Yeah, its insane to claim talent isn't orders of magnitude apart. I'm probably a better programmer than 99% of the population, but then I see those insane luajit or llvm people and realize I'm just another noob.
I think you're misunderstanding talent. You always have to compare yourself to people who invested an equal amount of time training the skill.
For example I go to the gym regularly (at least before the pandemic). I'm probably in the upper 10% of the population when it comes to strength. But compared to the regulars in the gym I'm below average.
> Are you saying they're all 10,000x smarter than us?
You don't make billions by being billion times smarter than other people, but by either deploying raw materials, or labor or capital to scale billion times more.
But in order to do that, you can't be 1x of the average person (generally speaking), but you don't need to be billion times better either.
