[sdeframond]

> I strongly believe that the average human being can be exceptional in any niche topic given enough time, dedication and focus.

I respectfully, but strongly, disagree. There's a reason most NBA players are over 2 meters tall, and one does not become taller with time, dedication nor focus.

It might be different for intellectual skills but I am not that sure.

Almost anyone can become decent at almost anything though. Which is good already!

[wtetzner]

> I respectfully, but strongly, disagree. There's a reason most NBA players are over 2 meters tall, and one does not become taller with time, dedication nor focus.

Being tall isn't a skill. I suspect you could be skillful enough at basketball to overcome the hight disadvantage. However, I think most people who might become that skillful see the high disadvantage (plus the general difficulty of becoming a pro basketball player) and take a different path through life. It's also possible that the amount of time that would be needed to grow your skill past the height disadvantage is too long, so it's not feasible to do it to gain a position in the NBA.

[rafaelero]

Intelligence is also not a skill, but the thing that makes you skillful in all cognitive tasks. Just like what height does to basketball players.

[nemo]

>Intelligence is also not skill, but the thing that makes you skillful in all cognitive tasks.

Careful with that "all", even the most highly intelligent humans still have peaks and deficits in different domains.

[samatman]

It's a matter of the definition. The general factor of intelligence, which is measured through various somewhat lossy proxies like IQ tests, is exactly the degree to which someone exceeds expectation on all cognitive tasks (or vice versa).

The interesting finding is that this universal correlation is strong, real, and durable. Of course people in general have cognitive domains where they function better or worse than their g factor indicates, and that's before we get into the fact that intellectual task performance is strongly predicated on knowledge and practice, which is difficult to control for outside of tests designed (successfully, I must add) to do so.

[goatlover]

Height is one physical attribute that helps, and professional players are mostly above average height for a reason. But also hand-eye coordination and fast-twitch muscles help even more. Many basketball players are very explosive athletes, because it's a sport with a relatively small play area and lots of quick movements are needed.

Track and swimming are where innate physical attributes have the most obvious benefits. Michael Phelphs had the perfect body for swimming. There is no amount of trainingg that 99.999% of the population could do to get close to what Usain Bolt ran. Most humans could not train to run under 4 minutes in a mile or under 2:30 in a marathon. They just don't have the right muscular and cardiovascular physiology.

Team sports are of course more complicated as other qualities come into play that aren't as directly physiological.

[wtetzner]

> Most humans could not train to run under 4 minutes in a mile or under 2:30 in a marathon.

Of course, but I don't think anyone was seriously suggesting that. The vast majority of humans can become pretty good at swimming though. And that was my interpretation of the original claim about cognitive tasks, mathematics, etc.

[nradov]

Most NBA players are under 2 meters tall. The average height is 1.99 meters.

https://www.lines.com/guides/average-height-nba-players/1519

[nolamark]

Since we are being pedantic, your statement may be true but it is unsupported by the data you presented. To make it simple, let's talk about the imaginary basketball league with four players, of unit less heights of 4, 4, 4, and 1. The average height is 3.25, yet 3/4 the players are taller than average.

A paid promotion of International Median is not Average Association.

[benjijay]

Most people have an above-average number of legs.

[sdeframond]

What's the average number of legs for humans ?

[cutemonster]

A bit less than two

[sdeframond]

What about Frank Lentini ?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Lentini

[samatman]

Simpson's Paradox[0] is the reason people are so easily seduced by the tempting, but dead wrong, illusion that humans are in any sense equal in their innate capacity for anything.

Because it turns out that, in the NBA, height does not correspond with ability! This of course makes sense, because all the players are filtered by being NBA professional basketballers. A shorter player simply has more exceptional ability in another dimension, be that dodging reflex, ability to visualize and then hit a ball trajectory from the three point line, and so on. Conversely, a very tall player is inherently useful for blocking, and doesn't have to be as objectively good at basketball in order to be a valuable teammate.

Despite this lack of correlation, when you look at an NBA team you see a bunch of very tall fellows indeed. Simpson's Paradox.

We see the same thing in intellectual pursuits. "I'm not nearly as smart as the smartest programmer I know, but I get promoted at work so I must be doing something right. Therefore anyone could do this, they just have to work hard like I did". Nope. You've already been selected into "professional programmer", this logic doesn't work.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox