> That's just not true. I will never be an Alan Turing or a John von Neumann, and I dare say neither will you, dear reader.
The author doesn't claim this either. I believe he means that you shouldn't discount how much you can improve yourself.
You'll never get anywhere without self-improvement, of course, but there's no sense pretending we can all be a prodigy like von Neumann - whose natural intelligence was shocking even to the top professors of his day - if we just work hard enough.
There very much is a limit, but one need not be deluded to be motivated or successful.
edit Perhaps the point is meant to be read as 'you can always improve yourself further', rather than 'there is no ceiling on your abilities'. Which seems far more reasonable.
Better to use a function that tends toward an asymptote, such as 1 - 1/(x+1)
Forever is a long time ...
In reality, there are limits to what you can do with a trained ape. An usually long-lived ape doesn't much help you. I suspect the same applies here.