is intelligence a curse?

nope.

Growing up watching Seinfeld and Woody Allen, I was conditioned to believe that smarter people were more mentally ill — or at least, less emotionally intelligent (nerdy), less extroverted (geeky), and less conformist (quirky). I believed that the smartest people had deeper souls, and this led to tragedy and depression. Since discovering atheism at a young age, I believed that the universe was full of cruel truths that only smart people could understand, and intelligence was a curse which drives us mad. Ignorance is bliss.

My prejudice had a basis in Hollywood, which fueled the archetype of the mad scientist. For example, Dexter’s Lab depicted a narcissistic, anti-social introvert genius surrounded by normal and average people. Cartoon villains always had superior intelligence, but clear sociopathic or psychopathic tendencies. Serial killers were depicted as cunning and brilliant. Anime also reinforced this archetype, like Light from Death Note, or Lelouch from Code Geass. The smartest people always seemed to be extremely alienated, psychologically tortured, or just plain insane.

Some of this probably goes back to the myth of Dr. Faustus, and it may even have roots in the cult of Dionysus as depicted in the Bacchae, or Hephaestus. Dionysus is a master manipulator and eternal outsider who dissolves the social order and takes over the world (Joker style). Hephaestus is a deranged weirdo who invents robots. In Hindu myth, the evil Ravana flies around in a giant airship, which he gained by studying divine science for thousands of years. What a nerd!

The archetype of the “evil genius” seemed to confirm that the smarter a person becomes, the more alienated they become from society and normalcy, which eventually leads to conflict and violation of social convention and norms. This also seems to have been a charge levied against the Socratics, that they were agents of “moral corruption.”

I found many ways to confirm my biases, anecdotally. I was diagnosed with Asperger’s, and I thought that people with Asperger’s were more intelligent. I assumed that life was an RPG where, the more points you put into intelligence, the less points you have to put into EQ, extroversion, social skills, or normalcy. It seemed that if your intelligence was “extreme” or “abnormal,” this also pulled all your other traits in a wonky direction.

That’s not a very scientific explanation, but it made sense to me. As I grew older, I tried to justify my belief in my rational terms. One idea that I had was that “extreme traits” cluster together, due to the strain of “selective pressure.” This idea became more appealing to me as I began to study human intelligence.

the cost of intelligence.

Why weren’t chimps as intelligent as humans? What is keeping our ape cousins from developing larger brains?

As it turns out, big brains are very costly, in terms of time and energy. The brain makes its final transition from “under construction” to “open for business” during puberty, which is a very difficult period emotionally and psychologically. Like our ape cousins, we are social creatures. The longer we draw out our maturation, the more K-selected we become.

Similarly, the optimal range of male human height is somewhere between 4’11” and 6’11”. There is no nation on Earth with an average height less than 4’11”. Human groups which were shorter than this were easily physically dominated by their neighbors and subjugated, either being killed or interbred with taller neighbors.

On the other hand, humans who grow to be too tall place extreme stress on their joints, and have a host of other genetic issues. Gigantism is a mutation. Mutations can happen in isolation, but one prominent or extreme mutation is likely to be associated with a number of other mutations. The tallest athlete in history, Sun Mingming, stands at 7’9”. Above that height, it seems difficult or impossible for humans to have enough genetic health, calisthenic strength, and stamina to sustain professional athletic activity.

I thought of intelligence like height. At extremely low levels of intelligence, humans become incapable of basic tasks like eating or speaking, and therefore, these traits tend to be selected against. However, at extremely high levels of intelligence, I imagined that something had gone wrong. Just as heights above 7’1” are considered “disabled by gigantism,” I thought that IQs above a certain level could be considered a disability.

intelligence as velocity.

One of the ways I thought about intelligence was as “speed of thinking.” There is a relationship between reaction time and intelligence. I modeled different levels of intelligence as different ‘vehicles.’

I imagined “slow” thinkers as having a toy baby wagon. As a vehicle, it doesn’t have any horse power of its own. It is essentially stuck in place until someone else comes to move it around.

After this, we have “minimal intelligence,” where a person has the ability to move of their own power, but only at a very slow speed, and are likely to fall down and get hurt if they try to go too fast.

At some point, we need to move past these little bicycle metaphors and go to cars and planes. The implication of these metaphors is that with increasing speed, there is also increasing power, responsibility, and the danger of something going wrong, and someone getting killed.

