I partially agree with the GP, except I would say it takes a special talent to excel at it in a given amount of time. A "special talent" in this case would be a predisposition to learning how to play a guitar.
>Are you saying that something in the brain is pre-wired to be a better guitar player?
Yes, whether due to nature or nurture, I would say certain people will be faster at learning how to play the guitar, and thus, be a better guitar player given an equal amount of exposure. Of course, you could always put more time into it, but there is only a finite amount of time available to a given individual.
No citations, but I believe this agrees with the general consensus. In fact, I would be greatly interested if anyone could provide studies showing the contrary.
What about Salman Khan's TED talk, where he shows that it is a frequent occurrence that kids stumble on a math concept, but then rapidly catch up or exceed their peers. If learning as a general phenomenon occurs in plateaus, but turns out linearly the same in the long run for most everybody (like a graph of the prime counting function seems choppy up close but a line out far), perhaps it is the case we intuitively think some people have a talent, because they didn't experience any early plateaus, but experience some later instead, when they aren't under as careful scrutiny. In other words, it might be a statistical phenomenon of the learning progression (assuming the plateaus are uniformly randomly distributed). Having thought a lot about this issue, I think it is closer to the truth.
In any case, I second the request for more studies.
What you're talking about is known generically as the General Learning, which is an aptitude in itself. Some people learn better than others. It also depends on what you learn.
Nurture:
At various ages, the ability to learn changes (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.88....). It might well be true that there is a lot of optimization to be done in the way we teach -- something that Salman Khan illustrates well with his new teaching methodologies. That doesn't necessarily mean however that at all stages, ages, circumstances, people will be equally able to learn something.
Nature: Some people have an innate aptitude; I won't look for papers, as I find this to be truly obvious.
I don't think this is very accurate. I scored 95+% on both SAT and GRE verbal, and I only got a 27,400. I imagine there are quite a few test takers who are not completely honest with themselves.
As someone who lived in coastal ecuador for 6 months, and also visited Costa Rica for 2 months, I'd like to confirm the unbelievable absence of the "seven deadly sins". Most of the people in the rural areas live with the sole purpose of bettering the future of their children and community, and the concept of exploiting others for personal gain is completely alien to them. I feel that the subtitles do not do Severo's character justice both when he is talking about why his family lives in La Paz and also when he sees his family for the first time in a month.
Also, tourists may ride these cables in Costa Rica, where they are referred to as ziplines.
As another owner of this card, I have to note that Schwab is no longer "subsidizing" this card, and has completely been disassociated from it. I believe the reason was that they weren't making any money off of it, but my memory is a bit foggy now.
It is now serviced by FIA Services, no longer available to new customers, and of course terms and conditions are subject to change. So far, nothing has changed, but still, the point is that this card was and is an anomaly.
The card doesn't stand alone, though. The point is there are tertiary banks that are more consumer friendly. Schwab, yes, and for them the credit crisis put their 2% card on the chopping block. But another tertiary bank, Fidelity, still offers the card that's always been like the Sister Card for the Schwab Visa: The Fidelity Amex is also an FIA card that is nearly identical in terms. It's reward structure involves tiers but it's very clearly a 2% card. And it has a 1% FETF.
Aside from that, it's identical.
And it doesn't change the fact that Schwab put together the terms of this card (certainly with the help of FIA) and that a more traditionally mainstream bank has not.
I also have the British Airways Chase card that literally has netted me a free Biz Class ticket to Europe. Very generous. But that's a signing bonus. If I were to keep this card as my daily-driver for a couple years Chase would make a lot more money off me than Schwab ever would've off the card that's now the "FIA Cash Rewards Visa"
There are interdisciplinary PhD programs that are now gaining popularity. For example, I work on protein structure prediction in my graduate program, which involves lots of programming, robotics algorithms, machine learning, HPC, etc. as well as biochemistry, statistical thermodynamics, and molecular biology. If I were to drop out right now, I could find employment as anything from a software developer to DNA sequencing technician.
These are a pretty good start. What I had in mind is an organization that gives long-term grants for many areas of study. Of course, any returns on this kind of investment would be ten to fifteen years away, which would make it hard to find anyone to support it. And worse, we do not know if a we can have a good return on this kind of investment.
