So I have a friend, let's call him Joe. Asian American, met him at one of those "gifted" summer programs. Top of his class at MIT CS, worked at a top quant hedge fund, also a YC founder. He is significantly smarter than me.

One day I said "man, you were probably like the smartest kid at MIT when you were there." He looked at me like I had horns and said "dude not even close. There were so many times I felt dumb."

He then told me about a classmate of his, let's call him Ron. White guy. He was a legendary math olympian, and MIT classmates called him the Great White Hope. Joe was struggling with a math problem set, no progress after hours of laborious work. He finally swallowed his ego and asked Ron for help. Ron was playing video games, thought for a few minutes, and solved it with very little effort. Joe was stunned. That was his come to Jesus moment when he realized the limits of his intelligence that nature endowed him with. That there were levels to this.

I was reminded of this story when I read the Scott Wu profile on Colossus.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5866914&forum_id=2E#49886831)