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If ignorance is bliss, does a high IQ equal misery? Popular opinion would have it so. We tend to think of geniuses as being plagued by existential angst, frustration, and loneliness. Think of Virginia Woolf, Alan Turing, or Lisa Simpson – lone stars, isolated even as they burn their brightest. As Ernest Hemingway wrote: "Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."
The question may seem like a trivial matter concerning a select few – but the insights it offers could have ramifications for many. Much of our education system is aimed at improving academic intelligence; although its limits are well known, IQ is still the primary way of measuring cognitive abilities, and we spend millions on brain training and cognitive enhancers that try to improve those scores. But what if the quest for genius is itself a fool's errand?
The first steps to answering these questions were taken almost a century ago, at the height of the American Jazz Age. At the time, the new-fangled IQ test was gaining traction, after proving itself in World War One recruitment centres, and in 1926, psychologist Lewis Terman decided to use it to identify and study a group of gifted children. Combing California's schools for the creme de la creme, he selected 1,500 pupils with an IQ of 140 or more – 80 of whom had IQs above 170. Together, they became known as the "Termites", and the highs and lows of their lives are still being studied to this day.
As you might expect, many of the Termites did achieve wealth and fame – most notably Jess Oppenheimer, the writer of the classic 1950s sitcom I Love Lucy. Indeed, by the time his series aired on CBS, the Termites' average salary was twice that of the average white-collar job. But not all the group met Terman's expectations – there were many who pursued more "humble" professions such as police officers, seafarers, and typists. For this reason, Terman concluded that "intellect and achievement are far from perfectly correlated". Nor did their smarts endow personal happiness. Over the course of their lives, levels of divorce, alcoholism and suicide were about the same as the national average.
As the Termites enter their dotage, the moral of their story – that intelligence does not equate to a better life – has been told again and again. At best, a great intellect makes no differences to your life satisfaction; at worst, it can actually mean you are less fulfilled.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @04:30PM
Also, a dumb dog can be blissfully happy in his ignorance till his "unexpected" end. Whereas the smart, knowledgeable and perceptive often have a very good idea that they're in for a very nasty checkmate many moves away. See also the Down Syndrome folk - many people say it should be called "Up Syndrome" :).
Sometimes ignorance truly is bliss. Eating a lot from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil ain't such a wonderful thing...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @05:11PM
I disagree, and for the same reason that began your post:
With perception comes the awareness that we have exceptionally little ability to affect meaningful change. There is even reasonable evidence that self-efficacy is an illusion all together. But that is besides my point. Because someone can be aware of possibilities does not mean that they are capable of making those possibilities happen.
The most obvious and mundane is changing someone else's opinion. How many times have you seen someone convince another to change their opinion? We exercise that skill every day on this and other sites, yet few success stories are to be had. That is just a simple immaterial matter of no significance. Just imagine how hard it is to change anything in the world at large given we can not even change the minds of others. Sure it looks possible, but in reality unless it is some technical change it is far more up to chance than ability.
Because the clever/perceptive/highly intelligent are aware of how low the odds of success are, while people of lesser abilities are not, the people of greater ability are not more responsible, but less. The odds are so small and the pay off so unsure of positive benefit that choosing to try to change anything in a meaningful way for them becomes as foolish as spending all your money on scratch off tickets.
Let the less aware that run on faith or belief take the high risks and leave the more able people to apply their efforts with efficiently.
(Score: 2) by pnkwarhall on Wednesday April 15 2015, @07:54PM
>>Just imagine how hard it is to change anything in the world
I can work to change myself. And that is enough. This truth is taught to children in elementary school, but surprisingly few take it to heart.
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @09:03PM
Absolutely I can't stress my agreement enough. The only thing we are directly adjacent to in the Cartesian sense and thus have any certainty of knowledge or control is ourselves. Or rather our thoughts, but that is for another time.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 15 2015, @11:04PM
Elementary school teaches pupils what the need to know in order to be a useful cog in the society. If truth happens to be included it's by accident.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2015, @12:01AM
Play nice
Eat a snack when you are cranky
Share
Take naps
Dinosaurs are awesome
Put stuff back where you found it
Spend more time outside
Go to bed at a decent hour
Yep, everything needed to live a happy life right there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2015, @10:27AM
And then corporations take an interest in you(r money), and the message becomes:
Watch sports
Eat a snack whenever you have a hand free
Sharing is piracy
Napping means you're lazy and should be fired
Okay, dinosaurs *are* awesome
No refunds
Spend more time at work
Watch infomercials until you pass out
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Common Joe on Thursday April 16 2015, @05:40AM
No, it is not enough. Not if one wants to live. I want food on the table. To do that, I need a job. My ability to find a job requires me to convince someone in power who has money that requires the services I can provide. And I depend on other people so I can accomplish my job (like the ISP or the electrical companies). I need to convince countless people in my life to make changes in their lives (i.e., change the world) just so I can live. And it's damn hard sometimes.
