TLDR:

Around Einstein-level, relatively small changes in intelligence can lead to large changes in what one is capable to accomplish.
1. E.g. Einstein was a bit better than the other best physi at seeing deep connections and reasoning, but was able to accomplish much more in terms of impressive scientific output.
There are architectures where small changes can have significant effects on intelligence.
1. E.g. small changes in human-brain-hyperparameters: Einstein’s brain didn’t need to be trained on 3x the compute than normal physics professors for him to become much better at forming deep understanding, even without intelligence improving intelligence.

Einstein and the heavytail of human intelligence

1905 is often described as the "annus mirabilis" of Albert Einstein. He founded quantum physics by postulating the existence of (light) quanta, explained Brownian motion, introduced the special relativity theory and derived E=mc² from it. All of this. In one year. While having a full-time job in the Swiss patent office.

With the exception of John von Neumann, we’d say those discoveries alone seem more than any other scientist of the 20th century achieved in their lifetime (though it's debatable).

Though perhaps even more impressive is that Einstein was able to derive general relativity.

Einstein was often so far ahead of his time that even years after he published his theories the majority of physicists rejected them because they couldn’t understand them, sometimes even though there was experimental evidence favoring Einstein's theories. After solving the greatest open physics problems at the time in 1905, he continued working in the patent office until 1908, since the universities were too slow on the uptake to hire him earlier.

Example for how far ahead of his time Einstein was: Deriving the theory of light quanta

The following section is based on parts of the 8th chapter of “Surfaces and Essences” by Douglas Hofstadter. For an analysis of some of Einstein's discoveries, which show how far ahead of his time he was, I can recommend reading it.

At the time, one of the biggest problems in physics was the “Blackbody spectrum”, which describes the spectrum of electromagnetic wavelengths emitted by a Blackbody. The problem with it was that the emitted spectrum was not explainable by known physics. Einstein achieved a breakthrough by considering light not just as a w...

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