The result called obvious afterward still required someone to risk being wrong beforehand.

Obviousness is manufactured after the fact. Once something is known, the path to it looks like a straight line, and it becomes hard to remember that someone had to commit to it while it was still an unpopular guess with a real chance of embarrassment. Hindsight erases the risk and then withholds the credit.

Be careful about calling other people’s work obvious, and be careful about dismissing your own instinct because it seems too simple to be worth saying. If you can see something clearly that others have not yet said, that clarity is the contribution. Say it while it still costs something to be wrong.