Well, first off, thank you for your kind words.

It’s a fair critique.

One point that I’d like to clarify though. So you said, “You call the the happy 20 percent the outliers but a lot of them were born in the ‘right’ families and often their ‘success’ is less meritocratic then assumed.”

When I was speaking about the role of the outliers, I didn’t actually mean their success as individuals. I meant that in terms of the way they contribute to society. I was thinking of ace pilots, innovators, thought leaders, star athletes, etc. The point of highlighting that role was to show how, on a societal level, these figures can allow for large advances because they were encouraged to follow their own path.

Hopefully that makes sense.