We know how much we don’t know
Have you ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger Effect? If you haven’t come across the term before, you have definitely experienced the principle. It’s a psychological rule that states; it’s the most incompetent who are the most confident, while the intelligent ones doubt their own abilities. Put simply, dumb people are too dumb to know how dumb they are. Smart people are clever enough to know how much they don’t know. British philosopher Bertrand Russell who first laid out the idea perhaps summed it up best: “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” Basically, all of us have a pretty lousy grasp of the limits of our own competence one way or another.
We often suffer from loneliness and depression
As Brookings Institution researcher Carol Graham explained to the Washington Post, “Those with more intelligence and the capacity to use it… are less likely to spend so much time socializing because they are focused on some other longer-term objective.”
Whenever I realize I don’t carry the same worries as my peers, I tend to stay on my own. Or worse, I imprison myself in my own depressed state. I am always analyzing problems I can’t solve in my mind which leads to deeper depression.
