The Depressing Psychology of People with High IQ

We treat intelligence like [music] it's some kind of miracle, an unseen force that's powerful enough to shape an entire life from behind the scenes. We assume that if you're intelligent enough, the world should bend more easily in your favor. You should be able to resolve problems faster, make better choices much, much easier, and you

should have your entire life figured out before the first time any adult even gets the chance to ask, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" But this belief that intelligence is some form of protection from the hardships of life only exists because of survivors guilt. We hear from the most successful

intelligent people and assume that that's the case for everyone when in reality nothing could be further from the truth. When we actually look at the neuroscience and psychology of highly intelligent people, we discover that for the most part it doesn't feel like protection at all, but actually overexposure. Instead of a world that's simplified,

they're forced to live in a world that's hyperfragmented and completely unstable. And all of this could lead to a pretty grim reality if left unchecked. This is the depressing psychology of people with extremely [music] high intelligence. Part one, the cognitive engine. The first mistake is to imagine a high level of intelligence as simply an

upgrade, a faster version of the same operating system, a more efficient processing, quicker recall, better performance across familiar tasks. It isn't. The highly intelligent mind doesn't just process information more quickly, it processes it differently. The structure of thought and in turn behavior itself begins to shift. The mind stops acting like a tool and starts