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Originally Posted by Sregener
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.
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I know, and it shouldn't be like that.
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What all "normal" people have is the ability to learn. <snip rest>
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What you are saying is that there are many people that don't have the required intelligence to understand certain things, such as brain surgery, no matter how much and how long they study.
That's certainly true. Maybe that example was a bit too high on the ladder. While I'm convinced that I could probably study and understand (almost) any academic field if I wanted to, and given the time, I'm sure it woudn't be easy.
On the other hand, I'm also realistic enough to know that I will never ever reach an ELO rating of 2800+ (Garry Kasparov / Magnus Carlsen level), even if I *had* kept up chess after high school. I would probably have become a fair player, somewhere just below master level (~2300-2400 ELO or so, like my teacher), but I know I wouldn't have had the talent OR drive/motivation to ever become a contestant for the world championship.
However, most fields of work or study are not at the level of brain surgery or championship level sports. For most people, things revolve around a difference such as the following.
Let's say, you are working in Photoshop CS4 on Windows, as a "Medior Design Engineer". Then you apply for "Senior Design Engineer", because the one on the team left. However, the SDE converted to a Mac, and Photoshp CS6 last year, after pestering the manager for it.
Then your manager says: "I'm not convinced you can be a SDE, because you have been working with Windows and CS4. The SDE uses a Mac now, and CS6, and you have no experience with them."
That's the sort of stuff I often hear, and it infuriates me. It essentially tells me that the manager thinks the applicant is stupid (can't actually work with a computer or software, and so only "performs steps"), or has another reason to not want to give someone that position, a reason that is forbidden by law to be a reason ("I don't like you because you're black/Jewish/Whatever").
Such a switch would be trivial for anyone who is the least bit intelligent and knows what he's doing. It would probably take less than one workweek to get to full speed after such a switch.