PaulK writes:
It is this failure which cannot be attributed to stupidity or ignorance.
You may well be correct that the phenomena being displayed isn't stupidity or ignorance. I've worked with kids with learning disabilities (executive function disorder, not simple stuff like dyslexia (I'm not saying dyslexia isn't difficult to deal with, just that its symptoms make sense in light of the disorder)), and the things they get versus the things they don't get just have no rhyme or reason.
I'm not saying Ray or anyone else has a learning disability, just that in many respects the human mind can't accurately be viewed as just a simple "comprehension machine" that you can point at bodies of information. I grant that the minds of Nobel Prize winners appear to operate that way, and for those of us who work in the sciences or in any field where the accurate analysis of information is important it probably appears that most of the people we work with have minds that operate that way, but even so, as RAZD points out most of us have our limits somewhere. Using myself as an example, even all these years after college I'd still like to know why I was so fantastic at math through algebra, trig, geometry, physics, mechanics, and calculus, then hit the wall at differential equations (I'm talking true crash and burn after stellar grades in math to that point, and I still don't get DQ). The mind is a mystery.
The way I see it is that even though the mind is a mystery, and even though perhaps anyone's particular issues might not really be their fault, we still have to enforce standards in order to maximize the opportunities for productive discussion, no matter how unfair that might feel to the affected people.
--Percy