It's right there in my initial post; barely any of the work is his own.
It's mostly memorization and recall and a single proof about primes he is well known for. It's akin to being well versed in Star Wars canon.
If Tao can be replaced by a model he isn't that smart just hyper-optimized in a narrow scope. As a scientist such evidence has to be a part of the assessment; it's not hard; find gaps in a syntax system and generate meaningful syntax to close the gaps. It's an idea printed in information theory books almost a century old.
He's well versed in existing content but has broken no interesting new ground. Where is his calculus or linear algebra. That to me is the real bar; definition of truly never before seen axioms and proof of them.
Lewis Hamilton is a great car driver but he didn't invent the internal combustion engine or racing; he's just a butt in a seat.
Butt hurt; because I don't easily accept awards handed out by innumerates who, not being mathematicians themselves, cannot possibly have an informed opinion on the quality of his work.
Many a mathematician and physicist out there have claimed there's no telling how much of this is verified; there are endless papers out there that constrain what we can actually know via scientific inquiry. Everyone in research just pretends they know it all because hey it's a living made not working in the mines.
But my bad for discussing and debating this all with experts over the years and not just accepting the populist take. If going with popular thing is the expectation Christianity is way more popular around the globe; lets just bin this science thing.
Good for Tao for achieving celebrity in a world of willfully ignorant people; convincing people too ignorant to challenge him to just give him awards sure means those awards are meritorious.
I simply don't carry water for and deify individuals when everything is clearly due to a mesh web of human labor across the globe.