Case in point: I moved to Europe not so long ago. I just spent the last four months getting through all the paperwork just so I could get tested for a driver's license. It should have only taken a week or so for the paperwork and a couple of weeks to study for the exam, but other people can't get their shit together and it's been one giant ugly ball of mess and incompetence. I had to go and beat people over the head. (I wish it could have been literally.)
If I took the idea to "change only myself and that's enough" only at face value, I'd read books or write programs all day and watch movies at night, but I would literally starve doing that. I have to go out and change the world if I want to live.
A lot of people spew this kind of crap advice. Life isn't black and white like this.
Don't take my rant too harshly or personally. My driving test is today and I'm a bit agitated.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday April 16 2015, @07:09AM
How did the test go? The bureaucracy varies from European country to country, in some places things can and do happen more or less as you expected them to.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Thursday April 16 2015, @03:08PM
Germany is one of the kings of paperwork in the world. And personal experience has taught me that they are no more competent than their American counterparts. (I'll back that up in a moment.)
As for the test: I passed the written test less than three hours ago. (I hadn't taken it at the time of my last comment.) Next step? Another appointment and more waiting.
Initially, we made an appointment with the driver's license bureau. We were told to bring X and Y paperwork. My wife verified that we didn't need anything else. When we got there, the girl swore they didn't need X paperwork so we didn't hand it in, but she absolutely needed Z which had to be translated. (In other words, a wasted appointment.) So we made an appointment to bring in Z paperwork to a third party, then the translated Z paperwork had to be picked up. Then we were going to make another appointment with the driver's license bureau, but they said we could mail it in so we did. Oh... and they wondered why we didn't hand in X paperwork when we were there. So we mailed in X and Z paperwork. Then we waited three weeks. (They said it would take two to process.) Then we called and asked what was going on. They said some person got our paperwork and processed it, but forgot to put it in next person's inbox. More waiting. Finally, we get a letter saying I can make an appointment for the written part of the test.
I had ordered the driving manual a few months ago and studied it some. It was €50 for a very crappy 93 page English translation that came directly from the license bureau. It took me two days to go through the book and another full day to ask my wife's family what certain parts were talking about. (There were a lot of unclear, poorly translated, and poorly formatted things. The whole book was a disaster.) Certain I could finish studying the information in there, we made an appointment for today to take the test. Then, this past Sunday, I spoke with a friend who just got his license. He loaned me his online account (to somewhere) so I could see the actual questions with the real answers. (Germany seemed to be fond of publishing their questions and answers, but only if you know where to look and pay gobs of money.) I found out on Monday that €50 book didn't have all information. On Monday and Tuesday, I went through 993 questions and their answers. Yesterday (Wednesday), I went over the questions I didn't understand fully. (Approximately 200 of them.) Then I took the test today and passed. Fresh from the test with everything we could need, we asked what the next step was. We need to make another appointment to trade in my American license. Apparently, they couldn't do it spur of the moment so that means more waiting. Woo hoo.
I am dog tired. Mentally, it's been a brutal week.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday April 17 2015, @03:32PM
Sorry to hear that it has not gone well - although that is still better than a fail, I think... And I thought the French were the masters of bureaucracy!
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Friday April 17 2015, @03:59PM
Definitely better than fail. Trading in a license instead of doing everything from scratch saves me gobs of time and money. At least I don't have to do a practical driving test too. I'm a safe driver, so everything is good. After all, I'm just like the other 95% of the people out who think they're better than the average driver.
[Looking up bureaucracy] Looks like the word comes from the French sometime about 200 years ago. The Americans and Germans have it down pat and I'm pretty sure the Brits are pretty steeped in it too. Maybe the four countries have some kind of competition thing going?
(Score: 1) by deroby on Friday April 17 2015, @05:08PM
Hmm.. if there is a challenge going on between France, Germany and the UK, that would explain the situation here in Belgium...
