I keep hearing that - most people won't have the intelligence to do tech/finance etc. However, a recent datapoint, the stanford ai class had over 1000 brilliant students, but only a handful in class at stanford itself. Watch the recent video chat sebastian thrun, peter norvig, and salman khan had on this topic.
Also, you could go back in history and say the same thing. 200 years ago most be people were "unintelligent" illiterate farmers, and yet today there descendents are literate, many doing highly intelligent work. The implied "genetic potential" arguments on intelligence are all wrong i believe, though i have no data to back it up.
Relative differences matter of course - there can only be one chess world champion - but most of tech or even finance is not in that winner-take-all space yet.
200 years ago most be people were "unintelligent" illiterate farmers, and yet today there descendents are literate, many doing highly intelligent work.
The parent commenter was speaking about making a transition in one's own career. Like him, I have doubts about my ability to become a top-notch violinist, especially since you have to find the tone centers by ear for that instrument. I don't know of anybody ever developing perfect pitch as an adult. Similarly, I doubt my grandmother, who even now is an extremely talented cellist with perfect pitch, could ever become a good programmer.
However, her son did become an excellent programmer, I am confident that my own children could become excellent programmers, musicians, visual artists or speakers of any language... if they start as children or adolescents. Yes people can change an learn... but drastic changes rarely happen after a certain age.
It's not about intelligence as much as the kind of intelligence you have. I don't really consider myself a stupid person, but I don't know if I could go into, say, finance, even finance-related programming. I particularly doubt I could do a decent job and stay sane.
Also, you could go back in history and say the same thing. 200 years ago most be people were "unintelligent" illiterate farmers, and yet today there descendents are literate, many doing highly intelligent work. The implied "genetic potential" arguments on intelligence are all wrong i believe, though i have no data to back it up.
Relative differences matter of course - there can only be one chess world champion - but most of tech or even finance is not in that winner-take-all space yet.