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So far, the only one tradeoff we know for sure for IQ is 'doesn't want children'. Suppose we made genetic score for triathlon. What makes you think sports celebrities you listed wouldn't be above average in these scores? What if we don't get Einstein but get 10x more geniuses that are better than Einstein?
An interesting question is why IQ suppresses fertility rates. We know, incidentally, that high IQ's are strongly correlated with poor sexual/romantic success. Maybe it's not a coincidence that ultra-high IQ groups like Ashkenazim and Tambrams use arranged marriages(doesn't Japan widely use don't-call-it-arranged marriages?). It also seems like, in the US, groups with higher out-of-wedlock birth rates are the ones which see the most dysgenic IQ selection.
There's only one recorded case of a virgin birth in human history. Kinda hard to have kids without a partner. I suspect that within marriage fertility rates are not particularly correlated with IQ.
Poor romantic success can't be the only explanation https://www.emilkirkegaard.com/p/not-just-dysgenic-outcomes-but-dysgenic [intentions too]
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My understanding is that, in the developed world, IQ (or at least, earnings and education as IQ proxies) are positively correlated with male fertility but negatively correlated for female fertility.
Basically, smart men earn lots of money and so can attract a wife more easily, while being able to afford to house more children.
Smart women spend their most fertile years in education and 'greedy' careers, leaving little time for babymaking.
High fertility among low IQ people was previously driven by teenage pregnancy, but that has mostly disappeared in the past couple of decades
My understanding is that the correlation of male IQ with fertility is limited to men with conservative attitudes about gender- liberal men don't get a fertility boost from higher IQs(presumably this is because men with more conservative attitudes about gender are more willing to 'marry down' on average- the surgeon will go for a cute nurse where infectious disease docs are mostly interested in ObGyns and pediatricians with the usual fertility penalty from decade long higher ed tracks), but that conversely sudden spikes in male wealth(eg male lottery winners) lead to fertility increases regardless of IQ so I think you've probably gotten the mechanism right.
Out of marriage fertility is declining, including among low-IQ people, but it's still much higher among the poor and dumb than among wealthy, educated, smart people, and differences in developed world TFR tend to be driven by out of wedlock childbearing because married couples tend have similar TFRs in western societies.
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Isn't intelligence correlated with mental illness?
That seems like a big tradeoff.
The opposite. Higher IQ = better mental health.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5014225/
I mean, it makes sense right. Higher IQ leads to better life outcomes which leads to better mental health.
Perhaps you could "correct" for life outcomes and get a neutral result, but that wouldn't make a lot of sense as high IQ causes good life outcomes.
Yep, an entire class of low intelligence alcoholics & criminals aren't considered mentally ill because their affliction is socially acceptable.
Instead of manic genius, you get alcoholic loser.
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Hmm. It seems this is an area of at least some some contention, with some research (e.g. a Mensa survey, which obviously is based on a self-selected sample) suggesting a higher correlation, but most research suggesting IQ is protective.
There's also some evidence suggesting a genetic correlation between autism and high intelligence.
My guess is that (to the degree that IQ is genetic) is that it's probably possible to "overselect" for it to the detriment of other good things (although IIRC we also know that e.g. autism is probably at a minimum correlated with other factors, such as older parents and maternal fever during pregnancy).
In my personal experience I have observed that the connection between high IQ, good life outcomes, and mental health is not strictly linear. But that's anecdotal and a very small sample size.
I think Mensa selects for people whose IQ test score itself is their highest "achievement", i.e. the lowest performers at any given tier of IQ. So it's very possible that Mensa members could have on average unusually poor mental health.
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They looked at phenotypes. Imagine looking at two nearly identical twins, both with genetic predisposition to schizophrenia but one was lucky to avoid it, and the other got it along with IQ drop that goes with it. This would inflate positive correlation between IQ and mental health. There should be looked something like Scott wrote about: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/non-cognitive-skills-for-educational
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