Open Thread March 21 - March 27, 2016

Gunnar_Zarncke

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

Not according to Razib Khan who writes in part:

"A new paper on which has some results on life satisfaction, intelligence and the number of social interactions one has has generated some mainstream buzz....The figure above shows the interaction effect between intelligence, life satisfaction, and number of times you meet up with friends over the week. What you see is that among the less intelligent more interactions means more life satisfaction and among the more intelligent you see the reverse...But take a look at the y-axis...The effect here is very small....These are not actionable results for anyone."

3Viliam10y

I wonder if the reason could be that for smart people it is difficult to find many good friends. So the actual choice for most of them is between having only a few great friends (which is better), or having many friends that suck (which is worse). But maybe given a chance, having many great friends could be even better. By difficulty to find many good friends I mean that for people with very high intelligence the set of their peers is already small enough, and then within this set they need to find people with similar values, hobbies, personality, etc. Even admitting this problem is a huge taboo (essentially you are telling 99% of your social environment "I don't consider you a good friend material"), so many people probably don't have good strategies for solving it.