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from the not-what-soylentils-want-to-hear dept.
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: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday April 15 2015, @05:40PM
Actually, even to believe the high-stakes game is with Satan you have to engage in some pretty serious theological gymnastics - as the first small hurdle consider: one of the things that made humanity unique was that God gave us free will, something the angels (including Lucifer) did not possess...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @05:49PM
If saan did not have free will, then what is the biblical explanation of his rebellion?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @06:10PM
He didn't rebel, Christianity is pure nonsense. Per the Book of Job, Satan can only act with God's permission. Anything Satan does, it is with God's explicit permission, so if he did "rebel" it can't be a rebellion because he was just doing what he was told. Angels, as a species, do not have free will; they were created to endlessly praise God and nothing else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @06:26PM
I gave my fish an aquarium, in it they can do what they want.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by urza9814 on Wednesday April 15 2015, @06:55PM
You've never written code that didn't behave exactly as expected? :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @06:59PM
Never ever give Satan Root
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2015, @05:25PM
Are you saying its possible for an omniscient and omnipotent being to make mistakes? If Satan had the capability to "rebel", it was intentionally coded in (omniscience leaves no alternative, as it means knowing every implication of every action and every consequence no matter how far in the future), which means Satan's "rebellion" would still just be him following orders. The only other solution is that your god is not omnipotent nor omniscient.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2015, @08:31AM
Except that Satan doesn't endlessly praise God. So he obviously doesn't perform as specified. Therefore how do you know that his "malfunction" doesn't also include a free will?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2015, @05:22PM
And where is your proof for this claim?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday April 15 2015, @06:46PM
Can you point to a Bible passage that says angels don't have free will? Actually, I can't think of a passage that contains the words "free will".
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Wednesday April 15 2015, @07:45PM
I'm more reminded of Joost van den Vondel's classic play "Lucifer" (in 17th century Dutch) [wikipedia.org], they definitively have free will there, but I can't think of anything from the Bible either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @08:07PM
Note I am not an xtian.
From my quick research it looks like in Judiasm and Christianity that angels do have a sort of free will. If they sin then they are fallen and cannot be redeemed. Fallen angels are just angels that have chosen to sin and are cast away.
In Islam though they explicitly don't have free will. 2:30 and 21:26
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2015, @05:36PM
That's purely Christan nonsense. Judaic tradition is that angels were solely created to carry out God's will, and have no will of their own. Pretty sure its the same in Zoroastrianism, where the concept of angels and demons originated (where Christianity got the idea). Only Christianity has the notion that angels have free will, because its required in order to push their narrative of fear of the devil into everyone.