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from the appealing-to-a-community-of-loners dept.
A story at Inverse, covers research that concludes that Evolution Made Really Smart People Long to Be Loners:
Psychologists have a pretty good idea of what typically makes a human happy. Dancing delights us. Being in nature brings us joy. And, for most people, frequent contact with good friends makes us feel content.
That is, unless you're really, really smart.
In a paper published in the British Journal of Psychology , researchers Norman Li and Satoshi Kanazawa report that highly intelligent people experience lower life satisfaction when they socialize with friends more frequently. These are the Sherlocks and the Newt Scamanders of the world — the very intelligent few who would be happier if they were left alone.
[...] To come to this conclusion, the researchers analyzed the survey responses of 15,197 individuals between the ages of 18 and 28. Their data was a part of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health — a survey that measures life satisfaction, intelligence, and health...
Intelligence is believed to have evolved as a psychological mechanism to solve novel problems — the sort of challenges that weren't a regular part of life. For our ancestors, frequent contact with friends and allies was a necessity that allowed them to survive. Being highly intelligent, however, meant an individual was more likely to be able to solve problems without another person's help, which in turn diminished the importance of their friendships.
[...] That certainly doesn't mean that if you enjoy being around your friends that you're unintelligent. But it does mean that the really smart person you know who spends much of their time alone isn't a sad loner — they probably just like it that way.
In my estimation, the community here is above-average in intelligence so I am curious: How many of you are loners? Do you prefer the company of yourself to the company of others?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Monday December 19 2016, @05:40PM
That's why I like text, the writing process helps people filter some of that noise out.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @06:14PM
> That's why I like text, the writing process helps people filter some of that noise out.
And to make up for it you use the most unreadable font to inject your own noise into the text.
Does being a loner also make you a narcissist?
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @07:05PM
If anything, monospaced fonts are more readable...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @11:42PM
The entire history of typography says you are wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @08:55PM
Does it hurt to be that stupid?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @09:18PM
Not a very clever troll. I see GP's text in same font as other posts here (although I do remember seeing his stuff monospaced back when SN first started). You must have your font selection messed up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @01:08AM
More like your system is missing a full complement of monospace fonts and is falling back to a proportional spaced one when this site specifies monospaced.
Try it yourself, try to use the code or tt tags to make a monospace posting like the way that ahole does.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @07:11PM
That might be more like ADHD...
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday December 22 2016, @12:49AM
Speaking from the nominal top 0.1%, I enjoy my friends' company, BUT -- for every hour spent with others, I need 2-3 hours alone to decompress. Being with people all the time is stressful and tiring. So I hear ya there -- text works around the issue.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.