I’m not sure I understand what you mean by “exposure”?
I’m talking about having healthy habits of thought and developing psychological resilience as laid out by the Stoics. This is done through practicing Stoic techniques such as voluntary discomfort, putting misfortunes into perspective and considering all the ways in which you have been quite fortunate. Whether you want to call this “exposure” or “learning” doesn’t seem to make a difference to me.
Why are high IQ people no as happy as other people? It might be a predisposition due to some natural correlation of intelligence and happyness. But beside that what remains? If happiness can be learned as you suggest how come the best learners acquire this the least?
I try to differentiate two aspects of how happiness can be acquired: Via explicit intentional learning and via other means. I’m not sure how procedural knowledge acquisition factors in IQ, but that might be one thing. And then there may be areas that could be learned easily but that for some reason are not on the list for high IQ people. One might be because the technique is associated for whatever reason with circles which high IQ people leave. The technique could be ‘too’ easy to be of interest.
Is this something you would expect school teachers to be able to teach? Perhaps in a monastery style setting it could work. But teaching kids how to be happy alongside the normal curriculum in the usual state school setting may be asking too much. Has it been tried anywhere to your knowledge?
I think various different trainers in the personal development scene can hold seminars that significantly change a person’s psychological toolkit in a matter of weeks.
Even if you can’t create an environment of similar strength, there no real reason why you can’t take David Burns Feeling Good Handbook and teach the material to children.
But teaching kids how to be happy alongside the normal curriculum in the usual state school setting may be asking too much.
The normal curriculum is broken. Most schools are places where a variety of factors prevent student from being open about their emotional issues. If I’m being graded on me own written investigation of a uncomfortable belief I’m unlikely to open up and tackle things of which I’m really afraid.
There no reason to teach student to interpret poems but not skills like dealing with their own limiting beliefs.
Under the Birmingham initiative, emotional well-being is being made one of six priority outcomes in the authority’s schools, which teach 180,000 youngsters.
The article lists as criticism:
A Scottish charity which drew on 20 international studies warned the classes could blunt children’s competitive and entrepeneurial edge by placing too great an emphasis on avoiding hurting people’s feelings.
Of course if your goal is to avoid hurting people’s feelings you are unlikely to get very far.
You don’t want an enviroment in which no child cries but in which it’s okay to cry and the person who cries is supported.
It can also help with epistemic rationality if you teach people to identify distorted thinking via the CBT framework as layed out in David Burns “The Feeling Good Handbook”.
Effectively dealing with one’s own emotions helps with clear thinking.
On the other hand when you try to get school teacher to do something right it’s quite possible that they mess up and at the end you have less epistemic rationality.
Having a high IQ doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to excel in all areas of learning. One area which may be decoupled from G is kinesthetic intelligence which determines dexterity, or artistic creativity.
The technique could be ‘too’ easy to be of interest.
Self-confidence. I can see it on my relatives. The dumbest ones are usually the most cocksure, and while this leads the wrong decisions occasionally, it really keeps them free from worry and as such free from much stress. They sleep well.
The funny part is that it leads to wrong decision far less often than I would expect to. While they are sure of themselves, they somehow still keep wisely out of things they know nothing about so they don’t invest their money in industries they don’t understand and so on. This is sort of difficult to map for me. I think their cocksurety is largely about thinking they are good about things they are really experienced about. They understand wandering out of their area of expertise would be dangerous. They identify with what they did so far, identify with their profession, have this I-am-good confidence, but also the attitude that I-am-a-bricklayer and understand they would know very little outside bricklaying, but since they identify with what they do, they are cocksure inside that domain. Everything else they are simply not interested in. Does that even make sense? Basically less intelligent people being less curious so less bothered by things they don’t know outside their domain, and thus knowing their domain well enough makes them confident enough, does that even make sense?
I’m fairly happy but I have Stoicism and Taoism to thank for that. Mental health in my experience depends on having the right psychological toolkit.
Toolkit suggests something you come by via exposure not via learning (as learning is presumably facilitated by IQ).
What are the toolkits for happiness one acquires as a non high-IQ person? I guess some of these are social tools from like-minded people.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean by “exposure”? I’m talking about having healthy habits of thought and developing psychological resilience as laid out by the Stoics. This is done through practicing Stoic techniques such as voluntary discomfort, putting misfortunes into perspective and considering all the ways in which you have been quite fortunate. Whether you want to call this “exposure” or “learning” doesn’t seem to make a difference to me.
Why are high IQ people no as happy as other people? It might be a predisposition due to some natural correlation of intelligence and happyness. But beside that what remains? If happiness can be learned as you suggest how come the best learners acquire this the least? I try to differentiate two aspects of how happiness can be acquired: Via explicit intentional learning and via other means. I’m not sure how procedural knowledge acquisition factors in IQ, but that might be one thing. And then there may be areas that could be learned easily but that for some reason are not on the list for high IQ people. One might be because the technique is associated for whatever reason with circles which high IQ people leave. The technique could be ‘too’ easy to be of interest.
Most high IQ people are very far from having learned a decent psychological toolkit. Schools are poor at teaching people to be happy.
Is this something you would expect school teachers to be able to teach? Perhaps in a monastery style setting it could work. But teaching kids how to be happy alongside the normal curriculum in the usual state school setting may be asking too much. Has it been tried anywhere to your knowledge?
I think various different trainers in the personal development scene can hold seminars that significantly change a person’s psychological toolkit in a matter of weeks.
Even if you can’t create an environment of similar strength, there no real reason why you can’t take David Burns Feeling Good Handbook and teach the material to children.
The normal curriculum is broken. Most schools are places where a variety of factors prevent student from being open about their emotional issues. If I’m being graded on me own written investigation of a uncomfortable belief I’m unlikely to open up and tackle things of which I’m really afraid.
There no reason to teach student to interpret poems but not skills like dealing with their own limiting beliefs.
In the UK there push to do things like teaching happiness:
The article lists as criticism:
Of course if your goal is to avoid hurting people’s feelings you are unlikely to get very far. You don’t want an enviroment in which no child cries but in which it’s okay to cry and the person who cries is supported.
Teaching happiness can be—and often is—at odds with teaching epistemic rationality.
It can also help with epistemic rationality if you teach people to identify distorted thinking via the CBT framework as layed out in David Burns “The Feeling Good Handbook”.
Effectively dealing with one’s own emotions helps with clear thinking.
On the other hand when you try to get school teacher to do something right it’s quite possible that they mess up and at the end you have less epistemic rationality.
Having a high IQ doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to excel in all areas of learning. One area which may be decoupled from G is kinesthetic intelligence which determines dexterity, or artistic creativity.
Wouldn’t surprise me.
Self-confidence. I can see it on my relatives. The dumbest ones are usually the most cocksure, and while this leads the wrong decisions occasionally, it really keeps them free from worry and as such free from much stress. They sleep well.
The funny part is that it leads to wrong decision far less often than I would expect to. While they are sure of themselves, they somehow still keep wisely out of things they know nothing about so they don’t invest their money in industries they don’t understand and so on. This is sort of difficult to map for me. I think their cocksurety is largely about thinking they are good about things they are really experienced about. They understand wandering out of their area of expertise would be dangerous. They identify with what they did so far, identify with their profession, have this I-am-good confidence, but also the attitude that I-am-a-bricklayer and understand they would know very little outside bricklaying, but since they identify with what they do, they are cocksure inside that domain. Everything else they are simply not interested in. Does that even make sense? Basically less intelligent people being less curious so less bothered by things they don’t know outside their domain, and thus knowing their domain well enough makes them confident enough, does that even make sense?