Portrayal of Hemingway in “Midnight in Paris” (which I was lucky enough to recently see in Paris) is off the charts funny.

PS – What the bleep did you guys do to our team while I was gone?!

Drinking is only one way to party.

High-pressure jobs…

I remember reading more than once that heavier drinkers also exercise more. Which would also be correlated with these things, presumably.

Kind of the opposite, actually.

To be honest, APV and Manhattan’s explanations are probably the most sensible, but this is clearly the more interesting hypothesis. Something about all the existential angst that crops up as a result of the “examined life”, maybe?

I think we are just fooling ourselves in thinking the psychological stress associated with being self-examining is somehow a primary explanation. It is certainly possible that it is true in some way, but I hold to the reasons outlined above. I spend a substantial portion of my time each summer living in a rural village where cash is almost non-existent. Pretty much everyone there lives off what they produce and what little does get sold is used to buy essentials. The people aren’t impoverished, exactly, but they probably have an average annual income of less than $500 and have very little time or capacity for leisure. And yet, hire them with a cash salary for a few weeks and come pay-day, the first thing they do is go out and buy a vat of moonshine and get hammered. This anecdote is, I think, backed by historical descriptions of drinking which show consumption of alcohol going along with the expansion of a working class. I think as a first order explanation, people drink because they can.

If there are studies supporting a link between high IQ and suicide (also remember, typical IQ scores are results from IQ tests aimed at skills that are correlated with traditional academic success, this does not include artistic, musical, or other such talents directly), they are in the minority of the data.

Here’s a Swedish study I found indicating that lower IQ correlates with increased suicidal risk. Although an interesting finding was when considering the parent’s educational background, poorly performing (IQ) men who had well educated parents had the highest subset risk for suicide.

This study also supports the “higher IQ lower suicide rates” findings.

I made my point about the artistic and “other” skills that aren’t assessed directly by traditional IQ tests, because I think there may be a perception of some of the great artists and writers that have suffered depression and suicidal attempts and completion in history that has probably led to the belief that higher intelligence results in higher suicidal attempts, but this is not case.