Hotz is pretty eccentric, but he's also pretty incredible. While technology wouldn't progress very far if everyone was like Hotz, I also don't think it would get very far without people like Hotz.
Exactly. You can appreciate aspects of a person and the work they do without deifying them in their entirety. Linus Torvalds and weev (being an extreme example) fall into this category.
Agreed. I can appreciate people who can go heads down and get things done. Where it falls apart for me is when those people get deified--or deify themselves, like that last quote demonstrates. And when they demonstrate an unwillingness to collaborate.