[TeMPOraL]

It's not that kind of intelligence that matters. Don't think in terms of being good at chess, poetry, or multiplying numbers in your head. Think wheel, writing, domestication, agriculture, petrochemical engineering, nuclear weapons, computers, genetic engineering.

Our intelligence is what allows us to acquire and improve new adaptations without having to change our own genetics. We're able to change living environments and adapt to them multiple times in a single life span, and we went from basic language to walking on the Moon much faster than evolution is able to make meaningful changes through natural selection. It takes however many million years for a species to grow fur to adapt to cold climate; it took a spear for us to adapt by stealing other animals' fur, and couple hundred years to figure out how to make synthetic ones at scale. In that time, we adapted to almost every environment on the planet.

Intelligence very much is the driving force behind humanity.

EDIT: and we're also beating natural selection from the other end - modern medicine allows many people to live and reproduce, who without it would've died from genetic diseases. We're very good at denying the "fitness" criteria nature uses.

[bdamm]

While I agree with your general slant, it's not correct to say that evolution can't act quickly. Evolution can act, and does act, slightly faster than a single generation. Populations change rapidly, and the success, failure, life and death of individuals and their guiding behaviors, change with it. The introduction of online dating, for example, has already caused evolutionary changes in our species. Only time can tell if these changes are going to last. Just because we haven't yet generally grown thumbs adapted for interacting with iPhones doesn't mean that the more subtle changes haven't happened.

[_carbyau_]

While I agree in the sense that what you say improves human race survival vs whatever-else comes.

But evolutionary pressure also occurs within the species and for the human race $$$ has largely influenced demonstration of procreational traits.

Intelligence doesn't matter if you are smart but don't have any opportunities. The other social cues, fashion, appearance, physical fitness, health, being "funny". Are all a lot easier if you have $$$.

So many conversations around modern population fertility rates have a $ component in them.

Maybe being intelligent matters more than simple strength and coordination used to. But what kind of intelligence?

Maybe being a sociopath such that you can bully your way to CEO - or to a high enough level you meet some "darwinian fitness" threshold.

But in and of itself, being able to engineer the feat of walking on the moon didn't make all the nasa employees inherently more desirable to partners to procreate. Those employees maybe had attributes that matched with desirable procreation partners and maybe that feat brought $$$ too - but the engineering smarts alone isn't it.