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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: 2) by archfeld on Monday December 19 2016, @08:04PM
Not to be pretentious, but I know I am above average intelligence, but my biggest problem is not socializing with others but having to explain myself in terms others will grasp, as a metaphor or to go back and explain the logic I used to help others to see the conclusion I came to. I play pen and paper RPG's with a group that over the years has come to contain people whose intellect and opinions' I respect. I have a great deal of fun with this group because you can pose a problem and get a variety of answers and know that the group follows your logic or derives their own that is understandable.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Monday December 19 2016, @08:16PM
This. I blame it on Mechanical Engineering Lab II. Dr. Wilkinson [usf.edu] never tolerated an imprecise description of the task at hand.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Monday December 19 2016, @08:47PM
Yeah, I think my experiences run parallel to yours. I have a handful of friends who I truly enjoy spending time with. I've known most of them for about 15 years. We all enjoy a similar train of thought most of the time with enough variations that it's quite insightful to run things past them. We usually meet, also, to play RPGs around a table in someone's basement.
Meanwhile, 'others' are kind of painful to have to interact with, because of all the going back and explaining what I'm trying to talk to them about. I don't know if that's intelligence or if it's just having such common interests, though we come from pretty different backgrounds. There are a handful of people I work with who are the same way, but they're few and far between. The guy I sit next to basically nods and smiles at most of the projects I talk about, while I nod and smile when he tells me about the TV show he's been watching lately. On the other hand, my team lead talks to me about her projects (which are usually things out of my areas of expertise) but we can have those conversations in an intelligent manner that, far as I can tell, doesn't leave either of us groaning afterward.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday December 19 2016, @10:06PM
It looks to me like you would benefit from more editing. Not censorship, mind you. It's my gut feeling that people of above average intelligence are used to their raw stream of thought passing as coherent throughout their educations. People below average, however, had to train themselves to form coherent thoughts. As a result, when comparing a smarter person against a dumber person talking about the same thing, the dumber person will be easier to understand because the content will have been better edited.
I say this because it's clear that your comment is mostly a big run-on sentence streaming from your unedited thoughts. A dumber person may have made a less insightful point more coherently.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Tuesday December 20 2016, @03:31AM
That could very well be true. I was always penalized for not showing my work in math. It always seemed so self-evident. While I was young and a cop we were taught to write as simply and directly as possible, but I do have a habit of just spewing forth a stream that seems linear to myself but not always so to others.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @11:48PM
"I like to hang with people who think like me."
That has nothing to do with intelligence, by the way, regardless of how smart you mom says you are.
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Tuesday December 20 2016, @03:42AM
Actually one thing I enjoy most about the group is the diversity of opinions. I will likely get a differing opinion/view and have it justified by a coherent train of thought. Discussion and/or debate is better when properly spiced by variety. Hearing the same views echoed gets boring very quickly. If I was looking for the echo chamber I could just stay at home and listen to me, myself and I agree on everything. That is one of the reasons I really like this place, a huge range of views and opinions, from a wide variety of unique characters.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge