**There's strong evidence that higher intelligence (IQ) correlates with higher rates of mental illness** That's not _quite_ the same as saying that Ignorance is Bliss, but a) [Neuroticism is directly correlated with intelligence](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5486156/), and has all sorts of negative mental health outcomes b) The [hyper brain/hyper body theory](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289616303324#!) holds that high IQ is associated with psychological and physiological “overexcitabilities,” or OEs. These correlate with bipolar disorders, depression, anxiety disorders and ADHD.

**Ignorance seems to definitely promote bliss where extended knowledge would otherwise inhibit it. Buddhism might seem to suggest the opposite in its call for lifting ignorance to achieve bliss, but I think a slight problem with this argument is that 1) it's not really bliss in its normal sense that Buddhism aims for, and 2) living in only the current moment is a main goal of that lifting of ignorance, which resulting mindset is actually a state of ignorance itself that, ideally, promotes bliss greatly.** - I do really think ignorance is bliss in general, especially given the research Turi demonstrated above. I can think of all sorts of scenarios where having more knowledge of something can increase quite non-blissful states: awareness of death, awareness, really, of larger states of the universe that could harm oneself, awareness of any kind of knowledge of anything other than the moment. Having these types of awareness can increase anxiety and depression and a whole host of negative mental states. - On the surface, [Buddhist philosophy](https://www.pbs.org/edens/thailand/buddhism.htm) may seem to suggest that achieving bliss is all about ridding oneself of their ignorance---seeing the true way of things in order to establish an existence beyond suffering. Escaping the cycle of suffering is vital to achieving bliss, but bliss in Buddhism is more about (and more derived from) [suspending connection to _any_ thoughts or feelings](https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/harris/bl141.html), bliss included. - Additionally, [escaping the cycle of suffering](https://irispublishers.com/ojcam/fulltext/overview-of-buddhism-and-the-concept-of-suffering.ID.000558.php) in a Buddhist manner is, as just mentioned, all about [denying a connection to](https://zenhabits.net/attachments/) any and every fleeting emotion and thought. This, typically, is something that, on one level, allows people to live moment to moment more than anything (and, on an extreme level, actually takes people out of what Buddhism considers the illusory self and into a suspended state of true "nothingness".) I'd argue that this moment-to-moment living, to whatever level and extent it happens, is something that is ultimately a return to a state of blissful ignorance. - Ideally, one will escape the cycle of suffering once their ignorance of the truth of the temporariness of everything is accounted and then corrected for, but I think that escape into a new state could very well be considered a return to the blissful ignorance of being unaware of (or at least functionally unconcerned with) anything other than immediate experience or, at the farther levels of detachment, experience at all. So I think ignorance could still be considered bliss, even in a Buddhism that seeks initially and/or at its endpoint to rid one of it.