The real sting here isn't that success validates brilliance—it's that the line between them is drawn *retroactively*, not beforehand. A visionary working alone in her garage looks indistinguishable from a crank until the moment the world catches up. This explains why we lionize entrepreneurs who mortgaged everything on an idea, yet mock the neighbor who's been perfecting his perpetual motion machine for thirty years; the only difference is whether history vindicated them. It should make us gentler with people pursuing unconventional paths, and more humble about our certainty that someone's mad.