Despite what sci-fi writers have done with the idea that we “only use 10% of our brains”, researchers seem to point to the fact that, for now at least, we’ve maxed out our cognitive capacity. In movies like Limitless, people with enhanced brainpower are able to see into the future, remember everything they’ve ever experienced, or read other people’s minds. However, the reality is that our evolution seems to have hit a “sweet spot”, as psychologists Thomas Hill and Ralph Hertwig say, and can’t get much smarter without some significant evolutionary trade-offs.

After conducting a meta-analysis of a number of other studies on the potential for humanity increasing their brainpower, they’ve come to one significant conclusion. In order for people’s brains to evolve much beyond where they’re at now they would need to make some fairly serious genetic sacrifices. Many individuals with advanced cognitive abilities, “savants, people with photographic memories, and even genetically segregated populations of individuals with above average IQ”, they are also unusually susceptible to neural disorders like autism and synesthesia.

The authors explain our having achieved our peak mental fitness like a person focusing on the road while driving at night. Although it’s necessary to pay attention to the road, ever changing turns and conditions, it’s possible to over-focus and not notice the deer on the shoulder or the driver in your blind spot. By enhancing our mental abilities much beyond where they’re at now there will be significant trade offs for the higher function. Evolutionarily speaking, it makes sense that our mental capacities will have reached a kind of pinnacle for the moment. We’ve evolved the complexity of our cognitive processes to the point where, on average, our species is capable of some pretty impossible seeming mental tasks and innovations. However, our species is no longer threatened by a rival species, and natural selection has effectively stalled for us. This is largely due to our present mental capacity, and the luxuries and security that our minds have created for our species. As a result we’ve reached a point at which, were our brains to improve incrementally again, the genetic payoff would not be a “natural selection”.

That doesn’t mean that in the distant future there may not be some further genetic adaptation that prompts further mental evolution. However, for our species, for right now, we’re about as smart as we’re going to get. Even so, in my opinion there are still some people that are too smart for their own good.