I'm kidding... kind of.
My experiences here with bureaucracy are that they are probably not worse than anywhere else, but in all honesty I can't compare really. In fact, each time I go out of the Shengen Area I'm getting the feeling that I'm living a sheltered life.
Then again, here too it sure helps to ask the right people because on your own you're never going to get it right the first time.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Friday April 17 2015, @06:40PM
You're spot on and this is the thing that gets me pretty frustrated. You walk into a place that should have the answers and if you don't fall into the 80% category, they don't know what to do with you. In my case with driving, it probably works ok if you go through a school of driving for a few months. (Germany is pretty strict.) I have decades of experience driving and Germany is happy to "simply" trade licenses under certain circumstances which is what I tried to do. Unfortunately, no one person seems to be able to give you a single set of instructions to get through on the first shot. They seem to expect the driving schools to help you navigate their bureaucracy. And it isn't just for driving. It seems to be everything: banking, internet setup, apartment hunting... everything. And it was mostly the same way in the U.S. too when I lived there. A few details may have been different, but the mentality was the same.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 16 2015, @03:53AM
Just imagine how hard it is to change anything in the world at large given we can not even change the minds of others.
The two aren't related, unless you attempt to change the world by changing minds. There are other ways and some of them can be far more effective.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2015, @08:37AM
The GP doesn't seem to be aware that there far better ways of changing and influencing minds than in direct discussion/debate (where people are more likely to be ready to be defensive and hold their ground).
Advertising, media etc work. And how the heck does he think ISIS gets so many recruits. Not all of them were born that way, or even were that way when they were children (just ask their parents).
That said this guy sure has a knack of changing minds over a chat: http://guardianlv.com/2013/11/kkk-member-walks-up-to-black-musician-in-bar-but-its-not-a-joke-and-what-happens-next-will-astound-you/ [guardianlv.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 16 2015, @09:21AM
And of course, there was the approach that Davis used, which was to connect to people via a neutral subject, music. That gets to the point you were making, AC, of better approaches to changing and influencing minds.
I think SoylentNews and other discussion forums are useful in that they bring people together without obvious cues that could lead to instant mental rejection. I like to head butt a lot particularly with unusual arguments. I'd say 60-80% of my posts are such. While they aren't likely to immediately convince the people I speak with (especially in the times when I'm in error), I think there is a crucial point to direct discussion, namely, a demonstration to people outside the conversation that there are other viewpoints out there than the standard ones.
There's a clunky term for a sea change in group consensus called "preference cascade". The idea is that people of certain beliefs are more common than they perceive themselves as being and that due to this perception and perhaps external forces, people conform to the perceived beliefs rather than their actual beliefs. But at certain times, information is revealed that changes the perception of consensus. Then there is a shift in consensus to something which more closely matches the beliefs of the group.
And it is possible for consensus to be way out of line with the beliefs of the people who constitute the group. A commonly used example is a totalitarian regime. Here, the idea is that almost everyone would rather not be part of the regime, but due to the rigid control on speech, they are unaware of how prevalent their beliefs are and are unwilling to act on them as a result. But when someone manages to publicly express discontent then that creates awareness that one is not alone and then revolution happens. The tyranny strives as a survival mechanism to create the appearance of consensus. Should that be broken, then there is a preference cascade to something which more closely matches the actual distribution of beliefs of the society.
For example, I commonly engage people who assume something is true solely because of a vague "scientific consensus". This argument is notoriously common in climate research where most of the research is extremely hard for the layman to understand and there is an institutionalized propaganda machine to further the argument, but it appears in other places as well. Another example of assumed things are moral consensus arguments like the assumption that a social safety net is a desirable thing (because a lot of people would get a piece of the action) or that employers are always blood sucking parasites in the wrong (employers being a despised and envied minority). But these things aren't true just because a lot of people would like them to be true. As a result, merely speaking up publicly gives others the chance to see that there is not universal agreement on this and the possibility of a preference cascade to something which more accurate reflects our true beliefs and hopefully creates a saner approach to reality in the process.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Wednesday April 15 2015, @06:54PM
And I suspect, hypothetically, an evolutionary psychology(!) based explanation for this.
