of their lives planned out already while I was just content to play sports, chase girls and learn about computers.

[cosmic_cheese]

I think it’s one of those things that varies wildly from person to person.

In my case, I was almost completely unconcerned about anything except my hobbies/interests in high school and didn’t have the foggiest clue about where I might be headed. It wasn’t without its stressors but overall it was a carefree time. It was maybe some time about halfway through college when reality began to sink in and that all changed. The ability to zoom out might’ve been present early on but if it was, it didn’t kick in until a threshold of some sort had been reached.

[saltcured]

Huh, I feel like you both changed topics midstream there?

I took your earlier post as saying that the ability to see the bigger picture leads to neurosis and unhappiness. But in replies, you're both talking like that ability lets someone figure out the game and solve for more happiness...?

Going back upstream, I'd say that the ability to "see the big picture" is not well defined. Part of it is abstraction and part of it is systems thinking and knowledge about additional activities going on in your world.

And, I think these are mostly orthogonal to a happiness. Your emotional disposition can cause you to see a very different valence in the same systems view.

[cosmic_cheese]

> I took your earlier post as saying that the ability to see the bigger picture leads to neurosis and unhappiness.

Yes, that was the intention. What I perhaps failed to convey in my last reply is that simply having the mental capacity to “zoom out” on its own doesn’t mean that the individual in question is actually doing that, and that some other secondary condition (such as life experience or knowledge) is required. In my anecdote, I was missing some requirement until halfway through college.

> Going back upstream, I'd say that the ability to "see the big picture" is not well defined. Part of it is abstraction and part of it is systems thinking and knowledge about additional activities going on in your world.

> And, I think these are mostly orthogonal to a happiness. Your emotional disposition can cause you to see a very different valence in the same systems view.

I don’t think the two are entirely unrelated. I would expect that someone who’s more cerebral is going to be less influenced by their disposition, and in the case of someone stuck in a negative mental loop their disposition could be shifted if the loop goes unaddressed for too long.

[gishh]

I’m quite close to being “over the hill” as it were.

I remember being in an honors chem midterm and distinctly thinking “my grade on this test will directly impact my overall grade in this class and have a direct impact on my GPA, which will affect my college selection, and my overall net worth.”

The test wasn’t nearly as stressful as that thought.

[SoftTalker]

I agree. I know a guy who is just brilliantly smart but he can get caught up in ruminating or "thought spirals" as you say and is constantly imagining all the ways things can go wrong and is therefore afraid to take any risks or start anything new.

[Foobar8568]

That's the case of my 10yo.

That though of spirals is really a scary thing.

[Tade0]

That's a specific problem that can be addressed. Here's a <1 minute summary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRvbh8xCi4w

[Foobar8568]

It has nothing to do with the problem.

[Tade0]

That's exactly the mechanism how they form. Happens to children as well.

[burningChrome]

Is this the classic "paralysis by analysis"?

[quentindanjou]

I feel like high intelligence is crippling itself, the more intelligent you are and the more issues to solve you find and the more conscious of your environment you become, awaking you to new sets of information and again, new sets of issues.

This overflow might contribute to less happiness as a result.

Same thing, not a psychologist, just some thoughts.

[lordnacho]

I don't think it's so much the IQ that causes self-sabotage. The thing that happens is that if you have a big brain, you tend to try to use it to solve every problem. Guy who has a hammer sees a nail everywhere. After all, IQ is seen as a kind of tool for everything, so why not?

So you get these smart people who think they can rationally work themselves out of emotional issues.

Well, if you lift with your back, you hurt your back.

[bell-cot]

> I think beyond a certain level surplus IQ begins to cause problems.

YES, with an emphasis on the idea of "surplus IQ". If you are similarly blessed with high EQ, great social skills, athletic talent, etc. - not much of a problem. Vs. if you're nothing special (or worse) in some of those other areas, while having a metaphorical Mjölnir in your IQ toolbox - Big Problems. "Solve it with IQ" becomes your go-to strategy in far too many situations, you tend let other skills type atrophy...and treating everything as a metaphorical nail really doesn't work well.

[cultofmetatron]

I believe this was the overarching theme of forest gump

[huherto]

I don't disagree, but I have seen a few counter examples in my life.

