天才都是傻子

It's hard to be the smartest person in the room (Credit: Getty Images)

CONTENT：

If ignorance is bliss, does a high IQ equal misery? Popular opinion would have it so. We tend to think of geniuses as being plagued by existential angst, frustration, and loneliness. Think of Virginia Woolf, Alan Turing, or Lisa Simpson – lone stars, isolated even as they burn their brightest. As Ernest Hemingway wrote: “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”
The question may seem like a trivial matter concerning a select few – but the insights it offers could have ramifications for many. Much of our education system is aimed at improving academic intelligence; although its limits are well known, IQ is still the primary way of measuring cognitive abilities, and we spend millions on brain training and cognitive enhancers that try to improve those scores. But what if the quest for genius is itself a fool’s errand?

Words and Phrases：
bliss n. 极乐；天赐的福
angst n. 焦虑；担心
misery n. 痛苦，悲惨；不幸；苦恼；穷困
ramification n. [植] 分枝，分叉

参考译文1：

如果无知是福，高智商是否就是祸？人们好像都这么认为。在我们看来，天才们总是忧心忡忡、郁郁寡欢、形单影只。想想弗吉尼亚·伍尔芙、艾伦·图灵或者丽莎·辛普森，这些孤独的星星， 即使光芒万丈时，也茕茕孑立。如海明威曾说的：“据我所知，快乐是聪明人最稀缺的。”
对某一小群人来说，这个问题似乎微不足道。但它所呈现的视角多多少少会涉及许许多多人。我们的教育系统很大程度上是为了提高学生的学术能力；虽然我们都知道这些不足，但智商仍然是我们测量认知能力的主要途径。而且，我们不惜花费成百万上千万去训练大脑，提高认知，试图提高智商值。但，如果我们所追求的天才到头来不过是傻子呢？