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I don't think the question is whether a human can learn pointers or not but rather how much effort one has to put to get to the mastery level. From various phys
by sytelus 10y ago
I don't think the question is whether a human can learn pointers or not but rather how much effort one has to put to get to the mastery level. From various physical tasks such as swimming, running, bicycling or mountaineering it is well known that few are born with inherent advantages such as metabolism, large lungs, muscle type, carb absorbtion, heart strength and so on. These people typically put in lot less effort and advance lot more faster than others who didn't had those advantages. For running marathons, you can find lots of examples where one has to put enormous effort over extended period of time just to barely succeed while others are competitive with little effort while starting with same initial abilities. It is however contentious if these analogies with developing physical abilities is applicable to mental abilities, primarily because brain is understood be far more complex, malleable and elastic. Even if person doesn't understand one set of abstractions such as pointers, it is likely that they excel at others such as recognizing perfect shade of color, musical composition or designing game levels. Instead of everyone trying to understand pointers, I think people should find their sweet spots, especially the one that they enjoy.
- wutbrodo 10y ago> Even if person doesn't understand one set of abstractions such as pointers, it is likely that they excel at others such as recognizing perfect shade of color, musical composition or designing game levels. Instead of everyone trying to understand pointers, I think people should find their sweet spots, especially the one that they enjoy. This sounds like the assumption that lack of predisposition to one field is correlated with skill in other fields (eg, "X is not a math person so he's likely to have some talent in lit or the arts). I thought I recalled reading that what evidence there is doesn't support this: and that in fact those who have a knack for, eg, math are more likely to be good at other fields too. (This of course isn't talking about time spent practicing each field, which is rivalrous, but we're talking about "inherent advantages" here).