Genius is about getting a check for what you do.

He says that self-expression is not unusual. But then, there have been millions of diarists, but only a few were great novelists, there have been millions of eyewitnesses, but only a few ascended to the level of Edward R. Murrow. Millions of people have balanced checkbooks, but only a few people are genius mathematicians. It is a basic logical fallacy to claim that because the mean of an exponentially distributed group is low, that the high is therefore, not consequential.