Educate to be Happy?

Justin Wolfers in the Freakonomics blog responds to a reader's question of whether "ignorance is truly bliss?" by offering...

My reasoning is simple: more intelligent people tend to earn higher incomes, and we know that people with higher incomes are more likely to be happy.

But then he "backs up" his argument with data that shows that people who score high on intelligence tests are happier.

That's fine, but his claims go beyond the data presented (earlier blogs point to his research that links happiness and income/wealth). In this blog he has introduced 3 variables: happiness, intelligence, and income. But produced data for only 2 variables: happiness & intelligence.

The problem is the relationship between these three factors. Is it causal? Are they merely statistically related with a hidden factor that links them causally? I'm willing to guess that higher income is a concomitant of higher intelligence that is only weakly linked because there are other factors (e.g. those who tout EQ, an emotional intelligence, or other factors in a personality that favours money-making activities). Obviously a blog is not a place to develop or espouse a full fledged theory.

Wolfers then muses...

But this doesn’t answer the harder question: What creates a relationship between (measured) intelligence and (measured) happiness? Are those who are lucky enough to be born intelligent also lucky enough to be born happier? Do happy folks elicit greater attention from their teachers? Or does the sort of intelligence that is created by education also enable us to successfully pursue happiness? If it’s the latter, then perhaps these data point to yet another reason to invest in education.

But here Wolfers misses the really critical question: what kind of education? The Classical World "solved" this through Stoicism and Epicureanism which taught a world weariness and acceptance. But I really doubt that this is the kind of "education" Wolfers intends.

Here's the Stoic road to happiness from Wikipedia:

The Stoic ethic espouses a deterministic perspective; in regards to those who lack Stoic virtue, Cleanthes once opined that the wicked man is "like a dog tied to a cart, and compelled to go wherever it goes." A Stoic of virtue, by contrast, would amend his will to suit the world and remain, in the words of Epictetus, "sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy," thus positing a "completely autonomous" individual will, and at the same time a universe that is "a rigidly deterministic single whole".

And the Epicurean road to happiness from Wikipedia:

Epicurus believed that the greatest good was to seek modest pleasures in order to attain a state of tranquility and freedom from fear (ataraxia) as well as absence of bodily pain (aponia) through knowledge of the workings of the world and the limits of our desires. The combination of these two states is supposed to constitute happiness in its highest form.

But I really doubt these are the "educational goals" that Wolfers is promoting.

I don't doubt Wolfer's data, but my personal experience is that income and intelligence lead to idle time and that idle time sets up certain personality types for neuroticism and unhappiness. For some, intelligence and income enable them to live wonderful productive and happy lives. But I suspect the world isn't simple. For some, education helps them find happiness. Some intelligent people can find happiness, but sometimes the education they receive introduces in them expectations or desires that leave them unhappy. Some unintelligent people can be happy if they are unaware of limitations. In short, it is complex. And worse, the answer is dynamic since happiness is not simply an internal state. We interact with others and perceive ourselves in and through them which in turn alters our own perception. Any social science is a very tricky science indeed!