I disagree with that threshold. When I was younger I thought it made sense: I was put into gifted and talented, and I developed an insane elitism that I used to

I disagree with that threshold. When I was younger I thought it made sense: I was put into gifted and talented, and I developed an insane elitism that I used to denounce pretty much everybody around me for not having the same intellect. As I got older, I realized: it's not like that. People are very rarely stupid. Most people are very bright and just don't care to apply themselves. Again and again, as a kid, I'd come across situations with bullies and go with the lie that the bullies were stupid and jealous. Then in high school, I'd realize that some of those bullies were very bright, clever, and talkative, and that my own actions towards other kids could be perceived as bullying, when to me it was more a good-natured hazing. I started to realize that even the stoner deadheads that I thought were entirely mindless were in fact intelligent people who knew they were ruining their lives and just didn't care. From the people I've seen, the idea of exclusive intelligence is not as true as most people think it is. I've met people with higher IQs than me who seem less intelligent than I am, because they weren't raised in the way I was, and so went around laboriously working on schoolwork without ever once finding their own interests. For me, that was the height of unintelligence: doing things without asking why. On the other hand, I know one or two people I used to think were stupid going out and doing some pretty impressive things, not because they were particularly bright, but because they kept at something longer than other people did. The line about genius being 99% perspiration keeps coming up in my mind during this conversation. Most people have good ideas: one statement I read says everybody has three million-dollar ideas every year. We've all thought of cool things and then seen somebody else making a fortune of that cool thing. The difference between that person and the rest of the people with that idea is that that person knew what to do with his idea. The idea itself wasn't uncommon, but its realization was. Most people don't do great things because most people don't care to do great things. They never try once. Look at the startups you see here. Most of them are interesting, most of the coders have good things in mind. But how many would you call great? Even the really good coders rarely take on anything monumental.