“If you’re so smart, why aren’t you happy?”
Naval
Intelligence is much more likely to be a bug than it is to be a feature. Because, like all things truly powerful, it is hard to master and difficult to harness.
Most intelligent people have not found a way to harness it for actual utility in the things that matter most to them. It is because intelligence is a tool. But if not mastered, will lead to more problems than less.
Ever wondered why intelligent people seem to suffer more? More broken families, inability to sustain relationships, inability to get started at anything, struggling to execute their ideas, inability to mitigate conflict etc.
Intelligent people have historically struggled with the things that truly mattered the most to them. It is a classic paradox. Because there are no objective markers to denote what type of success assures intelligence. The only marker is arbitrary and varies from person to person.
Which is why an intelligent hedge fund manager might be successful in business, but struggle with their relationships, despite being able to apply their intelligence to a profitable degree in other endeavors they do not care as deeply about.
Like Naval once said: “The only real test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life.”
An external observer could argue the hedge fund manager’s business success is a demonstration of their intelligence. But to the manager, great relationships are much more important than business. Ultimately, by that standard, their intelligence has been of little use.
Each successive generation assumes they’re more intelligent than the last, yet statistically struggle in the areas where the previous generation managed to survive or thrive.
When you’re a teenager, you think you’re more intelligent than your parents. Until you grow up and realize you’re struggling to do the things your parents handled gracefully —career, marriage, children, faith, relationships etc.
Intelligence confers a tremendous amount of overestimation on the intelligent.
It is why we say ignorance is bliss. Not because ignorance is objectively more useful than intelligence, but because ignorance “shields” you from making the mistakes an intelligent person will jump into.
Intelligent people exist on a confidence spectrum. They range from under-confident to overconfident. You are much likely to find an intelligent person who procrastinates, than to find one who doesn’t.
The process of intelligence opens you up to a lot of assumptions. Very valid assumptions, too. Assumptions are tempting as they are crippling. To the intelligent, x to y might not be as straightforward as suggested because they assume it might involve more than meets the eye.
The ignorant do not share this utopia. It is straightforward with almost no room for inferences. So they simply traverse x to y and complete the task while the intelligent is stranded in assumptions.
It might explain why intelligent student struggle with rigid curriculum not designed to accomplish their unconventional methods. Their approach will tend to deviate from the known more often than not.
You will find most intelligent people are outliers and dissidents, unwilling to bend and conform to rules. Conformity is usually touted as the mark of the ignorant and the less intelligent. Whereas, there must have been a historical factor to why rules were designed, and why nature accommodates the obedient, and eliminates the cancers.
This is corroborated by the actions of most intelligent people chasing the moon, egged on by their elusive estimations of what they deserve because they’re intelligent.
It might be correlated with why intelligent students also fail. Intelligence naturally comes paired with a hubris that causes overconfidence mixed with not enough fear. Especially because we know a healthy dose of fear is important to keep us grounded and guarantee survival.
Intelligence causes the intelligent to not be afraid, and to think, “I can always figure it out”. Or even to believe that they’re excepted from the odds of a general fate on account of their mental prowess.
Intelligence causes the intelligent to believe they can always get whatever they want if they want to. And if they don’t have it yet, it must mean they simply don’t want it yet. Therein lies the trap that has buried many intelligent people in the tombs of history.
Many an intelligent person, full of potential, confidence and ideas, have ended their journey far from where even the ignorant attain because they took things for granted.
It is the complex that intelligence breeds, that cause intelligent people to fail, not the act of being intelligent in itself. Intelligence excoriates the fear necessary for success.
The problem is we overestimate just how much, intelligence, in its sheer form, should be sufficient to induce. We think intelligence should be sufficient to induce hard work, for example. We also think intelligence is sufficient to induce the determination to succeed. Whereas, if we examine these things closely, we are more likely to find out that fear plays a much larger role in them, than intelligence.
Historically, there are far more achievements attributable to fear than intelligence. Vaccines, rockets, nuclear power, computers, jets, etc. No matter the levels of intelligence, certain feats can only be unlocked in the moment of animalistic drive, caused by fear.
The fear of losing your partner, failing in life and disappointing yourself might force you to do the right things far more than mere intelligence would.
Wars have been won because the fear of losing was palpable. This fear enabled winners to never take anything for granted, and to not underestimate their opponents.
Intelligence breeds the illusion of control or at least, the ability to control, in the intelligent. It induces immense amounts of delusion. It makes intelligent people believe that they are really powerful enough to change almost anything, even things that should be left alone. Whereas, the ignorant person is happy to know their limits and content with never pushing the boundaries.
This is not to say that intelligence is a bad thing. No, not at all. Intelligence, when properly harnessed by one who has mastered it will make you unstoppable. It is a cheat code to life. Those who have mastered intelligence know how to engage fear, assume ignorance, and take little for granted.
It’s not about what you have, but what you can do with it.
It’s not about what you know, but what you can do with it.
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Postscript:
I conflate intelligence and smartness a little too loosely here, in this note; not in the strictest sense, because I am concerned with the overlaps they share rather than their differences.
