Intelligence and loneliness

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by S.A.M., Mar 18, 2010.

  1. Dr Mabuse Percipient Thaumaturgist Registered Senior Member

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    The OP's question has been answered.

    Yes, 'The greater the intelligence, the greater the capacity for loneliness' is a true statement.

    It is rooted in wisdom that goes back for thousands of years. That statement/sentiment has been expressed as wisdom in many ways, by many people, in many languages and cultures.
     
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  3. John99 Banned Banned

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    No, it isn't true. It is wishful thinking and some romanticism thrown in. Most likely stemming from people believing they are more intelligent (could be true or not true) and also happened to be lonely. OTOH, i think the instances of intelligent people NOT being lonely is higher. That is not to say that loneliness is non existant for intelligent people.

    Difference is that the lonely people think about it more. Often times becoming fixated on there perceived intelligence. For some would say this is justification so i cannot fault people for at least looking on the bright side of what is not a very appealing circumstance.

    Much depends on a persons own impression of intelligence too. I really think there is more of an association with savantism than well rounded intelligence.

    Which is unfortunate because some people are very good at something, like Rain Man was only not as extreme and then they assume to know more about everything. This is not the case, however and like i said is very unfortunate for civilization.
     
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  5. John99 Banned Banned

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  7. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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  8. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    Source?
    Link?
    Or is this an unsupported supposition of yours?

    Why?
     
  9. John99 Banned Banned

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    Wash my ears out?

    It depends, i have used various pronunciations from Nee-shoe to Nee-sha to Nee-shee. From what i read his own grandfather pronounced it Nee-shee so that is where i got it from.
     
  10. John99 Banned Banned

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    Hey....what is your problem? you should appreciate that i even respond to you.

    ALL of this is unsupported supposition. Unless ALL people who are intelligent are lonely, which is NOT the case at all. I do think there is a bit of savantism at the extreme end though and perhaps that can manifest itslef into lonliness.
     
  11. John99 Banned Banned

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    Why.

    Well as i stated prviously, if someone is above the median intelligence in all areas usually they are very successful in business and their personal life. Basically assuming positions of leadership. For myself, i honestly dont know if i am intelligent or not as i have never been tested.

    Admittedly, i have suffered some stunting in my cogent consciousness. Sadly i have not learned like my peers due to the fact that i was taken out of school at the fifth grade. So what happened was, like the ferral child (though not intellectually deficient), i learned my own ways. So people laugh at my grammer because i put my marks wherever i want to. So i would say 'similar' to the feral child, which is fine with me, though i cannot recommend it.
     
    Last edited: Mar 30, 2010
  12. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    Because you obviously misheard your own link.

    So why give that link?

    The "problem" (which you been informed of previously) is that you make assertions and fail to justify them.
    "No, it isn't true" isn't stated as an opinion. At least other posters give their reasoning for their opinion.

    Try reading the OP:
    The greater the intelligence, the greater the capacity for loneliness
    That does not imply AT ALL that all intelligent people are lonely.

    Savantism isn't intelligence per se.
     
  13. John99 Banned Banned

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    I did read the OP.

    I dont agree with it at all though. So essentially i am disagreeing with the op's source and not the op so dont get all excited and defensive because there is no reason to.

    Often times things have a certain literary cadence to them and they do initiate some thought but honestly to me they merely sound good but are just not based in reality.

    Most people are just average intelligence. There is a difference between natural abilities and someone who has there nose in the books for eight hours a day. Hence, they were kind of lonely to begin with. But that is their nature and it is neither right nor wrong.
     
  14. Dr Mabuse Percipient Thaumaturgist Registered Senior Member

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    Obviously 'yes' this is a person just making up things and then posting about them.

    Many do not know that research has been done in this area. Books have been written, studies have been done, etc. The landmark book 'The Loneliness of the Gifted Child', by George Kaluger and Ruthe Martin was published in the 1960's. It was one of the early works in this area. The book of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's life and why he wrote his treatise on education titled - 'Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius' by Leopold Damrosch - starts with chapter 1 titled 'The Loneliness of a Gifted Child'. Aptly titled first chapter.

    Unusually high intelligence brings issues with it that the majority of people cannot even guess at, much less try to understand. It is simply beyond their intellectual ability to even consider, except in the most simplistic and unrepresentative way.

    In actual studies, a tendency towards a type of loneliness and isolation that 99.9XXXXX% of people cannot even begin to grasp, begins to manifest itself in the highly intelligent person in the upper grades of elementary school. Depending on how extreme the intelligence is, this continues to develop for longer periods of time.

    The gifted child begins to live in a world, and experience that world in ways no one around them can even begin to guess at, much less try to understand or be able to relate to, or help with. Who do you go to for an answer when no one can understand your question? This has been called 'the isolation of unique perception' in people that study the gifted and exceptionally gifted child. The more extreme the intelligence, the more unique the perception. As I said, hardly 1 in 100,000,000 people can grasp the weight of that and what it is to carry it, especially in the formative years of childhood and adolescence. That child goes through social structures like an educational system that in no way have them in mind. They are raised in a family of people who could not even begin to guess what they are going through in their life. They find that their ability to relate to others and have others relate to them begins to decline on an exponential scale as they grow towards adulthood. Soon they live virtually alone in a world of... people who can't even begin to see and understand the world they way they do, much less be able to discuss their thoughts about it. This is a loneliness far beyond the mundane considerations of an average mind... something along the lines of 'do I have many friends', or 'go out an be with people and you are no longer lonely'. It's a very profound loneliness.

