It's a perfectly fine formula. My argument is that the capacity for 'fuzzy logic' and 'intuitive leaps' required for works of genius doesn't magically disappear when you turn 42, and that people develop differently. I've just given you an extensive list of some of the most creative people ever in comics and popular media, who were coincidentally in their forties, fifties and beyond while doing their finest work--and some continuously, for much longer on average than a five to ten year 'peak period'. I'm sure the criteria fit well within an overview of the general populace, and I know that if a left-brained scientist hasn't made a major breakthrough by the time he's 30, it's likely never to happen. I just wonder if observation of the phenomena doesn't directly affect the outcome--which is what I mean by a Meme being accepted as fact--while consistent creative geniuses who are 75% of the time my favorite--negate it as a given fact, by their very existence. It's just that intuitive, creative people in creative fields might be more prone to, well, creative imagination--if that is the 'muscle' they are using. All I'm saying is that both a twenty-something doing his doctoral dissertation about peak performance in the general populace, and a 69-year-old William Blake, sketchin' up a storm on his deathbed, after 40 years of peak creative activity, or Hermann Hesse winning the Nobel Prize for Literature at 69 for his most recent work--can and do exist side by side in our reality.

Those who ignore paradigms are not limited by them, and get to work.