It's the same with any skill, lots of people are convinced they can't make music, or learn Mandarin or what have you. 99% of it is preconceived notions that they don't belong into a certain club and because we keep telling people that if something's hard for you, you're untalented and you should focus on something else. But it's just effort, even if it's more effort for some in the beginning, there's no magic in any of it.
I met a girl who struggled with trig and another guy who basically trivially studied the subject and aced it. IQ matters a lot.
We are talking in circles. Both matter but I’m saying with my example above that even at basic math, both still matter. It’s not some thing where iq only matters for phd level math
Even for talented people, learning a skill to a high level takes years.
Mere mortals don't really have that many years of free time. Choosing a path that one seems talented at is usually the right path.
It's one thing for the person to decide they want to take the risk knowing that they might not have the talent to learn the skill in a "reasonable" time, but it's another to thing to pretend there's no difference and cheer on a person chasing an improbable dream and waste a persons' life.
To be or not to be. Basically.
So basically the disagreement is to the approach to default to when the future is unclear. Taking the right action requires a degree of foresight that people generally don't have. (I'm not sure everyone has the same skill to intuit the future, but I'll grant you that it's just effort to learn it, even if it requires significantly more effort for some...)
I have heard of a few philosophers of their day years back being considered "the most learned man in Europe". Not the smartest, but the most learned. Learned implies agency, smart implies something innate.
With the advent of IQ tests and the computer you get the brain as computer metaphor gone much too far.
Terence Tao has a 64 core threadripper, so if you are just using a 4 core i5 don't even bother.
Then of course if you believe an i5 is basically worthless it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy even though for most tasks both would be plenty fast enough.
We accepts these types of basic inequalities when it comes to physical ability without blinking an eye, yet if you apply the exact same logic to the brain (a physical organ) people go into hysterics.
Most people could probably get a lot closer to dunking than they think they are capable of, but theres a very obvious hard limit.
Maybe with better nutrition, childhood conditions, and healthcare a good portion of this group could have been promoted into a different group, but the idea that everyone just needs better prereqs and they'd learn math better isn't right. The article itself was written by someone who manages their own website.
It's significantly slower than for average people and requires a ridiculous amount of effort on the part of the teacher and student, but it's possible.
Due to limited working memory many of these students will make mistake no matter how difficult the material is, and they will be slow at resolving problems, but I've never had a student without serious mental health issues be unable to get to precalculus level, and in the ones I've seen try they've been able to get to university math.
Again, many will always make more mistakes and/or be slow, but the concepts themselves are generally within grasp.
I see talent as the base of the pyramid. The limit to how high you can build your pyramid is the talent. There's certainly plenty of people who never reach their full potential for lack of prerequisites, opportunities, resources, etc. But there's a clear difference in how high and how fast different people can build even with equal circumstances.