When an obvious outlier pops up, I really respect that can represent an alternative path which might be maintained without serious limitations imposed by mainstream momentum.
Plus you have to figure, if you're going to discover anything at all before you're 20, you're going to need to start when you're still a teenager, or better yet a pre-teen. Why wait decades? OTOH, why not continue to be an outlier decade after decade and put the continuous improvement approach through a compounding effect?
Kind of like you would do financially with compound interest where starting early has a clear mathematical advantage of its own.
Technical mastery is one part of the equation that may or may not need to be built over the decades (but is too often arrested along the way).
However simple random occurrence is still a component and you would expect two decades of effort to double your chances of a breakthrough compared to a single decade, but in an environment of declining opportunity those earlier wins might be far more valuable than the same thing happening later on.
I think many of us are seeing the creativity here and recognizing it's one of the things that can lead toward unprecedented discovery which is where some of the most major impact comes from.
That path to discovery sure is impossible to pinpoint, especially when a certain amount of technical mastery combined with significant good fortune along with true creative effort are still not enough most of the time.
There's just something to be said about starting out more advanced in some way or another than others your own age, and maintaining that over the long term.
