Quote:
Originally Posted by Katsunami
The only prohibition for many (intelligent) people to not be able to do things is lack of knowledge, and often, lack of money or time to acquire it.
Even people with only average intelligence can often do much more than they, or others, think they are capable of, *if* they have the motivation to work at it. They'll probably need to work harder or practice more than the more intelligent people, but that doesn't take away the fact they can do stuff, if given the chance.
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In a perfectly free society, you're right, Katsunami. But not all societies are free, and none are perfectly so. In many cases, governments set up restrictions for who can do certain things (brain surgery, for instance) and then only grant certain applicants the right to do them. If the government or process is corrupt enough, it may take nothing more than a bad grade from a teacher who doesn't like your politics to sink your future career choice.
What all "normal" people have is the ability to learn. Work (practice, done right, with a review process that improves future practice) at something and you will get better at it.
The difference is that intelligence gives you two advantages: first, you have a head start because you've picked things up in the past faster than others so you already know things others would still have to learn. Second, you can stretch that lead on others, because you continue to pick things up faster than others. This is what we generally call intelligence. The same principle applies to people who are "athletic"; the only difference being that the things picked up on are physical rather than academic.
But we all have limits, and those will generally keep all but the very best out of certain fields (brain surgery, even in a perfectly free society.) We don't need 2000 tennis players who can play as well as Rafael Nadal. We don't need 50,000 people who can invent a wonder drug. And for some of us, the pace at which we can learn to do some thing at a useful level (brain surgery) may exceed our mortality, in which case we'll never get there.
There are some things everyone can learn. You can learn to read. You can learn to do basic arithmetic. You can learn to cook. You can even learn to play the drums if you're tone deaf. The mistake is thinking that because everyone can learn these basic skills, everyone could learn the more advanced ones as well.