I enjoyed an interesting conversation with a friend the other day, when he expressed the oft-made claim that less intelligent people are generally happier than more intelligent people. I won't go into the context, but it did get me thinking about whether that was true, if so why, and, more importantly, who really believes that.
One thing that strikes me as silly about the statement is that it doesn't set any boundaries. Surely, if the rule were "less intelligent = happier" then house cats are happier than their owners, mice would be happier than house cats, bugs would be happier than mice and so on. Even if one were to except the first of these, rather dubious itself, I doubt many would go any further. What people really mean is that hyper intelligent people aren't as happy as "average" people, or perhaps even those who are "slightly below average." Ultimately, there's a level of intelligence they'd have to claim is optimum for happiness- and never have I heard someone posit what that might be. The "average" intelligence of people has risen sharply over the last hundred years, and will likely continue to do so-- is the optimum intelligence based on absolute or relative terms? Are we all slowly progressing to a state of unhappiness, or are those around the mean just fine, so long as they have a few guys who are smarter?
Personally I think the whole thing is rubbish. More intelligence almost certainly leads to a greater potential for joy, a greater life income, and an increased fascination of the external world, among other merits.
What I find more interesting is, if so many people find the claim accurate, why almost no one opts for a lower intelligence. For an intelligent person to say stupider is happier, and not be smashing a rock to his forehead, seems a performative contradiction. Incidentally, I did ask my friend if he'd drop his IQ at will, to which he of course responded he wouldn't (and I'd consider him well above "average").
How could it be that my friend wants happiness, believes a higher intelligence is antithetical to that desire, is of a higher intelligence, and still wants to retain it? Indeed, upon further questioning, my friend would have an even higher IQ if he could choose-- an aspiration I suspect is held by virtually everyone.
One possibility is that he doesn't believe that being less smart would make him a happier person. Perhaps he thinks he does, but on a deeper level doesn't really- however that might be.
A more intriguing possibility is that people desire other things selfishly besides their own welfare, and that one such thing is information. By having multiple end points we reach conflicting conclusions where, given the subjective severity of our options, we're forced to choose between antagonistic satisfactions.
To make clear what I'm suggesting, I'm going to differentiate between the obvious and the non-obvious. It's plain that people have multiple priorities- that is, I may desire sleep, studying for an exam, eating breakfast, and going to class, choosing some over others each morning of the day. However, the examples I've described are all as a function of my own welfare- that is, I determine which of them will maximize it, and choose those. It's also plain that people value information- but only because it is so often so relevant to one's welfare. If I need to get to work in 10 minutes, I want to know where my car is, how much gas it contains, what the weather's like to see if biking's an option, etc.
What isn't so plain is whether or not someone can hold a priority entirely independent of his welfare- whether, in particular, he can value information for information's sake. Many examples may come to mind of times when you wanted to know something that you knew would hurt you-- perhaps a horror movie that you wanted to see, despite the predicted aftermath of a restless sleep. It's hard to interpret whether you went ahead to "satisfy curiosity," and thus improve your welfare, or because of an inherent preference to know, over not knowing.
Ask yourself: if you were offered the chance to learn everything there is to know- to gain omniscience- but you were told with certainty that it would ultimately, on net, make you a lead a life that's a little less happy- would you accept?
Try and figure out why you answered how you did, because I'll bet you'd take the offer.
Some mathematician has said that enjoyment lies in the search for truth, not in the finding of it. Don't you think that if you spontaneously granted yourself omniscience by virtue simply of making that choice, you would then feel you know everything; that therefore there is nothing left? And for someone for whom there is nothing left, is not the only recourse death, the final unknown? Or would our omniscience stretch to include our own end?
ReplyDeleteEnjoyment lies in many things, most of which are better exploited by the omniscient than the truth-seeker-- like collecting desirable things and consuming them. We reasonably expect omniscient people to be exceedingly wealthy and capable, allowing them to better help themselves, their friends and their loved ones.
DeleteYou focus on the point that he would have predicting power over the future; for what it's worth, it wouldn't be perfect, even for the omniscient. Quantum physics has revealed that pure randomness is inevitable, thereby making future events inevitably uncertain.
Omniscient: having complete or unlimited knowledge, awareness, or understanding; perceiving all things.
DeleteWe’re talking about omniscience here. Either you’re omniscient, or you’re not. There is no such thing as partial omniscience; it’s too oxymoronic. So if you meant omniscient, you would have to include the ability to perceive all possible uncertain paths, both future and past. Which would be truly disorienting for a mind that continues in its mortality, to be honest.
And forgive me, but what a ridiculous thing to say. Why would we reasonably expect any such thing? Are you holding that only exceedingly wealthy and capable people would ever be offered the choice of omniscience? And if so, on what grounds? Certainly none reasonable that I can discern.
In the end, I feel you’ll have to make a choice. You are either referring to being offered the chance to learn everything there is to know or being offered omniscience. I am convinced there is a distinct difference between the two. And in the end, I would have to maintain that while learning everything may very well make me happier, being omniscient certainly will not.
