You should also stop and consider, for just a moment, that if the only stories that can convince you need to be famous, you're working in a very narrow space of human experience.
It's a big world out there, and there are a lot of smart people who will defy your expectations.
Actually, it's not inherently about fame. It has to do with whether the hackers are skilled. Pg goes into why it's difficult to compare hacker skill in one of his essays, though I forget which. But the summary is that nobody knows who the most talented hackers are, because you have to work with them to know how talented they are. Therefore fame is the only metric that makes sense in this case to derive hard evidence. Fame is a proxy for many people having recognized their talent, and the original question was about talent.