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Comment by CodeSgt | Hacker News Reader

> This is wrong. Birds fly, fishes swim. There is nothing bad about either.

I have a hard time with this mentality. I would have agreed a few years ago perhaps, and do still agree that we all have our own aptitudes, but the level of absolution in a statement like this just isn’t really quite as applicable to humans in my opinion. There are things I never thought I’d be capable of that I’ve recently begun to excel at.

What I thought was a hardware limit turned out to just bug in my psycho-software that needed a patch. Obviously at the extreme end’s of the spectrum, the human hardware limit is very real. But for most (healthy) people, engaging in most activities, I believe that any perceived immutable barriers or obstacles are almost entirely psychological.

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> I believe that any perceived immutable barriers or obstacles are almost entirely psychological.

Laws of physics are laws of physics. And biology is applied physics.

People in sport have known that for a long time. You can train as much as Usain Bolt, he still has a huge advantage.

Thinking the other human characteristics are not affected by this is weird. You will never be Von Neumann, no matter how much you spend in the class room.

It's not that training has no effect, it does, a lot. Yet this doesn't remove the fact we have a variability between individual.

And there is not a tipping point, it's a spectrum for each characteristic.

It turns out math exhibit some early barrier in that spectrum. There is nothing wrong with that.

Nobody is claiming that 100% of people can be trained to run a 100m in 9.58s.

But there is some number of seconds which 90% of people can be trained to run 100m below.

And it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s a much lower number than you think.

Likewise not 100% of people can develop the mathematical horsepower of Von Neumann. But 90% of people can attain some level of proficiency in higher mathematical concepts… how high a level would that be? Higher than most high schools aim I would suspect.

I don't disagree with any of this, I'm just stating math is a topic that shows the limits of people quicker in the curriculum than other fields.

There's a big difference between edge cases like Usain Bolt and Von Neumann, and the barriers that most people actually run into.

The vast majority of people are not biologically incapable of making it through high-school level math, or even becoming a very capable mathematician with enough high-quality teaching and dedication.

Just using the extremum to show there is a difference.

The difference is not limited to the extremes. Why would it be?

Hence spectrum.

And math meet people early in the spectrum.

EDIT: thread limit reached, so I can't answer down there.

But in short, it's a HN comment, not a study. But I've been in 11 schools in my life. Some private ones with their own church inside, some for special kids, some for poor kids with a higher degree of violence.

I saw it again and again. The average math teacher is not worse than any other teachers. But the first field kids have a hard time is more often math than other fields. In fact, kids that are good at math usually can do ok in any other, even if not great. The reverse is not necessarily true.

At this point I'm just repeating the argument in the other comments.

What evidence do you have that the biological limitations for mathematical ability meets people early in the spectrum?

I can think of several anecdotal counter-examples... students who seemed to have been falling behind, but with the right teacher were able to make significant improvements and become a top performer.

You can also take a look at many of the studies done on the educational gap, to see that better schooling can have a massive impact on secondary and post-secondary educational outcomes. Surely this wouldn't be the case if poor performers had some "biological limit" that prevented them from succeeding in high school math.

>The vast majority of people are not biologically incapable of making it through high-school level math, or even becoming a very capable mathematician with enough high-quality teaching and dedication.

It was hard for me to accept, but I know that after many years of University math education there are things I will never be able to understand. I have had very good grades in my Masters, but I realized that I will never be able to do research in pure mathematics.

Almost every person I know struggled with math far more than I did. How would they become research mathematicians if I couldn't after years of study? The belief that secretly almost all people are better at mathematics than me, despite me trying for many years, seems utterly absurd.

Do you think I really am in the bottom ~50% of the population in terms of mathematical ability? Because I know I will never be a pure mathematician.

> Do you think I really am in the ~50% of the population in terms of mathematical ability?

I don't know nearly enough about your personal background to make any sort of judgement on to what extent your success up through university came from innate "mathematical ability" versus other factors.

But I do know that making it through a Masters-level program makes you a very capable mathematician, even if were unable to start a career in pure mathematics.

You made it further along in your mathematical education than 99.9%+ of students, and I have a very hard time believing that "biological predisposition" is what's stopping many people from making it past high-school level math.

I am not a mathematician at all and I have never been. My contributions to mathematics are exactly zero.

But even if I were, why did the hundreds of people I studied with in school and university fail far more than I did. No, I didn't work especially hard and often times I was explaining things to other students, it weren't the teachers, we all had the same. It also wasn't motivation, I didn't need all that much to succeed. Was it just luck that I outperformed most people given the opportunity?

> Obviously at the extreme end’s of the spectrum, the human hardware limit is very real.

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