Well, maybe claiming that everyone can become a rocket scientist and work for NASA if they put their mind to it is a bit optimistic as we found out when we contacted Professor Robin Morris. He is a clinical-academic neuropsychologist at the IoPPN and used to teach neuropsychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience of King’s College London. 

Professor Morris told Bored Panda, “Sadly, I think there are limitations to how far effort can help, but the limitations should not be overestimated.”

You shouldn’t be discouraged as he explained that there is a positive side to this, “One of the successes of the 20th Century has been to recognise that all people have strengths and weaknesses and so individuals can be helped to maximise their capabilities, if properly understood.”

These strengths and weaknesses depend both on genetics and on the circumstances in which people grow up and what opportunities are open to them. You may have noticed that some people are naturally inclined to humanitarian sciences and will understand what the author wanted to say with his poem but they will struggle with mathematical equations or vice versa.

Sometimes people think that the humanitarian is less intelligent because they “might rely more on intuitive thought - deep thinking that cannot be rationalised because we do not know the underlying brain or mind processes but may be just as complex as rationale thought. A scientist might think they are more capable than a person in humanities because they can rationalise their thought processes and this leads to hubris.”

But whatever side you are on, you may tune and improve those abilities if you are motivated enough. The way people can make their strengths work for them is by “putting effort in the right place and finding ways around obstacles for understanding. In the past a person with dyslexia might be told they were stupid by their teachers (this happened to my cousin, who ended up doing genetics research at Cambridge University). Now we analyse their disability, recognise it, and find ways to maximise their capabilities and opportunties.”

Putting effort into studying a difficult concept or theory not only brings us closer to understanding it but it also “over time creates levels of expertise which increase the chance of understanding more complex things specifically. This creates the intellectual structures that support understanding. An experienced doctor will reach the diagnosis more rapidly and intuitively even with a complicated patient because they have engaged in similar thought patterns for many years.”

Besides, if you don’t understand a concept, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are stupid. Professor Morris believes that it depends.

The Professor paints us a picture, “I tend to think about human ability as a bit like one of those recording consoles, with huge numbers of buttons and faders. These represent the miriad of different abilities each person has, and the faders determine the level.”

So everyone has a different mix of the faders as they are put in different positions. The smarter people have more of them turned up. That has an influence on how they understand things because “the smarter person has greater overall capability to understand things generally.” 

Certain people seem to have them all up and they are incredible at memorizing and grasping things but “Other people have a particular 'fader profile' and might have gaps in their understanding. For example, we know that there are people who are very intelligent at solving problems but struggle with emotional intelligence. They solve mind blowing problems but just do not get it when dealing with someone's feelings. Conversely some people are not very good at problem solving but seem to have an intuitive understanding of other people.”

This leads to the conclusion that you shouldn’t be too disappointed when you can’t understand a particular concept because it means that you might excel in a different field and that one thing is just a gap.

What knowledge or understanding would you like to gain but it seems too difficult for you? Have you ever met a very smart person who could understand almost everything but just not one particular thing? Tell us about it in the comments.