Can we kill the "genius" trope already? In 15 years at the nation's best engineering schools and another 10 at companies and institutions that employ their graduates, I have yet to meet a nobel prize winner, CEO, professor, astronaut, politician, or other individual that is single-handedly "propelling global human advance." Perhaps these magical minds are hiding under some rock I haven't overturned yet, but it's much more likely that the "genius" model is just not a very good one. There are plenty of clever people around and there will always be a tail end of the bell curve, but the idea that these individuals are lifting up the rest of us is self-serving and ironically, demonstrably false. It's hero culture for intellectuals. There are plenty of humans with tail-end IQ, none of whom become anything without the rest of society getting up and going to work to support investment in their minds and the infrastructure that enables them to utilize their capacity.

Einstein would have been nothing without cooperation from a wide range of scientists, mathematicians, family members, and hell his garbage man.

/end rant

Thank you for sharing that link, though - the bit about reproduction has some meat to it. I've wondered whether innovation will slow as global population levels off. We'll get better at being efficient with the capacity we have, to be sure, but I wonder if eking out efficiencies will also asymptotically stall.