On a side note, it's a good demonstration that knowledge beats intelligence. Being smart just gives you a higher ceiling, but most people can get pretty good at almost anything if they work hard enough. The question is of course why would you do it, and do you have the motivation.
Most people are intelligent, that's why they can get good, but being smart not only has a big effect on the ceiling, but also on the speed to get to the same level, which in turn affects motivation, so you can't judge it to be an inferior factor
But this isn't a good illustration anyway since it's a very constrained artificial example of a game based on pattern matching
I see examples of that pretty much everywhere. People that regularly do and practice something get to be better than the vast majority of people, so talent and intelligence end up playing a lesser role. This is true for physical skills and also mental. The author said he ended up in the 95th percentile -- I doubt this is achievable for all people, but "high" yes (whatever the interpretation of high is).
For most cases, I agree. I think almost anyone with the time and determination can get to 95th percentile or up in a non-physical pursuit. Intelligence becomes a key determinant if you want to break the top 0.1%. Most people of average intelligence could become a top 5% programmer if they wanted to, but getting 2 minute solutions on Advent of Code? Almost certainly not. (I pick AOC because I've been looking into the folks who hit the leaderboards and they all seem to give off high IQ vibes so far.)
When I was a kid I heard proffessional player opinion that people who play more games get better results, he stated chess is game of numbers. I'm probably not on that level as no matter how many games I played there is rating level I cannot beat, it's glass ceiling for me.
