This issue seems loaded because cognition is the way you win big now. Although NFL stars win big with pay, it's the Gates and the Zuckerburgs who loom high in our minds.

I've learned to ignore the issue (aside from its entertainment value) because there's still too much for me to optimize within my phenotypic range and local environment to make me better off – or at least, so I think. Either way there's much more to keep me busy than navel-gazing at cognitive-height so much.

On a related note: James Flynn of the Flynn Effect has noted many paradoxes within his infamous and eponymous result. I.Q. might not be improving so much. He anticipates explanations which synthesize nature and nurture but also look at the mind in terms of more basic cognitive operations and strategies. If I.Q. scores increasing reflect on the acquisition of useful, task-specific strategies, one might still be emulate the downward effect of a couple of I.Q. points which is at least something to be optimistic about. Newton only discovered Freshman Calculus. http://neuroanthropology.net/2008/12/16/the-flynn-effect-tro...

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Or perhaps it's the reduction of ambiguity/improvement-of-clarity that intelligence can bring that makes it so appealing in modern life? In which case there's still Buddhism to help with that.