You know, at one point, somebody would have been writing that same comment for literacy. Or, as the case may be, not writing it :P.

I have met members of the general public. (Wow, I can't think of how to use that phrase without sounding at least a little bit patronizing. Fine. I am a little bit patronizing.) Many of them should have taken a logic class at some point. At least enough not to fall for obvious nonsense. At least enough to reason and argue avoiding fallacies and obviously incorrect positions. At least enough, in short, to think properly.

Maybe a deep understanding of different logic systems is not for everybody. They probably don't need to study the predicate calculus. But logic in general? Everybody needs at least a bit.

Well, from what I've seen in people that have not just taken logic classes but passed them, I'd say that there really is an innate difference - not in skill or experience or learning or knowing, but in the mindset; and a significant proportion of people don't/can't/won't "think properly" as you state it.

And it doesn't seem to be changeable at college level - I've no idea if it is innate or learned at an early age, but for adults there is a difference between "logical" people and "intuitive" (for lack of a better word) people.

For the first type it is trivial to teach/learn things such as logic, computing, troubleshooting, etc - even if they have no prior experience and have always been working and studying in unrelated areas such as linguistics or psychology. I've taught them and seen that - if I get an HR girl in an Excel course that 'thinks logically', within a few weeks she'll be able to do more with data than a number of non-logical-thinkng CS grads.

For the second type, I've seen them spend a decade with both college+masters studies and lots on-the-job experience, and they still haven't changed by that - they may remember the concepts of logic and even pass an exam on them, but they don't/can't/won't apply them. They aren't dumb - they may be very intelligent, hard working and effective at they know; but still they won't "reason and argue avoiding fallacies and obviously incorrect positions" even the next day after taking a course about logical fallacies. As you say, they are not "thinking properly", but that's how they are happy and achieving results and they'll stay that way.

Everyone keeps equating programming with literacy. Why. This makes no sense. We have a legion of IT professionals that have no idea about programming at all. Could it be the only analog to "literacy" is really, simply the ability to use computers? Literacy comparisons is just too far. Literacy, in terms of reading and writing are much more fundamental.

Anyway, the reality is sure, logic is not for everyone. It clearly is not. I'm not talking about graduate level logic is not for everyone; I mean plain old logic is just not for everyone.

We may want it to be. But that's not reality. I think the world would be better of if everyone was at the same intellectual level of Einstein, but that's not reality.

In this case, I'm equating logic with literacy, which is more than reasonable. And it also happens that logic and programming are extremely similar (isomorphic, even).

> Everybody needs at least a bit.

This is a bit of a myopic view that assumes everyone has the capability to learn logic.

(Un)surprising truth: some people are dumb, and simply can't grasp it.

I think his argument was that it should be, not that it currently is.

Well, I mean actually that it is not in the sense that it never will be. It may not sound nice but just basic logic is not for everyone. Now if you mean some future utopia or something ... that's not really interesting to me. In such a case then you could never fault someone for saying "everyone should be maximally good at everything" but it has no verisimilitude with reality.

There are questions of cause and effect. Is the fact that a lot of people suck at logic and process based thinking because us coders are a special breed, or is it because they didn't get decent exposure to it in school?