Of course you'd be able to perceive all possible uncertain paths, but you still wouldn't know- despite being omniscient- *which* of those paths would ultimately be yours. Your being unsure would not derive from insufficient understanding, but from not being able to know what is inherently unknowable due to the constraints of what is logically possible. In the same way that an omniscient person would not know "xzpsd", being that "knowing xzpsd" is unintelligible, and therefore impossible, the omniscient person would not know which of entirely undetermined and indeterminable random occurrences *would* occur at a future date.
DeleteWe can reasonably expect an omniscient person to be both wealthy and capable not because only these sorts of people could ever become omniscient, but because we can expect human beings to use their omniscience to become wealthy and capable. For example, if I know exactly what I need to do to make the best possible house and eat the best possible food, I am more likely to be wealthy than without such knowledge.
If you define "knowing everything there is to know" as different than "omniscient" then omniscience becomes a logical impossibility, and of course I refer to the first. That said, one who knows everything there is to know can certainly be described as highly intelligent, and if people would choose this option while maintaining the view that being highly intelligent leads to unhappiness, there would seem to be a contradiction (though it is a contradiction I believe to have suitably answered in the post following this one).
Here is the general idea I feel came from this post:
ReplyDeleteSpectrum –
Happy ---------------------------------------------------- Unhappy
Less intelligent ----------------------------------------- More intelligent
If this spectrum is correct, then allow me to add on to it.
Spectrum –
Happy ---------------------------------------------------- Unhappy
Less intelligent ------------------------------------------ More intelligent
Animal ---------------------------------------------------- Human
I would argue this to be true mainly based on the observations I have made of my dog: he is almost invariably happy. I am never invariably happy. The main difference, apart from the obvious physiological ones, between myself and my dog, are that he is quite dumb, while I am in comparison quite intelligent and aware. My awareness gives me ability to realize all the things that are WRONG with my life; my dog is much less aware of these WRONG things, and is happier for it.
If it is awareness, then, that is the root of unhappiness, the spectrum must be updated.
Spectrum –
Happy ---------------------------------------------------- Unhappy
Less intelligent ------------------------------------------ More intelligent
Animal ---------------------------------------------------- Human
Dead ------------------------------------------------------ Alive
Death, we might agree, is to be completely unaware; while Life is the embodiment of awareness. This is hardly beneficial to the general cause, however, as now we’re relegated to death to attain happiness. So I think it’s time to revisit the differences between animals and humans and revise them slightly, so that:
Spectrum –
Happy ---------------------------------------------------- Unhappy
Less intelligent ------------------------------------------ More intelligent
Animal ---------------------------------------------------- Human
Completely unaware of death ------------------------- Aware of death
I would say the scientific world would agree with me on this: that most animals are unaware of death in general, with the possible exception of elephants, and that all animals, so far as we know, are unaware of their own death. In other words, humans are the only beings on the planet that are aware that one day they will die.
To take this further, let us think of ourselves as children. I am willing to assume that as a child, you were not particularly aware of your own death – that is to say, when you were younger, you did not know or recognize that you yourself are going to die. I am also willing to assume that like me, unless you had an atypically horrific childhood, you were as a child generally happier than you are today.
Which, for me, begs the question: Does our happiness wane as the awareness we have of our death grows? And if the answer is yes, then what does that mean?
I find a number of problems with your spectrums and their implications. The first, as I explained in the post following this one, is that "happy" and "unhappy" seem to be bad descriptions of what it is people actually desire. Really what we want is highest possible welfare, welfare being "the value of the state of emotion in oneself as defined by his subjective preference" (as defined by myself). So I will modify the first of your spectrums.
DeleteLow Welfare-----------------------High Welfare
Depending on the time and circumstance, one may prefer to be calm, angry, scared, fascinated, or even sad- some of which the more intelligent are arguably better at evoking than those less intelligent. Further, the more intelligent the more capable and able to attain resources that contribute to the creation of one's preferred emotional state. For these, among other reasons, I'd argue that the less intelligent reside on the side of lower welfare (though perhaps not "low") and the more intelligent on the side of higher welfare-- though only as a general trend, of course. Animals and humans are obviously placed in kind:
Low Welfare-----------------------High Welfare
Less Intelligent--------------------More Intelligent
Animal---------------------------Human
Though it's true that things which aren't intelligent don't have good awareness of negative states of being, they have equally poor awareness of many positive states of being. Taken to its extreme, the ultimate lack of intelligence- that which is inanimate- has no understanding of good or bad welfare, and so remains in a neutral state. Living humans tend to live far above such a state, as those who live below it usually choose to take their own lives.
The problem I have with your 4th spectrum is that it does a poor job of explaining the feelings of humans- intelligent or unintelligent- towards the knowledge of their own death. Many believe in an afterlife of pure paradise, and at least one (myself) believes in immortality through the inevitable and persistent reincarnation of your consciousness throughout the infinities of time. Even amidst those who believe life comes to a sudden end don't tend to see it in a negative light, and many welcome the perfect tranquility of nothingness.
It could be that having a knowledge of one's death has significant influence on their welfare, though I'm not convinced the evidence can soundly confirm the strength or even the sign of that influence. My explanation of the spectrums also makes more sense of the fact that when given the choice, most people would like to retain their intelligence or become yet more intelligent.