RoR: Forum

Would you rather have red hair or travel to the international space station?

Would you rather be right or president?

Would you rather gay or rich?

Would you rather be a carpenter or anorexic?

Would you rather have shingles, warts or a million Zimbambwe dollars?

Would you rather have excellent social intelligence, great artistic skills, wonderful musical abilities or mid-range success owning a major league baseball team, or speak three foreign languages of someone else's choice?

Would you rather have one wife or two horses?

Would you rather be tall or cute?

Would you rather have low cholesterol or a male pattern baldness?

Would you rather be a hermaphroditic frog or an automobile mechanic at Sears?

Would you rather answer stupid questions or rant in a blog?

Post 1

Friday, November 27, 2009 - 7:19am

Evidently, Michael, you are not one of those people for whom intelligence (or logic, or common sense) is an issue.

But what a shame you don't seem to be happy either.

(Edited by Ted Keer on 11/27, 7:24am)

Post 2

Friday, November 27, 2009 - 7:22am

On the eve of Thanksgiving, House and the team take on the case of James Sidas, an exceptionally brilliant physicist and author who traded his successful career for a job as a courier. For the ailing patient, intelligence is a miserable burden that has prompted depression and addiction, and this, coupled with a myriad of strange symptoms, nearly stumps the team. Meanwhile the doctors at Princeton Plainboro wrestle with strained personal relationships.Source: foxflash.com

Post 3

Friday, November 27, 2009 - 10:51am

I went with "smart", though the House episode does make an interesting case for choosing "happy".

I guess it depends on the levels of happiness / unhappiness and the levels of smart / dumb we're talking about -- suicidal, Virginia Woolf / Syliva Plath levels of unhappiness? Hell no, I'd choose happy.

Marginally happier but considerably less intelligent? Nah.

Considerably happier on a permanent rather than temporary basis, but marginally less intelligent? Yes.

Oh, and I sanctioned Ted's post #2 for bringing context to this debate.
(Edited by Jim Henshaw on 11/27, 10:57am)

Post 4

Saturday, November 28, 2009 - 11:46am

I am content to be pretty.

Post 5

Saturday, November 28, 2009 - 11:47am

This poll question is guilty of the fallacy of the complex question -- the artificial tying together of 2 issues by a mentally-stipulated relationship which does not correspond to the reality of the situation. There is a common saying bandied about -- a bromide -- which asks the following complex question:

Would you rather be right or be happy?

Dr. Phil is guilty of using this fallacy. What the question really tells us -- rather than anything about ourselves -- is about the mental struggle of the questioner, himself. In order to get into the psycho-epistemological position of feeling the need to ask the question: Would you rather be right or happy? -- one must have once felt overwhelming frustration with being right; almost to the point where one is ready to jettison the enterprise of being right (i.e., the enterprise of learning) in order to exist without any more of that kind of frustration.

When being right feels wrong, more introspection is needed. Questions like:

Why does it feel wrong to be right?

... are what needs to be asked and answered, not the complex question about being either right or happy. It's because reality allows you to be both right and happy (a truth which the question, itself, tries to undermine). Indeed, being right (i.e., having knowledge) is one of the necessary ingredients of human happiness. It's because of what kind of creature we are (thriving best with knowledge).

Imagine the miniscule amount of happy living you'd likely get if you didn't have the knowledge to differentiate food from poison. If you couldn't differentiate a friend from a toxic, time-, energy-, and values-vampire. If you couldn't differentiate self-love from either braggadoshishness (?) or from self-loathing. How far would you get in the race for happiness? Three steps? Two? One?

There, but for 'the grace' of Rand (and Aristotle and a few others, including myself!) go I.

:-)

Ed

p.s. In fairness, the above is sort of a strawman. The question is about intelligence (mental power) vs. happiness, not about being right (mental accuracy) vs. happiness. However, there is a high potential for accidentally viewing these 2 things in the same way. While accuracy and happiness have a necessary connection (you can't be happy without being accurate), intelligence and happiness are more orthogonal (you can be very happy without being very intelligent, and vice versa).

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 11/28, 11:56am)

Post 6

Saturday, November 28, 2009 - 12:40pm

Jesus, Ed you really are clueless with this subject. Complex question applies when you attribute to some definite subject a controversial claim within the context of asking a separate question. A complex question would be something like: "Should Ed, who tortures babies, study logic." Whether you answer the question yes or no you are accepting the premise that Ed tortures babies. That is complex question.

