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Comment by afterburner | Hacker News Reader

I didn't mean to imply Jobs was a con man. But I don't get why your comment applies, especially since it credit a large group which I would be entirely willing to accept contained numerous geniuses. It would be equivalent to praising Apple as a whole, which I would definitely be fine with. Lots of excellent work from very talented people going on there no doubt.

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> It would be equivalent to praising Apple as a whole, which I would definitely be fine with

Okay.

Well, the thing about that is, Apple as a whole almost burned to the ground once upon a time.

A man's singular vision turned that around. A company on the brink of death turns into one of the most valuable in all the world.

If the guy who can do that isn't a genius, we might as well give up on using the word.

Is good leadership always genius? Was his good leadership all the way up there at genius level? Is working hard to bring out the ideas of your staff worthy of genius-level praise? If he was more humble no-one might have called him a genius, although he would still be respected.

I think there is plenty of room for praising people for quite astonishing accomplishments, but I don't necessarily equate accomplishment with genius. It's not a knock on someone if they really pull something off but they don't get called genius. Genius is in the mind.

> Genius is in the mind.

Agree completely.

Steve didn't accomplish all he did using his fists.

Genius is not somebody that makes you believe that you 'need' something that you actually don't, those are mere leaders of the consumerism religion. Geniuses were people like Pitagoras, Newton, Gödel... you know, people that opened whole new science fields just with the power of their minds. Please don't insult them with your first world cheap heros.

Newton and Godel are first world heroes. Pythagoras lived long ago, so the concept of first/third worlds is moot here.

I guess "First world Heroes" means people who solve problems that are do not really matter for humanities progress. And I think there is a lot of truth in that: Mp3 players, Smartphones and such are nice things to have, but their impact is negligible in comparison to things like the telegraph, Phones, microprocessors, mobile phones, cars, railways, aviation, space flight, the internet and the theoretical works enabling them.

^ This is what I mean with my sentence, thanks :)

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