I picked up the same idea too, and it does seem problematic. I can sorta buy an idea of there being some kind of Turing-completeness equivalent property for human minds, where all minds who have this property can in principle do the same mental work, given enough time.
What I don't buy is all people being able to do the same degree of mental work in the same time, which is basically what the PhDs for all stance seems to require. If it would take someone 30 years instead of 5 to learn the stuff required to finish a PhD thesis, it's not practical for that person to pursue a PhD.
The developmentally disabled, stroke patients and others are unignorable cases of people who need much longer than others to learn things. It's a pretty big stretch to assume that the learning speed would be so close to same for all the rest of the people that there wouldn't be any significant fraction of people who learn so slowly that pursuing a PhD isn't a practical option for them.
What I don't buy is all people being able to do the same degree of mental work in the same time, which is basically what the PhDs for all stance seems to require. If it would take someone 30 years instead of 5 to learn the stuff required to finish a PhD thesis, it's not practical for that person to pursue a PhD.
The developmentally disabled, stroke patients and others are unignorable cases of people who need much longer than others to learn things. It's a pretty big stretch to assume that the learning speed would be so close to same for all the rest of the people that there wouldn't be any significant fraction of people who learn so slowly that pursuing a PhD isn't a practical option for them.