alt Hacker News> cannot agree. It's just "feel-good thinking."
Not really. There's nothing inherently special about people who dedicated enough time to learn a subject.
> "Everybody can do everything." Well, that's simply not true. I'm fairly sure you (yes, you in particular) can't run the 100m in less than 10s, no matter how hard you trained.
What a bad comparison. So far in human history there were less than 200 people who ran 100m in less than 10s.
I think you're just reflecting an inflated sense of self worth.
> Not really. There's nothing inherently special about people who dedicated enough time to learn a subject.
"You didn't work hard enough." People really blame you for that, not for lacking talent.
> So far in human history there were less than 200 people who ran 100m in less than 10s.
And many millions have tried. There may be 200 people who can run it under 10s, but there are thousands that can run it under 11s, and hundreds of thousands that can run it under 12s. Unless you've got clear evidence that those people can actually run 100m in less than 10s if they simply try harder, I think the experience of practically every athlete is that they hit a performance wall. And it isn't different for maths, languages, music, sculpting (did you ever try that?), etc. Where there are geniuses, there also absolute blockheads.
That's not to say that people won't perform better when they work harder, but the limits are just not the same for everyone. So 'capable of mathematical reasoning' either is some common denominator barely worth mentioning, or the statement simply isn't true. Clickbait, if you will.