16 Jun 2012
3 Oct 2010
Why are smarter people often lonelier?
You are probably thinking, Einstein is not a loner. He has a full and meaningful life.
Fine, I admit the title is a generalization that tries to grab your attention. Many smart people I know are not loners, but many more are, so I say, "Intelligence is positively correlated with loneliness." Trust me, it's not always related to arrogance. Here's my little explanation.
First of all, human intelligence follows a normal distribution. Most people have IQ between 90 and 110. In fact, 95% people have IQ between 70 and 130. We further assume that intelligence is the rate of learning, i.e. the velocity of learning. Then some grade 8 physics will help us out in solving this question.
Velocity = change in distance / change in time
Distance = Velocity * Time
Distance is a proxy for accumulated knowledge/skill or accomplishments of a person. To make the problem simple, we set the time constant to 25 (years old). Here's something interesting, the distance probability distribution function is a log-normal distribution, not a normal distribution.
Why is that? Let's use our intuition. For people who have IQ<100, their "distance" is <2500, but IQ<100 consist of half of our population. Let's plug in more numbers, IQ130 (0.5%) => Distance 3250, IQ160 (<0.1%) => Distance 4000. While the distances grow in the same ratio, the "next person" is further away for smarter people, simply because the outliers grow further and further apart after being multiplied by a constant.
We often say, birds of a feather flock together. This is also true for making friends. It is difficult to talk to someone who has no idea what you are talking about, or listen to someone who you have no idea what he/she's talking about.
Is there a moral to this story? Yes there is.
First of all, human intelligence follows a normal distribution. Most people have IQ between 90 and 110. In fact, 95% people have IQ between 70 and 130. We further assume that intelligence is the rate of learning, i.e. the velocity of learning. Then some grade 8 physics will help us out in solving this question.
Velocity = change in distance / change in time
Distance = Velocity * Time
Distance is a proxy for accumulated knowledge/skill or accomplishments of a person. To make the problem simple, we set the time constant to 25 (years old). Here's something interesting, the distance probability distribution function is a log-normal distribution, not a normal distribution.
Why is that? Let's use our intuition. For people who have IQ<100, their "distance" is <2500, but IQ<100 consist of half of our population. Let's plug in more numbers, IQ130 (0.5%) => Distance 3250, IQ160 (<0.1%) => Distance 4000. While the distances grow in the same ratio, the "next person" is further away for smarter people, simply because the outliers grow further and further apart after being multiplied by a constant.
We often say, birds of a feather flock together. This is also true for making friends. It is difficult to talk to someone who has no idea what you are talking about, or listen to someone who you have no idea what he/she's talking about.
- If you are smart, don't find someone as smart as you to have kids with
- If your intelligence is on average, congratulations, you are more likely to have many friends and a social life, perhaps a successful business
- If you are dumb........you couldn't have read till the end. Don't be so humble.
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