The problem is all inside your head she said to me. The answer is easy if you take it logically.

22.jpg

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 Though unpublished, this aligns with some prior intuitions.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.

{ GeneExpression | Continue reading }

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