Overthinking.

My model of intelligence was: “intelligence is a measurement of the number of thoughts over time.” In other words, intelligence was the velocity of thought. It seemed, however, that at a very high velocity, this would result in “overthinking,” and the whole process would “crash,” resulting in neuroticism.

For example: imagine you see a pretty woman. You decide to go up and talk to her. You get her number, go on a date, keep dating, get married, have kids. This takes a degree of intelligence (enough to use language, at least). However, imagine if, once seeing a pretty woman, you not only imagined all of this happening, but you also imagined all the ways it could go wrong. You imagined or simulated in your head all the potential rejection, pain, and heartbreak that you could experience.

Due to your intelligence, you are able to simulate in your head every possible negative outcome, and because your imagination is so powerful, the simulation affects you as much as reading a great novel or watching a great movie. You feel depressed before ever making the first move. What’s the point?

Intelligent people are, of course, capable of engaging in this kind of behavior. However, this entire model is flawed, because it doesn’t actually take very much intelligence to simulate social outcomes. Even very dumb people can imagine being rejected, and feel bad as a result. In fact, being intelligent allows you to understand the dynamic of overthinking, and to develop strategies to overcome it or cope with it.

Overthinking is not a result of sheer intelligence, but of emotional dysregulation and neuroticism. There is a relationship between neuroticism and intelligence — an inverse relationship. The more intelligent you are, the less likely you are to be neurotic.

yiddishkeit

It is possible Ashkenazi Jews have a greater genetic predisposition toward schizophrenia. However, it is less clear whether or not Jews suffer from greater levels of neuroticism. While it seems very clear that Jews are more intelligent than average, whether or not they are actually more neurotic than average is less obvious. While I grew up thinking that there was a biological connection between intelligence and neuroticism, there may be more important cultural factors at play.

Jews, like liberals, are much more likely to self-diagnose and seek professional therapy. This might be because modern therapy, through Freud, is inspired by the Rabbinic tradition. When you have a problem, you go to an educated man who listens to you and asks you probing questions. This is different from the Catholic confession, where the confessor and priest are engaged in a ritual of humility with no “advice” requested or given.

Whereas Christians seem to think of their problems as spiritual, and reject secular therapists as “worldly,” reform Judaism has always been proud to support the field of psychology, which was one of the earliest fields where Jews were recognized and celebrated. In the same way that 76% of Jews have incorporated Holocaust remembrance into Jewish identity, it seems that Jews have (consciously or unconsciously) adopted psychoanalysis as an important element of Jewish culture. That could have played a role in my belief that smarter people were more meshuggeneh, because both intelligence and therapy culture are highly valued among Jews.

Politics and neuroticism.

A quote from the most popular neo-Nazi website in the world [/a-reader-wonders-why-hes-so-fucked-up/]

People who have extreme politics tend to be extremely neurotic. This is because politics is astrology for incels. By projecting one’s internal problems out onto the world, they become easier to conceptualize and potentially solve. This is because traits like neuroticism are deeply ingrained within the mind. The brain is plastic and malleable to an extent, but not infinitely so.

It may be possible to use psychedelics to alter the structure of the brain, but this is similar to chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is intended to kill cancer cells, but unfortunately, it kills a lot of normal cells as well, and results in death by chemo in 27% of cases. Psychedelics don’t kill brain cells, but they alter all the structures of the brain, not just the bad ones. As a result, yes, you can forcibly change your personality with psychedelics, lobotomies, and other physical interventions, but these are crude and inaccurate ways of targeting neurotic neural pathways.

Politics is a much quicker and more targeted way of alleviating the pain of neurotic worry. Neuroticism tends to lead to low self esteem, because neurotics worry about their status and how others perceive them. By hyper-focusing on politics, neurotics can avoid hating themselves, and start hating whatever outgroup is responsible for the problems of the world (Jews, liberals, blacks, whites, Nazis, capitalists, Satanists, lizard people). Scapegoating works as a coping strategy. That’s why we do it.

assortative friendship.

Like attracts like. Neurotic people exist in self-imposed mental ghettos. If a neurotic person goes to a party with a bunch of normal people, they feel a sense of isolation and alienation.