My pseudoscientific narrative goes like this:
Biologically, happiness and sadness and other positive/negative feelings come from parts of animal brains that are oriented towards positive and negative reinforcement. Inputs like hunger or fear are intended to promote a change in state to fix those issues. We subjectively feel those pressures as unpleasant, unwanted.
Humans are nearly unique in our capacity to look ahead and consider our own feelings in a hypothetical future state. It's partially an artifact of our intelligence. Some smart birds and primates have show similar natural ability to plan ahead as us, so it's not totally unique. But just seeing that state wasn't enough for our ancestors to out-compete their contemporaries. Those whose parts of their brain that cause negative reinforcement to state, if also active in those forecasts, would motivate us to act to prevent them. So we anguish over future decisions constantly, often to the point of neurosis.
We're miserable because of mental adaptations that help keep us from dying, because it's always possible to foresee terrible crises to be averted.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday April 15 2015, @10:12PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VortexCortex on Wednesday April 15 2015, @07:06PM
[With great intelligence comes great responsibility] More so if you also have enough awareness and perception. If you're so clever and knowledgeable and know "X more moves" ahead, you're responsible for a lot more- there's more you might be able to do too to make things better/less crap.
Careful. The guilt of responsibility is easily manipulated.
Awareness doesn't necessarily require higher intelligence, and higher intelligence doesn't necessarily mean being aware of anything important. Typically intelligence drives curiosity and thus smart people tend to find themselves more aware of things like how the media is chock full of lies. Curious discrepancies in reporting led me down the path to (re)discovery that our political system was completely and utterly broken, largely due to an uneducated (not dumb) public. The type of education they needed wasn't book smarts or "genius" or IQ (which just measures how fast you learn, not how good you are at applying knowledge). The type of education they needed was the basic important facts being unreported in the state controlled media.
For a long while (in my teens) I was depressed that I couldn't do anything about it, and almost wished for ignorance. It was very disenchanting and disheartening to have checked the facts for lies and omissions every mainstream media outlet was spewing, and yet be dismissed as "conspiracy theorist" by the wilfully ignorant masses.
Later in life, thanks to BBSs and later the Internet I found that there were other people who were aware of the propaganda too. One famous linguist had been trying to get the word out for decades. [youtube.com] With this new awareness I no longer felt alone; I soon learned to laugh with others while discussing the ridiculousness of it all. The people who are happy to trust media lies at face value are the same with votes that don't matter anyway. No longer burdened with the necessity to do the media's job of making people aware of the reality of the situation allowed me to pick a different sort of battle. I wouldn't be able to change the media narratives or convince most to discard decades of state propaganda fed to them in school. [youtube.com] (Note: Today's schooling doesn't promote intelligence, it knowingly hampers the gifted and free thinking; Watch the video and find out how). It was the more aware (not necessarily intelligent) people who could make a difference. What they need are better tools to gain more awareness easier -- A way to gather information not filtered by the state; A way to compare reporting of events and point out the (more likely false) disparities. In short: I became aware of what part I could actually do to help change things as best I can. It just so happens that machine learning is also primarily concerned with awareness.
Unfortunately, I soon ran into those that thought themselves more aware, but whom had been fed lies and ideologies not based on fact which often sound reasonable on the surface. For example, there were people buying into Depopulation agendas while using Climate Change and environmental preservation to rationalize their extremely flawed views. To them more efficient food and transportation and city layouts were off the table, and only eliminating population would suffice as the final solution. Many of these useful idiots who thought themselves more aware were merely seduced by yet more propaganda. Few demanded we test any hypothesis of their ideology or tried to refute the null hypothesis disproving them; Any event or speaker that confirmed their bias was accepted "fact" no matter how flawed, and any that shed doubt were dismissed as an outlier or liars no matter evidence to the contrary. Having a high IQ doesn't make one immune to cognitive bias. The burden of a little awareness was successfully being used against them to repress rationality and enlist consent for actions furthering ulterior motives. How odd that basic confirmation bias and selection bias is so effective against both above and below average intelligence "intellectuals".
Most concerning was that the wealthier the intellectual the more "burdened" they felt and more dedicated they were to carrying out deeds required of their insane ideology. E.g., since the masses won't ever be minority of aware and "important" individuals we should try to keep them happy and useful by using propagandizing and "normalizing" education (hold back the intelligent to promote the slower learning); Thus creating a happy working class and having "important" intelligent people privately schooled. This was their rationality for Common Core's federal tracking of personality profiles and "correcting" students with undesired personality traits (like those troublesome, anti-authoritarian, curious and clever hackers who those with secrets most fear -- seriously, watch that 2nd vid I linked). The ends all seemed to justify the means because they bought into scaremongering ideologies.
