Agreed, I've always believed you can learn anything you want. The realization I was talking about was the one where maybe that's not the default assumption for everyone.

Of course it's not the default assumption.

Why “of course”? I too took a long time to discover this wasn’t the case. I don’t think it’s as obvious as your wording makes it sound.

Surely you've heard countless "I just can't do math", "I can't draw to save my life", "I don't have talent for X", "Piano teacher tried but I just have no talent for it", "Wow, you must be very talented for doing Y", no?

I think actually following through over time is the hard part. Wanting to do something is easy.

Sustained motivation is just a matter of degree of want. If you want something enough you will do it.

At least that's my premise.

This is a wild oversimplification. And very dangerous if you try to apply to people in more complex situations.

Dangerous?

Yes, dismissing mental and health problems can make people not seek treatment, further increase them, or at more extreme cases even physically hurt people.

Dismissing social problems can have the equivalent of all those consequences, and even worse ones.

Where did he dismiss people problems ?

If someone want to do something enough, he should be compelled to seek help to overcome his limitations. Comment like your encourages learned helplessness, which to me is a lot more dangerous than what he said !

Full agreeance.

I grew up poor, had stints of homelessness, and all my friends/relatives came from the same background.

Learned helplessness is one of, if not the biggest, issues facing socially disadvantaged people. Money, counselling, temporary housing - all of this is moot and useless if the person retains a poor mindset.

Conversely, if there's a positive mindset, then they are most likely going to seek out those opportunities and use them to their advantage.

> You can learn anything you want

Without any quantifier/qualifier, say that "you can learn anything you want" is meaningless. If you are not disabled (broadly speaking), you can learn to run, where running is a way of continuously moving your body in which for some time no foot is touching the ground (marching/walking = one foot is touching the ground always). But, can you learn to run the 100 m dash in under 12/13/14 seconds?

Sure, anybody can learn to draw, where drawing means moving the ink from pen to paper, but can you draw something that is objectively good? And if yes, how long will it take for someone like me, who has close to no talent for it?

And so on.

There's all sort of obstacles to learning. It could be the price of the courses you want to take, the lack of motivation/willpower/discipline to follow through, poor learning skills, lack of equipment or materials.