This is a good point. It occurs to me that a disproportional number of people in this forum may have had the experience growing up of being the smartest, most promising kid in class. Maybe you were always put into the advanced classes even in subjects you weren't interested in. As you advance, the competition gets a little tougher, but you learn to push yourself, too.

For the overwhelming majority of people, this cycle has to end, early or late, with the shock of realizing that you are finally out of your league. Some poor bastard had to come to terms with knowing that he was obviously the dumbest physicist on the Manhattan Project, a net drag on the team.

The overwhelming number of people in historical times have died and been forgotten. How many people have lived? And of those, how many could possibly be even assigned a name by any historical records, let alone a place in popular memory?