> some very confident futurist dudes writing comments on the internet

What an odd take, why would I suggest that? I meant that people who have the means to do meaningful work, especially high impact work, should do so - generally that'd mean research or in the case of IT, writing good software.

> Great Man Theory

You can see the sibling comment, would you not agree that there's some software and research out there that's very useful to humanity as a whole? Where I and the other critical commenter seem to disagree is that I don't expect another Einstein, but still acknowledge that some people will just achieve much more than others due to a variety of factors.

For example, it's hard to take risks when you're struggling to pay bills due to the economy being in a bad state, and it's hard to build great things when you're in a locale where nobody cares for whatever it may be. It's also hard to make much of an impact, where disproportionate amount of time goes fighting against illness that life has inflicted upon you.

It doesn't make everyone else useless (like me paying my taxes and working on relatively boring software is still good, just low impact), just that those who have the means to do more, should!