> If you use your smarts to conclude that having a spouse will negatively affect your happiness, don't have one.
You're assuming the negative. Your spouse can be a huge overall help in achieving happiness.
> A very intelligent person should be able to figure out a way to improve their finances.
It's not that simple.
You could be exceedingly smart but medically handicapped, which leads to lower paying jobs. Or could have been a high earner and then come down with an unfortunate disease which greatly impacts you ability to work and medically bankrupts you.
> You're assuming the negative. Your spouse can be a huge overall help in achieving happiness
I am not assuming anything, but explaining that, in theory, one could decide to have or not to have a spouse to increase their happiness — if they could reasonably deduce what the outcome would be, which they can't.
I was mostly tongue-in-cheek in relation to a spouse: that's a "poorly defined problem" that, according to the article, intelligence does not help with.
> It's not that simple
Oh, agreed. But we are talking about averages, and there is a known correlation between intelligence and financials.
Statistics, unfortunately, never says anything special about any single case.
You're assuming the negative. Your spouse can be a huge overall help in achieving happiness.
> A very intelligent person should be able to figure out a way to improve their finances.
It's not that simple.
You could be exceedingly smart but medically handicapped, which leads to lower paying jobs. Or could have been a high earner and then come down with an unfortunate disease which greatly impacts you ability to work and medically bankrupts you.