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Comment by mmsimanga | Hacker News Reader

I think you are conflating things here. The gentleman who came up with the polio vaccine is the "crazy" person who decided not to accept the status quo. That polio should be literally a death sentence. I am not saying the hard working people who administered the vaccine should not be acknowledged, they should be but we cannot equate administering the vaccine to inventing the vaccine.

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It wasn't one gentleman but the result of multiple people.

Solutions are seldom the result of one lonely working geniuses.

For instance the internet or FB changed the world, but I wouldn't categorize their inventors as those crazy ones mentioned in the article.

We just tend to attribute special features to the most well known people, higher endurance, greater skill, stronger will.

There are way to many inventions and companies to thinks the world is formed by a few 'crazy' ones.

The only crazy one who achieved that are the real crazy ones and they didn't change the world to the better, see Putin.

I agree that most things aren't invented by one person. We stand on the shoulders of giants. I am okay with recognising all 20 or 100 people who contribute to an invention. Heck even the 1000 people. I am just having a hard time with notion that those administering the vaccine are the same as those who invented the vaccine. I use Linux promote Linux to those in my circles. I certainly do not view myself as an equal to Linus.

I'm not talking about the administering of the vaccine but it's development.

Even that was a team effort and I doubt that people like Sabin count as that kind of crazy mentioned in the article.

Those are average scientists, not meant pejoratively, on the contrary, doing their job and sometimes the results have a big impact.

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