    The phrase 'He/she collapsed under the weight of his/her own genius and killed his/herself' has been around for centuries for a reason. In fact highly intelligent people do have a markedly higher suicide rate.

    I could go on, but there are books written on this topic if one cares to know more.

    If one is completely ignorant of such information, and studies, and thousands of years of wisdom on the topic, etc, one could just make up what one wanted to be true... and then apparently delight in trying to 'look smart' while babbling on about their own nonsense I suppose. LOL

    But as I stated earlier, 'yes' is the answer to the OP's question. With more intelligence comes a far greater capacity for, and in fact in gifted intelligence an actual tendency towards, loneliness.

    The episode of the TV show 'House' was surprisingly insightful on this issue. While exaggerated and stylized for the purposes of plot, as any movie or TV show must be, it still had some weight to it. In fact many exceptionally gifted intellects have great difficulty making it through an educational system not designed for them, to even make it to college, much less MIT, but this is a TV show so they take that route. 'Ignorance is Bliss' is the episode. If you care to, you can watch it here on Hulu -

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  15. John99 Banned Banned

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    you dont see the real problem with YOUR summation is that there are multitudes of lonely people who are very much average and even below average.
     
  16. John99 Banned Banned

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    and perhaps even more so because like poor people, they go relatively unnoticed and no one is studying them so merely a factor of perception and limitations.
     
  17. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    Then you missed the point of it.

    Which is neither here nor there.

    You're STILL not reading the OP: the implication is - the higher the intelligence the greater the CAPACITY for loneliness.
    Not all intelligent people are lonely, nor only intelligent people are lonely.
     
  18. Stoniphi obscurely fossiliferous Valued Senior Member

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    Loneliness is like any other feeling, it is independent of the "intelligence" of the person feeling it. Animals other than humans feel loneliness, stupid people feel lonely as well. In fact, a stupid person may well feel more lonely because they are too stupid to know that they could do something to stop feeling lonely, if only they were a little smarter.

    Intelligence can give you the tools to deal with loneliness, if you are smart enough to use them. Intelligence on its own is independent of your feelings, unless we are speaking of emotional intelligence, which we were not.
     
  19. William Registered Member

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    I think we see just that bit further than, I hate to use the phrase, average person. Since they don't see what we can they dismiss what we say, that is the most frustrating part, especially warning of impending disater, economic usually. Whats the point of being able to thnk deeply if you can't pass that knowledge on. Very depressing in a Cassandra Syndrome sort of way
     
  20. Me-Ki-Gal Banned Banned

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    Yes . Why do you think I am so lonely and feel so unloved . Hell it is hard to be understood when the world is trapped by the language they use . First everybody thinks you are a crank with ulterior motives . Then there is the thing were you don't have that many peers to commune thought with. You can talk and interject but most of it goes over the other peoples heads so you get no real intercourse . I think that is why we get stuck on forums like this . Why it becomes such an addition for us. Think about this ? It takes a certain amount of balls just to post on a science forum . It is not for every one to do because of potential ridicule by the things you post . Kind of a permanent record of who you were and who you are becoming . That scares the shit out of most people . So why do those of us that do do it . F---ck we are lonely and crave to talk to people like our selves . People that can reason out what we say , Then debunk it or support it .
     
  21. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Dogs can get pretty lonely.

    The risk of loneliness, or the realistic vulnerability to it, may be greater for the very intelligent - but the capacity? Seems less obvious.

    Read a study once of how quick people are at picking up social cues - in the study, people were shown brief clips of filmed scenes (professional actors, a source of doubt for me) and asked questions about them. Some people could pick up the essential mood depicted (allegedly) - anger, affection - from clips too brief to be "seen", flashes of image in which they could not even say how many people the scene included. Others would consistently misunderstand after watching several minutes of filmed conversation. These two groups - the very quick and the very slow - were both socially isolated in general, with fewer than normal numbers of friends, substandard employment, etc. Lonely, presumably, or more likely to be so.

    The underwhelming observation is that social isolation predisposes one to loneliness. Any cause of the isolation will do.
     
  22. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    Hey, what are you doing wearing my Captain Obvious cape, Iceaura? Give it back!

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  23. SomethingClever Registered Senior Member

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    this about sums it.
    it's not a lack of desire for friends and conversation- it's a lack of compatibility.

    here is a proof inspired by my sadistic algebra teacher Ms. Moore (no chance it was "Mrs."-- no one would marry that *****)
    .....anyway :bugeye:

    The Lonely Proof
    1. birds of a feather flock together
    2. there are far more 'average' people than highly intelligent people
    3. therefore, highly intelligent people have less friends, and have less varied social interactions (though perhaps their interactions have more substance)

    I know it's bizarre to bring math into this, but it's worth a shot
     

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