This opposition is of course, existentially arbitrary. There is not in the real world any necessary one to one connection between happiness and smartness. No genie is ever going to offer you this question in the real world. But neither will you ever be asked whether or not to invade Nastonia. And the question is not at all pointless.

The question is quite clear cut. If you had to choose (either the one or the other, not both - that's what having to choose means) would you choose to be a smart or a happy person.

But the question is not complex. "If you had to choose" is a counterfactual condition, not a hidden premise. It does not imply that whether you answer smart or happy that some other state of affairs is the case. If you don't want to answer the question you don't have to. Making up silly pretenses as to why you don't want to answer the question is not necessary.

(Edited by Ted Keer on 11/28, 5:39pm)

Post 7

Saturday, November 28, 2009 - 1:38pm

In ninth grade, our American History teacher (at our local government-run, taxpayer-financed, compulsorily attended high school) would often take a break from the routine lessons to ask the rhetorical question:

If you had to choose, would you rather:

1. Slide down a 50 foot razor blade into a pool of alcohol, or
2. Suck someone's nose until the back of his head caved in?

Perhaps I should post this meaningless "time-killing" poll to complement similarly meaningless "time-killing" polls here.

Ed, I think you mean bragadocious.

While I agree with critics of this and other polls about their poor formation, I answer all the polls so I can see the results and participate in the discussion. I answered "Smart" to this one as the "less wrong answer." As the saying goes, "It is better to be a wise man dissatisfied than a fool satisfied."

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 11/28, 2:02pm)

Post 8

Saturday, November 28, 2009 - 2:53pm

Ted,

If you have the right to be gay, then does that mean that you have the right to be happy?

:-)

Luke,

Thanks for the link!

Ed

Post 9

Saturday, November 28, 2009 - 4:29pm

I take the question to be a prod to encourage introspection and/or to clarify the relationship between the two elements. We know that in reality the two are both available - Yahoo! We get to be happy AND smart - and all of us here know that it makes more sense to see happy people who are smart than to see happy people who are not smart. (Smart people, presumably, will see a wider array of options and will make better choices between them... and with happiness as the goal.)

But, it gets more complicated in many ways.

We live in a culture with badly mixed premises. A culture where a great many people are anti-smart and sometimes that's a problem.

The proper functioning of our consciousness (being smart) is a joy in itself. But, just to make it a little more confusing, there are also people who make 'smart' part of their identity and build psuedo-self-esteem around that 'smartness' and that can generate a conflict between the drive to preserve or publish this brittle self-image versus being happy and self-accepting. And there are people who fail their own expectations of how smart they feel they should be, and overcompensate or beat themselves up over it - diminishing the degree of happiness that would be theirs.

As to Ed's comments, it is a question that comes up in couples counseling fairly often... "Would you rather be right all the time or happy?" Here it more about choices made in communicating in the relationship. Here, being smart would entail not insisting upon winning every argument, not fighting to be seen as the smartest, not making agreement with your position more important than enjoying the relationship. But that's a slightly different context.

Post 10

Saturday, November 28, 2009 - 4:38pm

No, Ed.

Saturday, November 28, 2009 - 6:04pm

Steve -- I think that at a certain level of intelligence, perhaps starting at 1 or 2 standard deviations above the mean, further amounts of intelligence may on average lead to dysfunction and less happiness.

There's a reason why the bell curve of intelligence is scattered around a mean level, and doesn't show much sign of budging greatly from that level. That is, there is a price paid for being not very smart, but also a price paid for being very intelligent, otherwise evolution would cause the competitive advantage for intelligence to continually push the mean upward.

That being said, I'd say intelligence is only slightly correlated with happiness -- people seem to be born with an innate setting for how happy they are on average, and circumstances and chance don't seem to budge that greatly once the basic needs of life (adequate food, shelter, and clothing) are met.

Post 12

Saturday, November 28, 2009 - 6:49pm

Jim,

There are assumptions in your statements I don't agree with.

You say, "...further amounts of intelligence may on average lead to dysfunction and less happiness."

Why?

I know of no organically-based dysfunction related to high intelligence.

There is nothing that, say, 3 deviations above average, would cost us in ability to survive, or decrease our capacity to reproduce - unless it is something in the culture. Cultures may have evolved to throw out or discourage those who fall outside of certain parameters, but that isn't an objective reason for disvaluing high intelligence, or a condition that cultural standards will necessarily adhere to in the future. And if there is a dysfunction it would be with the beliefs in the culture.

Because we choose ideas, and because that takes precedence over genetic evolution in this area we are, choosing our cultural reactions to intelligence.

