I find the idea that there are a lot of more intelligent people in the world than me comforting, especially in my chosen fields. Not because I feel this gives me an excuse to slack off and let them do the hard work, but because competition seems to drive me and keep me happier than anything else. Since finding lesswrong and related sites where people discuss AI, programming, and rationality, my efforts have improved considerably. I am far from competing with most of the people here, particularly you, but at least I have mental patterns I can model to improve.

I know people with greater mental horsepower than you, but none of them ever persisted at any problems that are hard enough to test the limits of their abilities.