if being very smart was much, much better than being of average smarts, then everyone would [have] become very smart up to the physiological limit. […] The fact that being very intelligent is not evolutionarily clearly “good” seems ridiculousness to many people who think about these things. […]

let’s talk about another quantitative trait which is even more heritable than intelligence, and easier to measure: height. […] Though being a tall male seems in most circumstances to be better in terms of physical attractiveness than being a short male, circumstances vary, and being too tall increases one’s mortality and morbidity. Being larger is calorically expensive. Large people need to eat more because they have larger muscles. […]

let’s go back to intelligence. What could be the trade-offs? First, there are now results presented at conferences that very high general intelligence may exhibit a correlation with some mental pathologies. Though unpublished, this aligns with some prior intuitions. […] Additionally […] one could argue that being too deviated from the norm might make socialization and pair-bonding difficult.

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photo { Linda Evangelista photographed by Philip Tracy for Vogue, January 1992 }