>Fierce nerds also tend to be somewhat overconfident, especially when young. It might seem like it would be a disadvantage to be mistaken about one's abilities, but empirically it isn't. Up to a point, confidence is a self-fullfilling prophecy.

As a child I was mathematically precocious and often (to myself) compared my modest accomplishments to stories of prodigies like Gauss or von Neumann. Looking back it seems patently ridiculous, but I might not have spent dozens of hours per week reading math textbooks and Wikipedia if I had had a more realistic self-perception. I can't say I regret it.