I think it’s probably a little of both. On one side, I am reminded of the quote “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity”. Many of the big disco

I think it’s probably a little of both. On one side, I am reminded of the quote “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity”. Many of the big discoveries happened by very intelligent people being in the right place, at the right time where a certain idea was ripe, meeting the right people, and having just enough gusto, so to speak, to push in a new direction. I think that is probably applicable to people like Einstein and Shannon. I’m not taking away from them at all because they did it with work and intelligence. It’s just they had the right preparation at the right time and place. But then there are other people that do seem to be on a totally different plane, usually in some specific field. One that comes to mind is someone like Grigori Perelman. I think that’s where the comment on genetics applies, because someone like that truly has biological horsepower that the rest of us don’t have. Then there are others who are more generalist thinkers, at a system level, that seem to see things the rest of us don’t and have the capability to sort through it all. I’m reminded of people like Stafford Beer. Someone like Noam Chomsky is probably in this category as well but also in the former, like Perelman. If you’ve ever watched Chomsky debate or speak, he seems to have a basically infinite memory and instant recall of what he has read.