Why aren't smart people happier? IQ tests miss wisdom

I think being smart universally trumps being less smart - but the definition of smart needs to be more encompassing.

For example take the stereotype of a brilliant man or woman who neglected family for career, and are forever single and childless forever -- while someone less brilliant just "ends up" with a family and ultimately more fulfilled in life.

Superficially this is an example of an average person being happier than the really smart one but I don't agree with this. I look at this as the non-brilliant person being smarter in the areas that matter. Or vice versa the "brilliant" person neglected a really important area of life - which isn't that smart.

With this expanded definition - where smart isn't just a measurement of raw processing power or a spike in one area, but rather the product of "smart about what's important" * "smart about how to go about it" - that kind of person I think is consistently happier than anyone else.

One dimension of this is the (in)ability to stick with tradition and culture rather than "smartly" invent everything yourself. In the scenario above, the average person maybe ended up with a family because they were more able to follow family patterns and advice while the "brilliant" person tries to figure out everything from scratch, not able to benefit from the "well troden paths" that are available.

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.

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

I find it interesting that there's an expectation that smart people would be happier.

Being smart is essentially "having a strong brain". Would we expect people with a strong back or legs to be happier? I wouldn't expect someone good a maths or puzzles to be any happier than someone good at carrying heavy things.

There's a difference between smart and wise. Some smart people become wise people, and I find them to be happy.

Ugh. This analysis starts off a little interesting with its observation that "intelligence", as analyzed historically, tends to be about solving bounded-context problems (with a known right answer) rather than open-ended problems (D&D called this "wisdom", right?)

But it is lacking so, so, so much in explaining why smart people aren't happier or evaluating the premises of the question.

If my teenager gave me this analysis and question, I'd give them 8 more avenues to explore, none of which the article addresses:

1) Is intelligence Kahneman's "type 1 thinking" or "type 2"? Do people (including you) act on their thinking or their emotions? (Can/do you think smart + act dumb and end up happy?)

2) What does being happy have to do with having autonomy and control and purpose? (Existentialism)

3) What does happiness have to do with contentment and the scope of what one wants to control, ie ambition? Attachment? (Buddhism)

4) What does happiness have to do with one's overall outlook of being pessimistic or optimistic?

5) Is there some deeper insight why a widespread religious tradition such as the Judeo-Christian one has a creation story where where "knowledge of good and evil" is inherently problematic?

6) What does happiness have to do with dopamine and the timing or frequency of solving problems of small vs large size? What degree of problems need to be present for an intelligent problem-solver to be happy vs, say, bored, (example: Marvin the "brain the size of a planet" androi […]

Because we're depressed at being surrounded by stupidity.

Or at least I am; I won't speak for everyone else.

I do think an important part that we leave out when we analyze datapoints like "people who test well in one subject tend to test well in other subjects" is that "test taking" is itself a skill that people can be good or bad at.

I was always an expert test taker from a very young age. I loved standardized tests, and excelled every time.

I remember thinking many times how I was pretty sure I could do pretty well on a test on any subject, even if I didn't know the subject itself.

I had a chance to test (hah) that theory when I took a summer job at a college testing center when I was a college student myself. I would give out these tests in a number of different subjects, but I had time to kill while the students were taking the tests. I decided to try taking some for subjects I had never studied.

I scored well above the average scores on these subjects I knew nothing about, I just knew how tests were written. I could pick up context clues in the wording of questions, use my experience on how test questions usually go, and use clues from other parts of the test to figure out how to answer a different question.

That doesn't mean I was any good at those subjects, I just was good at that form of test.