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posted by CoolHand on Wednesday April 15 2015, @04:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the not-what-soylentils-want-to-hear dept.

From BBC Future:

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.

 
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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @05:49PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @05:49PM (#171080)

    If saan did not have free will, then what is the biblical explanation of his rebellion?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @06:10PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @06:10PM (#171098)

    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

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @06:26PM (#171111)

      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

      by urza9814 (3954) on Wednesday April 15 2015, @06:55PM (#171132) Journal

      You've never written code that didn't behave exactly as expected? :)

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @06:59PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @06:59PM (#171136)

        Never ever give Satan Root

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2015, @05:25PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2015, @05:25PM (#171663)

        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

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2015, @08:31AM (#171470)

      they were created to endlessly praise God and nothing else.

      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

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2015, @05:22PM (#171662)

        Except that Satan doesn't endlessly praise God.

        And where is your proof for this claim?