Is the bell curve you are discussing relative to a point in time? Or, are you claiming that intelligence has not moved up since we became a species?

There are also great problems just measuring "intelligence" - there are lots of different kinds of intelligence and I haven't found any descriptions that I'd agree with. I'm also convinced that intelligence is both genetic AND premise-based - how intelligent a given person is goes beyond the wet-ware to how they have learned to use it.

There might be some organic limits on happiness, but I doubt it - my experience with psychology has shown me enormous latitudes in a person's capacity to increase or decrease their level of happiness just by how they use their consciousness. The fact that changes in circumstances don't tend to change happiness levels in a permanent fashion doesn't mean that those level are innate.

Post 13

Saturday, November 28, 2009 - 8:17pm

Steve, are manics typically happy or unhappy people?

(Let me remark that I don't think the answer to that question about mania is really relevant to the poll question, the point of which no one seems to have realized or touched upon.)

Post 14

Saturday, November 28, 2009 - 8:46pm

A History of Ancient Philosophy:
The systems of the Hellenistic Age
By Giovanni Reale

The sage is not envious of the gods because his happiness does not differ qualitatively from that of the gods. Epicurus

In no way is the happiness of Zeus preferable or more beautiful or more worthwhile than the happiness of the sages. Arius

Post 15

Sunday, November 29, 2009 - 10:05am

Steve,

The big reason I think that the question is silly is that you can't 'morally' choose something other than happiness as a higher value in life. If you choose something as higher than your own happiness, then you do so 'immorally.'

It's no more absurd than choosing to live in a world where up is down and where left is right and where you have to run all day just to stay in the same place, Alice in Wonderland style. You mentioned some value from it stimulating introspection. As a big & basic philosophical question like:

(1) Would you rather that reality be real and knowable or an eternal and ever-changing mystery to all?

(2) Would you rather have free will and responsibility or be determined without any responsibility for your actions?

(3) Would you rather live a life of truth, or one of lies on top of lies on top of convoluted fabrications?

... well, then, fine, it and the above all stimulate introspection. It's just that I lump this poll question up with the other big & basic questions. Here's a question meant to stimulate introspection: Would you react much if one of the 3 questions above were posted as a poll question here -- in this objective philosophy forum?

It's times like these when I wish there could be something like a "Dissent" poll.

Ed

Post 16

Sunday, November 29, 2009 - 10:54am

The question amounts to, "Would you be happy if you were happy, or would you be happy if you were smart yet unhappy?" Choosing "smart" is not at all the smart choice.

"The big reason I think that the question is silly is that you can't 'morally' choose something other than happiness as a higher value in life. If you choose something as higher than your own happiness, then you do so 'immorally.'"

Bingo.

If 100% of people had voted for happiness, you would have a point, Ed. But the question is obviously not silly if so many people don't get the point. It is more like disturbing. It reveals either a profound ignorance or a deep disconnect with the stated point of the Objectivist ethics.

So, Ed, how do you explain that so many people, a majority of supposed Objectivists, don't understand this?

(Edited by Ted Keer on 11/29, 10:56am)

Post 17

Sunday, November 29, 2009 - 11:05am

Based on the exchanges about intelligence and human species development, I want to mention that the Flynn Effect makes an empirical argument in favor of increases in human population intelligence with succeeding generations:

In his study of IQ tests scores for different populations over the past sixty years, James R. Flynn discovered that IQ scores increased from one generation to the next for all of the countries for which data existed (Flynn, 1994). This interesting phenomena has been called "the Flynn Effect." Many of the questions about why this effect occurs have not yet been answered by researchers. This site attempts to explain the issues involved in a way that will better help you to understand the Flynn Effect. It also provides references for further inquiry.

This argument runs against the contention that human evolution disfavors increases in IQ. Note that the "mean" IQ gets renormalized periodically to account for the Flynn Effect. This implies that someone with an IQ of 100 today would be smarter than someone with an IQ of 100 a century ago.

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 11/29, 11:06am)

Post 18

Sunday, November 29, 2009 - 1:49pm

Ted,

What's really got my undies in a bundle is the schizophrenic nature of your praise and blame. In one post, I'm supposedly "clueless." Further on in the thread, I'm the only one who 'gets it.'

As to your question about folks who answered "smart" -- you really can't blame them because, like I said above, the question is so regressive and banal. It's like a trick question or something (where one doesn't trust the questioner to be being straightforward) and trick questions aren't good philosophy -- though they make for fun party games.

Ed

Post 19

Sunday, November 29, 2009 - 2:58pm