[alvah]

It's very difficult for most (not all) people to relate to others who are either significantly more or significantly less intelligent than them. So, for example (using IQ as a proxy), most people of average intelligence (~100IQ) would find it difficult to relate to those of ~65IQ, and equally difficult to find much in common with someone much more intelligent than them (140+IQ). Given power laws / bell-curve distribution, most people on the tails of intelligence distribution will spend most of their time surrounded by people they can't really relate to. This does not seem like a recipe for happiness.

[robot-wrangler]

Yes. A useful analogy is to imagine being an adult in a world populated only by children. Aside from the social alienation of it being hard to relate to others, there would be practical matters. The entertainment would all be tedious and predictable, all the rationalizations for bad behavior would be transparently self-interested. Enhanced capabilities for observation, prediction, and planning would make you a super-hero at problem-solving, but really, what does that get you except repetitive unfulfilling effort? Don't sweat the small stuff is good advice, but you couldn't actually ignore the futility. Don't focus on the negative is good advice, but in a world like that pessimism and realism are the same thing. Anyone would be miserable. The good-aligned person would likely withdraw or self-lobotomize. More cynical characters would harden their heart, seize power, and become king of all the blind babies and try to yoke them together and build a pyramid or something. (Yes, I've recently reread Understand by Ted Chiang, No a pyramid is not a plot point per se ;)

Thankfully the situation isn't actually this extreme, but I think what we're talking about is just a difference in degree and not a difference in kind. Seeing more clearly than others seems very uncomfortable at best, and frequently maladaptive and/or a recipe for derangement.

[wat10000]

"Imagine"?

It is indeed not that extreme, but sometimes it feels pretty close. It is hard to find entertainment that isn't tedious and predictable. The public seems to eat up rationalizations for bad behavior which are obvious nonsense.

I'm happy at work because I'm surrounded by people smarter, more motivated, and more conscientious than I am. Outside of work, well, some days I dream that Anderson's Brain Wave would come true, the Earth would move out of some magical interstellar intelligence-suppressing field, and everyone's IQ would quintuple overnight.

[Nathanba]

yes and those children have money, power and jobs and you have to navigate that somehow without sparking their very irrational, very easily sparked ire.

[sandspar]

I haven't found this to be true. For marriage, sure, pick someone close to you. But I've found that IQ is mostly irrelevant for friendship. Character and compatibility matter more than IQ.

I've noticed that many smart people have never learned how to enjoy spending time in mixed-IQ settings. I feel a bit sorry for smart people who were raised with smart parents and smart siblings and smart friends etc. I find their perspectives very limited.

[roncesvalles]

>will spend most of their time surrounded by people they can't really relate to.

But society tends to bring together like-minded people e.g. in schooling, professional work, sports teams, art school, or whatever other community.

Also, I think social compatibility is less about matching IQs and more about matching senses of humor. If someone finds your jokes distasteful or downright bland, it's never going to work out. My friends are my friends because we laugh at the same things.

[johnfn]

This doesn’t seem obviously true. There’s a bell curve of how knowledgeable people are with tech and somehow people I spend time with end up in the tail end. There’s a bell curve of how much they like board games and I end up spending a lot of time with people at the tail end as well. In general, the people you spend time with are not selected by a process which is even close to random.

[alvah]

"In general, the people you spend time with are not selected by a process which is even close to random"

That very much depends on where you are born & brought up, and how willing you are to leave all that behind.