Comment by nestes

Not the original poster, but I want to push back on one thing -- being capable of something and being one of the best in the world at something are hugely different. Forgive me if I'm putting words in your math -- you mentioned "placing the bar for mathematical skill pretty" low but also mentioned running a sub-10s 100m. If, correspondingly, your notion of mathematical success is being Terence Tao, then I envy your ambition.

I do broadly agree with your position that some people are going to excel where others fail. We know there trivially exist people with significant disabilities that will never excel in certain activities. What the variance is on "other people" (a crude distinction) I hesitate to say. And whatever the solution is, if there is even a solution, I'd at least like for the null hypothesis to be "this is possible, we just may need to change our approach or put more time in".

On a slightly more philosophical note, I firmly believe that it is important to believe some things that are not necessarily true -- let's call this "feel-good thinking". If someone is truly putting significant dedicated effort in and not getting results, that is a tragedy. I would, however, greatly prefer that scenario to the one in which people are regularly told, "well, you could just be stupid." That is a self-fulfilling prophecy.