I've been thinking about that quote from time to time for a while now, and what strikes me is that his generalization does sound very plausible, but we have to

I've been thinking about that quote from time to time for a while now, and what strikes me is that his generalization does sound very plausible, but we have to remember that his experience is from a very specific context. To me it seems like having an open door at Los Alamos or Bell Labs back then, is akin to hanging around HN, certain IRC/Slack channels, and so on, today. At least for the vast majority of us, who wouldn't be exposed to such bright people otherwise. Although I wouldn't count myself as successful by any metric, I still think I've picked up a lot of interesting and useful stuff though osmosis, stuff that a lot of people not exposed to the same things only realize a few years later when it hits the mainstream and becomes part of the zeitgeist of Western culture (and so much else that never hits a more general audience but still holds promise within their respective niches if one can connect the dots).