Ask HN: Is Cost of Intelligence, Misery?

Nobody lives forever.

The other day I was comparing the movie "Forrest Gump" to the TV show "Quantum Leap".

Both recapitulate the time period 1950-1985.

Forrest Gump is an idiot who stumbles through situations without understanding their significance; somehow he comes out on top of a life put together from the covers of Time magazine. His childhood friend is a victim of drugs, AIDS and the counterculture.

Sam Beckett, the hero of Quantum Leap, "leaps" into a crisis in someone's life at the beginning of each episode; his mission to set right what once went wrong.

Sam is an expert physicist, pianist, martial artist, and actor. Sam agonizes over the problems of the people he leaps into. But you know he is satisfied, that he finds this mission to be meaningful -- even if he never gets home he's found a purpose for his intellect.

When I first saw "Forrest Gump" and the spell it cast over my older family I had the feeling, for the first time in my life, that I could kill someone (Robert Zemeckis, the director) because of the danger of their ideology.

I don't feel that way today, actually I like many Zemeckis films, but I was offended at the idea that you could let it all wash over you without experiencing a moment of critical distance.

Sam to me is like Faust from the 2nd part of Goethe's play, who escapes Mephistopheles clutches by finding, in the service of other people, a moment that he wishes time would stop.

No. A study https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22998852/ in England found that

"Happiness is significantly associated with IQ. Those in the lowest IQ range (70-99) reported the lowest levels of happiness compared with the highest IQ group (120-129). Mediation analysis using the continuous IQ variable found dependency in activities of daily living, income, health and neurotic symptoms were strong mediators of the relationship, as they reduced the association between happiness and IQ by 50%."

I am not a Buddhist, but I would highly encourage you to look into the basics of mindfulness and the core concepts of that faith's views on happiness and suffering. In essence, it really doesn't matter how intelligent or unintelligent you are, as the nature of suffering/misery is endemic to life. There's way more to it than this, but I think you will enjoy reading more about it and you may even find acceptance and peace with the way the world is.

Where are you getting your sample from? In some areas of academia it's usual that people overworks and burn out. (We use to made a joke with one of my friends, if his PhD advisor let him go outside the lab on weekends. He finally escaped and now he has his own lab. He looks happy.)

> Can a intelligent person live happily forever?

Nobody lives happily all the time. Enjoy the good times. Try to get nice people around you to help in the bad times.

Correlation is not the same as causation

No, this is a lie stupid people tell themselves. Sounds like you're one of them.