I think people are getting hung up too much on the "their own" part vs "full of geniuses" part.
Ok, fine, if three - instead of one - people - out of billions - came up with a revolutionary new idea - that does not, to me, discount the idea of the "lone genius", just because 2 > 1 and we can't strictly use the word "lone" anymore.
The idea would be discounted, if say, 500 million people all invented calculus independently of each other over a period of 5 months.
Ok, fine, if three - instead of one - people - out of billions - came up with a revolutionary new idea - that does not, to me, discount the idea of the "lone genius", just because 2 > 1 and we can't strictly use the word "lone" anymore.
The idea would be discounted, if say, 500 million people all invented calculus independently of each other over a period of 5 months.