Some of the smartest people that I have known are also the kindest. It is like they are so smart that are able to understand and empathize with other people thoughts and feelings. In any place I go, I look for the kindest people and frequently you also find they are also really smart and interesting.

[bongodongobob]

Perfect essay for ya:

https://philosophynow.org/issues/45/The_Last_Messiah

Our horns got too big. What once was an advantage is now getting stuck in the tree branches.

[ASalazarMX]

Or, you could just ask "Why aren't people happy?". I don't see how IQ could make you happier. Smart people are not as smart as they think, they usually perform better because they're overspecialized.

Now, emotional intelligence, that would greatly influece your happiness. The hurdles you're talking about are emotional, not intellectual.

[wahern]

Emotional intelligence and IQ are positively correlated, albeit not strongly. But like IQ, emotional intelligence brings its own burdens.

[lurk2]

> Smart people are not as smart as they think, they usually perform better because they're overspecialized.

This isn’t true at all.

[dingnuts]

usually when people talk about emotional intelligence, they mean Big 5 Agreeableness plus Openness, which can be measured. If your hypothesis is correct there should be data on the potential correlation between those traits and self reported happiness

[thewebguyd]

There is a lot of data on the Big Five and correlation with subjective well being (self reported happiness).

Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness are all strong predictors of higher life satisfaction and positive emotions. High levels of neuroticism are strongly associated with lower life satisfaction, and openness is mostly neutral.

[aleph_minus_one]

As far as I am aware, concerning the Big 5 traits

- There is a strong positive correlation between "Openness" and IQ (some people even claim that "Openness" is actually some weak version of an IQ test)

- There is a small negative correlation between "Extraversion" and IQ

The other three Big 5 traits are basically independent of IQ.

[lo_zamoyski]

It's a double-edged sword.

A properly disciplined person is capable of great things according to the measure of his intellectual power and his discipline. However, without discipline, that extra horsepower can be a force multiplier for error, and more intricate rationalizations can make it easy to lodge yourself in a web of false justifications.

This is one reason why the ancients and the medievals always emphasized the importance of the virtues. Intelligence is just potential. What we want is knowledge and ultimately wisdom. But there is no wisdom without virtue. Without virtue, a man is deficient and corrupt. His intellect is darkened. His mental operations dishonest. His hold on reality deformed. Virtue is freedom; a man of vice is not free, but lorded over by each vice that wounds him and holds him hostage. His intellect is not free to operate properly. Good actions are strangled and stifled, because his intentions are corrupt, because his impure will cripples and twists the operations of his intellect, because his vices dominate him and cause disintegration.

Without virtue, we are but savages and scum.

[never_inline]

Idk about the modern meaning of virtue but doesn't "virtus" in roman mean something like "bravery" and "manliness". (Probably cognate to sanskrit "vIryam"

[lo_zamoyski]

It isn't some modern meaning I'm referring to. I'm speaking of the general notion of virtue discussed by Aristotle or expressed in things like the four cardinal virtues (among which you will find courage, opposed to cowardice) and so on.

[mattlondon]

You are confusing medium intelligence with high intelligence I fear.

Truly intelligent people won't be getting into doom spirals and self-sabotage. They will - obviously - use their superior intelligence to avoid that situation (or mitigate it before it becomes an issue), but the merely middling folks get trapped by it and cannot work their way out of it because they're just not intelligent enough to realise it is happening and/or work out how to stop it.

Good luck.

[aclindsa]

My experience is that intelligence is not one-dimensional or a cure-all. It is possible for someone to be able to solve a difficult math problem much quicker than their peers, but still have a really hard time managing emotions or dealing with everyday life.

[energy123]

Does an inability to inhibit the default mode network correlate with IQ?

[lanfeust6]

Anecdotally, expectations and identity (through narcissism) do a lot of the lifting. When we see ourselves as "smart" while still being emotionally immature, then falling short of certain signals and accomplishments we project on that is thought to be tantamount to being a failure.

What should be impressed upon us far earlier is that our actions dictate our identity. If they are in harmony with your real desires, as opposed to surrogate desires, you'll be happier.

[chermi]

As I said in another comment, I think the expectations and probably parts of the narcissism are definitely on the "nurture" side. Smarter people are noticed in school and told how bright their future is. They're not as often told how hard they need to work for that bright future. This sets up expectations of success without developing all the tools needed besides raw intelligence.