In these situations, I seek out the weirdest possible person at the party, who is also standing awkwardly and aloof in the corner. Humans have a social sense like dogs have a sense of smell. We can sense the presence of others who share our “type,” either based on physiognomy, animal magnetism, “aura,” or it might actually just be smell after all. It’s a mysterious process, but it works. Throughout my life, I have been attracted to weird but intelligent people.

“Assortative friendship” creates confirmation bias, inflating my preconceived notion that intelligent people are more neurotic. The data has blown my preconceived notions out of the water. This is a true redpill for me, in the original 1999 sense (not the 2014 far right sense). I thought that intelligence necessarily generated mental illness, and the two were inseparable. Now I realize that I have unintentionally, unconsciously manufactured a lie. I created my own Truman Show (1998) without realizing it.

I coped with being weird by saying, “well, that’s just the cost of high IQ. You win some, you lose some.” Now I’m realizing that being neurotic is isn’t necessary for having high intelligence. This is disappointing and kind of lame.

High IQ people with low neuroticism are much more successful than high IQ neurotics. Neuroticism is a form of self-sabotage, and people who are intelligent and neurotic find themselves constantly underperforming expectations.

In our intelligence-focused society, people assume that those in the top 10% of intelligence should be in the top 10% of wealth and status. As a result, neurotics are judged as “lazy” or failures, which feels bad. Those who are dumb, but emotionally regulated, receive less harsh judgement, and society is more forgiving and willing to help them. We punish dysfunctional smart people more than functional dumb people. Hence the “evil genius” archetype is constantly getting beat up by the hero.

One of the ways for neurotics to cope is to call stable high IQ people “boring.” Stable people are bourgeois. They have no beautiful suffering. They do not understand “the truth.” The truth, in this case, has nothing to do with facts and figures or philosophical arguments, but with the sense of doom, pessimism, and despair that comes with a neurotic personality.

Mental illness as a strategy.

Why does neuroticism exist, if it doesn’t correlate with intelligence, as I once thought? Neuroticism can be thought of as a parallel phenomenon to paranoia, which serves to avoid risk.

Paranoia and neuroticism are not exactly the same. Paranoia is a feeling that someone is watching you, stalking you, or sabotaging you. Neuroticism is a more general and impersonal or self-critical idea, that something is going wrong, that something bad will happen, or that things are hopeless and impossible. These feelings are generally debilitating and often lead people to embrace crazy ideas like political extremism.

However, what if civilization actually did collapse? In fact, this has happened several times before:

1. 930kya, the Pleistocene Bottleneck;

2. 70kya, the Toba Volcano Supereruption;

3. 5600 BC, the Euxine Lake flood;

4. 2500 BC, the Bell Beaker Invasion of Britain;

5. 1200 BC, the Bronze Age Collapse;

6. 537, the Roman Collapse;

7. 1346 the Black Plague.

In each of these cases, populations decreased by at least 30%. Imagine the three people closest to you, and imagine that one of them died, then imagine that this happened to every single person on Earth. This would be fairly dramatic and unthinkable. Humanity could survive, but it would be difficult.

This is where neurotic traits, which are generally debilitating or at least inconvenient, start to shine. Normal people have a very difficult time dealing with extreme, catastrophic events. Neurotic people, on the other hand, have the time of their lives. They dream of collapse. They imagine it every day. They are ready. Whether or not they have cans of food and ammo in their basement, they have been mentally and emotionally prepping every day of their lives. When something really does go wrong, a huge wave of catharsis washes over them. Finally! Vindicated! The end of the world is almost an exciting and invigorating prospect for neurotic people.

Is neuroticism rising?

There may be some kind of mystical Spenglerian mechanism at work, where as we grow closer to collapse, neurotic traits begin to skyrocket. It might also be that these traits aren’t changing at all, but that we diagnose more. Finally, neuroticism might be increasing as a function of moralization and education. Women tend to be more neurotic. Is this because they are higher in conformism, and the pressure to conform generates feelings of internal conflict? Is our education system responsible for generating stress? What about social media?

Neuroticism might not generate intelligence (and intelligence doesn’t create neuroticism), but it does seem that when people try to force themselves or struggle to attain their maximum educational or professional capacity, this causes increases in neuroticism. Our capitalist culture values intellectual labor above all else. Perhaps it is this change in economic incentives which is generating neuroticism.

Thanks for reading.

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