I would argue that people who go deep are invisible for most of their early career to the general public, and only become famous (if ever) once they use this kn

I would argue that people who go deep are invisible for most of their early career to the general public, and only become famous (if ever) once they use this knowledge years later, at which point someone might ask about their past and they could explain how many thousands of hours they spent holed up learning. Even within your extended local social graph this is likely to be the case, imagine if your e.g. neighbor's teen spends years learning about any topic, if you ask your neighbor then they're not likely to tell you (might not even know!) about this, instead would tell you the typical "oh you know he's a teenager and hangs out with his friends and is all day playing videogames" or might tell you on the surface "he's interested in science". You might only get a more accurate picture within a close social graph, but then it's statistically very unlikely that any of those are one of those dig-deep geniuses. I've seen at least 3 examples in the Open Source/DIY communities of news about some popular-ish people who shocked everyone when they revealed their age and were teenagers. Some times they hid it intentionally to avoid being judged against, some times they just never mentioned. BTW, the more generic "young people are lazy/don't want to put effort" is a meme that has been said for literally centuries by the respective older generations: https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/407/503/119.jpeg https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/407/503/119... https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2013/05/me-me-me-generation-vs-the-me-decade.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2013/05/me-me-me-generation-...