Am I the only one who believe that the "10x programmer" might actually be someone who is just as good as the others, but actually work constantly and is self sufficient ?

I believe this, mostly. There are those who refuse to learn and do poorly, but compared to an average programmer instead of the worst, the real difference is ability to remain focused despite interruption (or a good mitigation strategy), a desire to improve oneself, and a willingness to continue working through a solution to either completion or determination of it being the wrong answer and finding an alternative.

Probably but I doubt you'll ever hear recruiters say: We're looking for rockstar ninjas but we'll settle for someone who's very productive by blowing off bullshit distractions.

There were teams of 2-3 average programmers who, combined, didn't deliver what John Carmack did over his career.

What about in algorithm development or research? Could an average programmer invent quicksort, dynamic programming or information theory if transported back to the mid 20th century?

There is >10x productivity in scientists or mathematician using many kinds of metrics (papers, citations, awards etc)

"Could an average programmer invent quicksort, dynamic programming or information theory if transported back to the mid 20th century?"

I think many could have yes, had they been in the same academic environment as the people who invented those things. It's amazing what normal people can acheive when they are isolated from the noise of modern corporate work environments and given the resources to focus on a problem.

Not only can most programmers not create it, most can't implement it:

Binary search is a great example because it's so simple and yet it's so easy to implement incorrectly. In Programming Pearly, Jon Bently shares how, over the years, he asked hundreds of programmers to implement binary search after providing them with a description of the basic algorithm. He gave them a very generous two hours to write it, and even allowed them to use the high-level language of their choice (including pseudocode). Surprisingly, only about 10 percent of professional programmers implemented binary search correctly. (Beautiful Code, p. 87)

I don't know.... I have not seen this study, but:

1> I feel I can safely say that I am more productive than the median programmer, as are probably a majority of visitors to Hacker News

2> I am aware of many famous programmers who are more productive than I am by at least an order of magnitude - probably two orders of magnitude.

Skeptical. You may be star struck and/or undervaluing yourself.

More likely I simply have a much lower estimation than you do of the productivity of the median programmer.