Or a better teacher. The limiting factor isn't necessarily the student.

So we should ensure equal opportunity to ice-skating lessons, in perpetuity, for all humans? Just in case?

Yeah dawg! That sounds like basic decency that doesn’t cost much to anyone who’d be harmed. Also it’s a general principle of meritocracy. You can’t merit anything without access to merit it!

LMFAO do you have any idea how much it costs to operate an ice-skating rink? How about in a place like Los Angeles, California? Apparently not.

Or you're trolling me. In that case, well done friend.

Your objection was to equal opportunity to lessons. We’re not talking about operating ice skating rinks for the public. We’re talking about allowing all people to be taught by teachers.

No, I find that position rather absurd. I'm not talking about entitlement. I was reacting to a train of thought started two posts up:

> There just was not enough time dedicated to dissecting how to parse word problem, look for patterns, map it to a framework. It was basically left to the student to figure it out in 1 week based on 3-4 homework problems.

My position is that, perhaps, it is counterproductive to tell people who have some trouble in this environment to "find another occupation" based on such a limited measure of performance. We've never defined what the occupation is in this exchange, so perhaps I'm just unintentionally talking past you. I'm certainly biased. The autodidacts I've worked with (who intentionally dropped out of the rigid, unforgiving environment of academia) have been among the biggest contributors on teams I've participated in. In environments more suited to them, they learn just as fast as folks with a more traditional background. In these instances, the occupation was fine. The teacher needed to be swapped out.

> In environments more suited to them, they learn just as fast as folks with a more traditional background. In these instances, the occupation was fine. The teacher needed to be swapped out.

You're assuming it's the teacher's fault. That will be true in some cases, but it may impossible to tell at the time. What will be true in others is that the person (like me) was far more motivated by work than academia, and university at the age of 18 wasn't appropriate.

Sometimes this is true. But sometimes the limiting factor really is the student.

In my own experience I've seen fellow students put in less than half the effort I did (I watched them copy homework assignments in groups 30 minutes before class, spend a lot of time trying to track down last years exams, etc etc), and then have the nerve to complain afterwards that the exams were too hard.

I’ve seen fellow students put a quarter of time on studying that I did (they spent the rest studying all the other advanced stuff that I didn’t even have time to look at), and get top scores on exams and effortlessly explain everything to us mere mortals. Life simply is not fair.

Me too. Hal Finney (that Hal) was in the dorm room next to mine at university. He could ignore class for an entire semester. Just before exams, he would pick up the textbook, spend a couple hours on it, and ace the test.

Again and again.

While Hal was one of the nicest, easy going guys I can remember, his intelligence was so far off the charts there was no way to compete with that.

Of course, sometimes I wish I was as smart as Hal, as musical as George Harrison, as handsome as Tom Cruise, as cool as Steve McQueen, but all one can do is just be glad that nature produces such people now and then. I have no desire to tear them down to my level.

Yes, it's a combination of passion and ability. The super-achievers in any field have both.

Even the NFL needs backup quarterbacks. There are examples in almost every profession that highlight the value of a spectrum of capability.

Backup quarterbacks in the NFL is actually the worst possible example you could've given here. How many of those do you think they need relative to the population ? What level of play do you imagine they have to exhibit?

Unflagged remix yayy yayyyeee

The point is that even in the NFL, there's a wide and very visible gap between the top and bottom levels of quarterback play, and that's taking into account that these players (including the backups) are already considered the best of the best.

I only mentioned the NFL because I was riffing on your comment about throwing footballs, but agree that it's generally a stretched analogy. The extreme scarcity at the top of most professional sports and the resulting lack of utility/career viability outside of the big leagues doesn't compare well to most vocations.

The argument also assumes the only reason someone plays football is to play in the NFL. I invested significant time learning to skate because I enjoy it, not because I think I'll become a professional hockey player.

Backup NFL quarterback is a pretty damn elite job. There are what, 50 or 60 of them in the world? Vs dozens of NCAA div 1 starters who graduate every year.