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Comment by plaidturtle | Hacker News Reader

The word used was "everyone". All I have to do is point to a bum on the street and the original statement is false. I just wanted to make a point that such statement places all the burden on the individual, without acknolwedging the systems at play in fostering and developing talent.

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No, this isn't how proof works. All you have to do is find a bum, and definitively prove that he has no talent at anything, even things he has never been exposed to, even things that have fallen out of fashion, even things that have yet to be invented.

Go ahead, get started, I'll wait. If you could please do this with many bums, the world would thank you -- every inevitable failure will make the world a better place.

What good is talent if you can't exercise it? Also you clearly do not get the point of my rebuttal. Also why so hostile?

I'm not sure why it's so important to you to push the notion that some people just simply are not good at anything (and of course you use, as an example, a homeless person -- obviously they must be talentless, yes, otherwise they would be successful like us?).

"Everyone has a talent, it's just a matter of finding it" -- the point you are dismissively hostile towards is a positive one which is essentially irrefutable. It doesn't claim talent is "any good" or that it can easily be exercised. It's suggesting everyone has worth and something to offer. I don't know why you are so opposed to accepting something like that. The hostility here isn't mine.

If you read my second sentence "I just wanted to make a point that such statement places all the burden on the individual, without acknolwedging the systems at play in fostering and developing talent", you would know that we hold the same position. The point I am making is not that some are talented and some are not (only idiots would believe in fully meritocratic outcomes), but that the burden of seemingly "untalented" people lies with the society as much as it does with the individual, and the original bumper-sticker statement does not acknowledge that complexity and power dynamic. I have no hostility.

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