> Several decades of academic achievement data, psychology studies, etc.
Right. That much was obvious. But what does that mean in more detail? If you pick a random, normally capable, person off the street and give them everything they need to become successful in R&D, what ends up happening?
> If you pick a random, normally capable, person off the street and give them everything they need to become successful in R&D, what ends up happening?
Don't we run that experiment on every moderately wealthy child on the planet? I can tell you that the hit rate there is definitely not 100%.
I don't know. You're the one who has studied the data, not me. What's the answer?
If you are asking about what I've seen anecdotally, which is all you can expect of me given that I am not the one of us who is the subject matter expert between us, all those who were moderately wealthy children that I know have grown up into having success with R&D in at least some limited capacity. They haven't all dedicated their lives to R&D, but they've had no trouble being able to invent things when the situation necessitated it.
If they had more time to dedicate their life to it, I see no reason for why that would stop. But, again, you're the expert among us here. I don't know much about it — that is why I'm asking you.
Aside, R&D fundamentally isn't guaranteed to deliver fruit, so elaborate for us on how the research you spoke of differentiates between someone who is well suited to R&D work but never strikes gold due to the nature of the beast, and someone who cannot strike gold because they are straight up incapable as a person. That might help us communicate about this more effectively.
> which is all you can expect of me given that I am not the one of us
Not sure why the snark is necessary. Its pretty easy to look up academic achievement stratified by socioeconomic status. I'm not an expert, but the line for rich kids doesn't go to 100%.
> If they had more time to dedicate their life to it, I see no reason for why that would stop.
Because not everyone is a bottomless pit of ambition. Most people, given the option, engage in leisure in their free time.
> Aside, R&D fundamentally isn't guaranteed to deliver fruit, so elaborate for us on how the research you spoke of differentiates between someone who is well suited to R&D work but never strikes gold due to the nature of the beast, and someone who cannot strike gold because they are straight up incapable as a person. That might help us communicate about this more effectively.
I'm speaking in generalities. Research is generally a race, and the smartest and hardest working generally win the race. Even if everyone's IQ and ambition shot up, there would still be a smarter and harder working subset of people.
After that last paragraph, it isn't clear to me that you disagree with my core premise of "not everyone should do research".
Not sure why you think a computer screen is giving you snark, but you do you.
> I'm not an expert
You read through all of that data and research, as told earlier, and haven't become an expert...? Yeah right. No need to be so modest with me. Be proud of your achievements!
> Its pretty easy to look up academic achievement stratified by socioeconomic status.
It may be, but no need to waste time sauntering off on another, rather uninteresting, subject. We're talking about R&D, not academic achievement. Stay focused, by friend.
> Most people, given the option, engage in leisure in their free time.
R&D is the leisure activity of many people. We'll leave your data sources to quantify exactly what that means, but it is clearly large enough to be a recognizable set of the population.
> Research is generally a race
It can be where you are trying to be first to build a moat around something that scales massively. But not all R&D scales, or even wants to scale. Despite your unquantified "generally" claim, it remains unclear if most R&D is even trying to scale. There are a lot of hobbyists out there carrying out R&D with no plans for it beyond doing something for themselves.
> there would still be a smarter and harder working subset of people.
There is seemingly no end to how much R&D is possible. I guess at some point there is a pinnacle of human achievement, but it seems highly unlikely that we'll reach that point in the next thousand years. Humans are pretty shortsighted — the people from the year 1200 would have never imagined digital computers being a thing — but when the time comes we always find something new to immerse our thoughts in.
> You read through all of that data and research, as told earlier, and haven't become an expert...? Yeah right. No need to be so modest with me. Be proud of your achievements!
Okay. You seem upset, so I'll disengage. Have a great day!
As valuable as that diversion no doubt was for you, we still haven't established from your data sources how many people are involved in R&D in a hobby/pleasure/necessity capacity and how that compares to those who have chosen to dedicate their lives towards it.
If it is not in the data, you can say so, but it becomes impossible to know how the average person performs in R&D without it. Which then returns us to the original question: "Based on what?"
Right. That much was obvious. But what does that mean in more detail? If you pick a random, normally capable, person off the street and give them everything they need to become successful in R&D, what ends up happening?