For the longest time I was under the impression that everybody has unlimited potential, that you can essentially take a homeless junkie of the streets send them through college, give then a job and have a functioning intelligent person come out at the end. That is absolutely not true. based on my own experience we all have limits and glass ceilings. Yes, we all live on the same clock, but some of us have to deal with so much behind the scenes just to stay afloat while others can breeze through life like its nothing. There are people who are incredibly academically gifted but absolutely inept in personal or household stuff, some people are thick as a rock but incredibly charming, etc. We all have our strengths and weaknesses but sometimes of course all the marbles roll into the right holes and you get somebody who’s good at everything they touch and are almost doomed to success.
There are just things that I will never able to grasp, or habits that I will never able to form because I tried my whole life and it never worked out. I consider myself as a fairly baseline dude, so its safe to say that if I have these experiences the majority of people will have them as well.
A large majority of that is winning the luck lottery of which family you were born into. Most people who have “trouble staying afloat” are also those who are economically disadvantaged… as in, in the lower-90% of the economic population who are desperately just treading water. Most of the people who “breeze through life” have the intergenerational family wealth that permits this behaviour.
Yes, that has also been my experience. But this also evens out fairly well with age. I’ve come across very well put together people in their 50s and 60s whose childhood all the way through late adulthood has been literal hell. But this might be survivorship bias.
For me it was that other people think in the same manner, basically. But it turns out that brain usage is very different for people. So some people use more of their visual cortex for maths, making them see color in numbers.
In this video Richard Feynman explains it better then I could.
So you’re telling me we can’t just steal a baby from one of those secluded amazon tribes and force them to learn the quadratic formula so I don’t have to? there go my weekend plans :(
For the longest time I was under the impression that everybody has unlimited potential, that you can essentially take a homeless junkie of the streets send them through college, give then a job and have a functioning intelligent person come out at the end. That is absolutely not true. based on my own experience we all have limits and glass ceilings. Yes, we all live on the same clock, but some of us have to deal with so much behind the scenes just to stay afloat while others can breeze through life like its nothing. There are people who are incredibly academically gifted but absolutely inept in personal or household stuff, some people are thick as a rock but incredibly charming, etc. We all have our strengths and weaknesses but sometimes of course all the marbles roll into the right holes and you get somebody who’s good at everything they touch and are almost doomed to success.
There are just things that I will never able to grasp, or habits that I will never able to form because I tried my whole life and it never worked out. I consider myself as a fairly baseline dude, so its safe to say that if I have these experiences the majority of people will have them as well.
A large majority of that is winning the luck lottery of which family you were born into. Most people who have “trouble staying afloat” are also those who are economically disadvantaged… as in, in the lower-90% of the economic population who are desperately just treading water. Most of the people who “breeze through life” have the intergenerational family wealth that permits this behaviour.
Yes, that has also been my experience. But this also evens out fairly well with age. I’ve come across very well put together people in their 50s and 60s whose childhood all the way through late adulthood has been literal hell. But this might be survivorship bias.
For me it was that other people think in the same manner, basically. But it turns out that brain usage is very different for people. So some people use more of their visual cortex for maths, making them see color in numbers.
In this video Richard Feynman explains it better then I could.
https://youtu.be/Cj4y0EUlU-Y
Feynman explains most things better than most people can.
This video was really interesting! Thanks!
Yeah that’s his talent, such an amazing man. If you haven’t, read his biographie.
The video is part of a longer series ‘fun to imagine’ is really with it watching them all.
So you’re telling me we can’t just steal a baby from one of those secluded amazon tribes and force them to learn the quadratic formula so I don’t have to? there go my weekend plans :(