I should point out that the comment I made about being optimistic was a minor part of my post—a footnote in fact. The reason why many people have trouble learning is because learning disorders are common and more generally people have numerous difficulties with grasping material (lack of focus, direction, motivation, getting distracted easily, aversion to the material, low curiosity, innumeracy etc.).
I suppose you can cast them as having ‘broken parts’, but I don’t think that helps. They are people.
Having broken parts is not a moral judgement. In the next sentences I showed how I have similar difficulties.
Regardless, the main point of my first explanation was less of saying that everyone has a similar ability to learn, and more of saying that previous analysis didn’t take into account that differences in abilities can be explained by accounting for differences in training. This is a very important point to make. Measuring performance on Go, Chess and other games like that misses the point—and for the very reason I outlined.
ETA: Maybe it helps if we restrict ourselves to the group of people who are college educated and have no mental difficulties focusing on hard intellectual work. That way we can see more clearly the claim that “There don’t really seem to be humans who tower above us in terms of their ability to soak up new information and process it.”
I should point out that the comment I made about being optimistic was a minor part of my post—a footnote in fact. The reason why many people have trouble learning is because learning disorders are common and more generally people have numerous difficulties with grasping material (lack of focus, direction, motivation, getting distracted easily, aversion to the material, low curiosity, innumeracy etc.).
Having broken parts is not a moral judgement. In the next sentences I showed how I have similar difficulties.
Regardless, the main point of my first explanation was less of saying that everyone has a similar ability to learn, and more of saying that previous analysis didn’t take into account that differences in abilities can be explained by accounting for differences in training. This is a very important point to make. Measuring performance on Go, Chess and other games like that misses the point—and for the very reason I outlined.
ETA: Maybe it helps if we restrict ourselves to the group of people who are college educated and have no mental difficulties focusing on hard intellectual work. That way we can see more clearly the claim that “There don’t really seem to be humans who tower above us in terms of their ability to soak up new information and process it.”