@Kingpatzer...
For late mastery outlier my favorite example is I.F. Stone who was well into his sixties and suffering heart ailments when he retired from his great muck-raking journalism to go back to college and finish his B.A., -- eventually becoming an able classicist. At 80 he published: The Trial of Socrates -- a probing look at the political dimensions of Socrates's teachings and his relationship to the Athenian state. It's scholarly without being dull in either content or style -- a rare performance indeed.
@Andy Clifton:
Michael York -- Jenny Agutter -- Farrah Fawcett
Run, runner!
In the paradise of the future all life will be lived in a combination Vidal Sassoon salon/disco. This is NO PLACE FOR THE OLD!
At the time I.F. Stone attended school, he almost certainly learned the basics of Latin and possibly Greek, in high school, and he was a quality researcher, writer and analyist as a jouranlist. And while he was a poor student in high school, that doesn't mean he didn't learn the material only that he was a poor student.
That's why he was able to make a living at it. All that changed for him really where the subjects of his reporting. In my mind those are fairly related fields.
It is however, the best example anyone's actually produced thus far, but I think a fair case can be made that well-written research is exactly what journalists are asked to do every day.
We may ask that of journalists, but the vast majority simply rephrase the press releases they receive.
Guys, 2000 isn't that high. The average person can reach it, it's just a question of how much time they spend. But if they spend the average time, they wont.
History suggests otherwise. 2000 is something like 97 percentile. So, yes, it is that high.
But that's because the average person doesn't try enough to reach it. 2000 doesn't take a fantastic unachivable amount of knowledge.
You just assume the 97% that have tried didn't try it all. That's total horse shit. I know people that tried for 10, 20, even 30 years, putting everything they had into it and never reached 2000. Since so very few officially rated chess players ever reach 2000 (only 3%), it stands to reason it's not this easy-to-reach checkmark that only the rare stronger player thinks it is.
You're looking from a perspective of it having seemed easy to you, therefore, it must be easy for the average person. That is a load of bullshit because it completely ignores the facts about only 3% of all rated ever getting there.
I'm getting real tired of pointing this out over and over: You cannot disregard the stats by merely claiming people didn't try hard enough. That makes for an impossible debate because it assumes the average person will become and exceptional person. It's a self-created paradox.
I'll tell you what, many people try but have no idea how to go about it.
Many assume you just have to play again and again and you will magically improve. Others stick to the London system and never learn anything else. Others don't really want to admit of having being positionally outplayed and say to themselves that they were fine until the move before they blundered a piece. Others try to avoid playing with stronger players, etc.
Let me do an example in a field where I know quite a bit: how many with a gym membership can bench press their own weight? I would say a small percentage. Yet almost anybody (16-50 years old male) could reach that, if he knew how to train. And that's the point, 90% of people in the gym have no clue on how to increase the weight on the bar. And that's because it's much more complicated than people think. Maybe you think that just going to the gym will magically make you improve, but nope. You need to know tons of things and follow strength-specific training routines. While all this info is freely available on the internet, disinformation on how to improve reigns.
So while the average guy could eventually bench press his own weight (and then more than that, of course), in practice few people can do it because the vast majority of gym goers have no clue on how to improve.
I take it something similar happens in chess. You can't just play. You need to know your stuff if you want to learn.