Complex Numbers

Alone at Low Interest

Today in Adventures in Confirmation Bias...

Evolution Made Really Smart People Long to Be Loners  

Confirmation bias applies because a) I like to think I'm smart and b) I appreciate being alone. You may not agree with (a). Hell, most of the time, I don't agree with (a). But let's proceed as if I'm really quite clever and see where this takes us.

Psychologists have a pretty good idea of what typically makes a human happy. Dancing delights us.

No.

Being in nature brings us joy.

Being in nature brings me rashes, sunburns, and bug bites.

And, for most people, frequent contact with good friends makes us feel content.

That would be stretching the definition of "frequent" for me; I'm an introvert, not a misanthrope. Most of the time.

That is, unless you’re really, really smart.

Got me.

In a paper published in the British Journal of Psychology, researchers Norman Li and Satoshi Kanazawa report that highly intelligent people experience lower life satisfaction when they socialize with friends more frequently. These are the Sherlocks and the Newt Scamanders of the world — the very intelligent few who would be happier if they were left alone.

Who the hell is Newt Scamander? Oh, it's a Potterverse thing. I wasn't aware that anyone had actually watched those Fantastic Beasts movies.

To come to this conclusion, the researchers analyzed the survey responses of 15,197 individuals between the ages of 18 and 28.

Thus forms the first crack in the foundation of Confirmation Bias: because naturally, any study done on 18-28 year olds must extend to people of all ages.

That was sarcasm. Us supergeniuses use it frequently.

Analysis of this data revealed that being around dense crowds of people typically leads to unhappiness, while socializing with friends typically leads to happiness — that is, unless the person in question is highly intelligent.

Oh my gosh, you're telling me that a scientific study shows that being among dense crowds of people makes a person unhappy? Who'd have thought that was true? Hey, I have an proposal for a study to find out if water is wet; can I have a grant?

(That was more sarcasm.)

The authors explain these findings with the “savanna theory of happiness,” noting how different our world is than that of our Pleistocene-era ancestors.

Oh hell, not this shit again.

The savanna theory of happiness is the idea that life satisfaction is not only determined by what’s happening in the present but also influenced by the ways our ancestors may have reacted to the event.

And the last pebbles of Confirmation Bias crumble to dust.

Look.

Evolution is an actual ongoing process, I'm certainly not denying that. Evolutionary psychology, though... well, I call it by another name: Unsubstantiated Guesswork. It's right there in the last quote: "the ways our ancestors may have reacted to the event."

I see this all the time in certain kinds of articles, usually psychology. They see that humans have psychological trait X, and they argue thusly: "We have X because our ancestors needed X to survive because situation Y must have occurred to select for trait X." Or some so-called logic to that effect. It's usually circular reasoning, because we don't know exactly how our prehistoric ancestors lived.

Moreover, it's not like evolution started the moment our line split off from chimps and bonobos something like six million years ago. We carry remnants of evolutionary features from way before then, both physical and mental. Trying to explain human behavior by how we "must have" acted and reacted on the plains of Africa leaves out several billion years of evolution.

I'm not saying they're necessarily wrong, mind you. They often make compelling cases. But where's the evidence?

“In general, more intelligent individuals are more likely to have ‘unnatural’ preferences and values that our ancestors did not have,” Kanazawa tells Inverse. “It is extremely natural for species like humans to seek and desire friendships and, as a result, more intelligent individuals are likely to seek them less.”

Okay, now I'm beginning to actively hate this "theory." (Which of course doesn't mean it's not valid.) For starters, "unnatural?" That word has been used to justify all kinds of oppression. "Homosexuality is unnatural." "Any sex besides missionary position is unnatural." "Polygamy is unnatural." "Being trans is unnatural." "Their rituals are unnatural while ours are ordained by Deity." Moreover, how can anything we do be unnatural? We're part of nature.

For seconds, that last sentence seems to imply that smarter people actively do things the speaker defines as unnatural.

And finally, how do you know whether prehistoric people who were smarter (they had a range of intelligence, just as we do) didn't also seek out solitude? There's plenty of evidence that people did that sort of thing within historical times. Thoreau, for example. Not that he was right in any way, but I can't deny he had smarts.

Intelligence is believed to have evolved as a psychological mechanism to solve novel problems — the sort of challenges that weren’t a regular part of life. For our ancestors, frequent contact with friends and allies was a necessity that allowed them to survive. Being highly intelligent, however, meant an individual was more likely to be able to solve problems without another person’s help, which in turn diminished the importance of their friendships.

"...is believed to have evolved?" I don't even know where to begin, so let's start with the weaselly passive voice. Believed by whom? Though my personal working hypothesis is that a very few people actually innovate; the thing that enabled humans to dominate the planet was our ability to communicate, and, once a thing is discovered, to understand and copy the techniques involved (think fire or flint-knapping or the Theory of Relativity or whatever) -- one person figured it out and taught others. He or she could not have done so without contact with other humans.

“In general, urbanites have higher average intelligence than ruralites do, possibly because more intelligent individuals are better able to live in ‘unnatural’ settings of high population density,” says Kanazawa.

City-dweller-like typing detected. I mean, seriously, what the hell is this? First you connect intelligence with the need for solitude, and then you proclaim that this solitude takes its best form in crowded places? You define intelligence as the ability to solve problems without other people, and then you claim that people who do this prefer city life, where almost everything is cooperative?

That certainly doesn’t mean that if you enjoy being around your friends that you’re unintelligent. But it does mean that the really smart person you know who spends much of their time alone isn’t a sad loner — they probably just like it that way.

Here's an alternative, equally valid "theory:" Smart people want to be left the fuck alone so we don't have to put up with unverifiable evo-psych arguments. Or, alternatively, we just get easily bored by small talk.