Fortunately there are enough aware people that I can socialize with others rather than the so-called "intellectual elite" useful idiots who merely think themselves aware, important, and burdened to follow flawed-ideologies to their terrible ends. For example, while the elites believe that normalizing the workforce will help in the transition to their replacement by robotic workers freeing people from menial labour, the more aware of us discuss how this will make those ex-workers useless resource consumers (and targets for depopulation) while making humanity dependent upon mechanical systems and thus easily controlled by those who own the machines. While those unusually proud of their "high IQ" squander it with trivial pursuits the more aware of us discuss forms of alternative education that actually accelerate and accommodate those with a desire to learn, such as home-schooling and curriculum free learning. [wikipedia.org] I know I can't change the entire world, but I can help by finding and helping those curious and dispossessed before they waste their smarts in indoctrination camps dressed up as educational facilities. I can help facilitate awareness, even among the "unintelligent" (you don't have to be smart or gifted to see how you're being screwed).
Sometimes ignorance truly is bliss. Eating a lot from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil ain't such a wonderful thing...
Sometimes, perhaps. However, if you are unaware of your ignorance you can't know to be blissful because of it -- you'll find other things to be equally unhappy about than what you're unaware of. Likewise, selfishly wallowing in bliss doesn't require ignorance. In fact I find even more satisfaction in my "guilty pleasures" now knowing just how selfish they really are, e.g., I enjoy an evening "wasted" playing video games and eating steak knowing the true price of my actions. Future historians who aggregate and filter our archives will rejoice that they have our alternative and more accurate analysis of world events. Those that remain unaware of misinformation are doomed to repeat the history enshrouded by it. I would rather die full of wonder hoping my actions were beneficial than to live in ignorance aware of only my untapped potential while fretting over trivial things. Be careful, sometimes the price of a little blissful ignorance is a life lived in frustrating bewilderment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @08:04PM
Not to take your excellent post lightly, I would like address some select points. The internet at large might just be the system of gaining awareness more easily that you wish for. It is something that I pretend gives my work meaning. Another is related to both the "intellectual elite" and machine learning. We have been focusing on sentience of AI and increasing our own without regard to sapience. It is that we should be trying to maximize. Wisdom, for lack of a better term, I take as being awareness added to intelligence. Technical correctness is great and we have made wonderful strides in that area, but have been stagnant for centuries in applying awareness with it such as your example of automation being great, but also being bad. It is a never ending wonder to me how so many things in the doing annihilate itself or the gains made. That may be some sort of subconscious or even conscious awareness of those with high IQ that pushes them to apply their abilities in realms of triviality, as the end results of trivial things don't particularly matter as much as the process. That might explain why so many brilliant minds have more passion for sci-fi, video games, or debating if this post would have been more well received with paragraph breaks than doing something of actual value ;)
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 15 2015, @11:22PM
How does todays schooling de-promote intelligence and knowingly hamper the gifted and free thinking?
How does the federal Common Core track personality profiles? and how do they correct them?
The internet is likely to connect the aware and perhaps gifted and allow them to leave the ignorant in the dust. So perhaps it's a good aid in your goals?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2015, @12:59AM
How does todays schooling de-promote intelligence and knowingly hamper the gifted and free thinking?
Because it focuses almost entirely on rote memorization, and neglects understanding. Math, in the school system, is simply memorizing formulas and applying them to the arbitrary problems on tests and worksheets. Worksheets will consist of the same types of problems over and over, and since schooling is a one-size-fits-all 'solution', you must do them all even if you understand the material. You must do the same material as everyone else in the class even if you're far beyond them, and doing anything 'strange' or 'dangerous' could result in expulsion. Obedience to authority is revered above all else, and if you deviate, you are punished (suspension, expulsion, bad grades); this is true even if the authority is foolish. Schools do not promote creativity or understanding.
In fact, it wasn't much different in the past. Sure, No Fool Left Behind made things worse, and Common Core won't fix anything, but it was about the same.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday April 16 2015, @08:33AM
One problem with the anti-depopulation loons is that their propaganda is even more full of deceitful lies than the depopulationists'. Of course, if you follow the money, you normally end up at the catholic church...
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves