I know a couple of guys diagnosed with Asperger's. They are two of the best code writers in the biz. Another person I know of sustained a brain injury and all of the sudden could learn to play several musical instruments. He had no noticible musical talent prior to the injury.
Achievements in life come from a sum of all our parts and efforts. Why not acknowledge that our makeup sometimes enhances our abilities towards certain achievements?
Seems to me that, in theory, if a big bump on the head can do that, there ought to be surgeries that could unleash prodigious talent.
There are Freepers who get their undies in a knot whenever anyone suggests that accomplishment, wealth, great learning, or any such thing is caused by anything other than good old Protestant hard work, reciting the Pledge every morning, sitting still in your desk, and doing what the government school teacher says. Anybody who does things in a way that’s at all eccentric must be a hippie.
And have you ever noticed how many programmers, myself included, have dyslexia to some degree? I swear sometimes it helps. And maybe that translates into being able to look at a problem from a different angle than others do.
I think this article makes a lot of interesting points and is probably on to something. Maybe brains that function differently than what's "normal" should not be medicated into oblivion.
The combination of high intelligence plus the ability to super-focus on a problem for extended periods of time plus the stubbornness to keep working on something in the face of disparagement = genius