Zed A. Shaw, Painter

The second study shows that if a professor *thinks* you can't improve (say, because you are genetically pre-disposed to suck and that's the end of it), then you'll get lower grades. Obviously the students aren't really changing so it's the professor's bias.

Another aspect of this is most STEM and Art college courses are designed for people who can already do that thing pretty well. They assume the student has been doing it since they were young, had parents who did it, etc so they don't even bother with training true beginners.

When you look at a lot of research on whether there's a biological predisposition toward nearly anything you never see them attempt to...train it away. It's always, "haha! see? I told you girls suck at math!" There's no study that goes "if you suck at math, this course fixes it

When someone does attempt to "fix" an untrained skill with a proper training system it totally fixes the supposed genetically predisposed brain deficiency. It's almost as if...and bear with me here...like...smart people can learn new things? I might be crazy though.

In my case I experienced this with artists. In fact, I would do little studies of this when I could. If I told them I was a programmer they immediately acted like all my art sucked, no matter how good or bad it was actually. How do I know this? LOL, listen to this:

When someone would email me saying my art sucks I'd send them my very best drawing and say, "Yeah, can you do better than that?" They'd send me back something with flaws, but ALSO rip into my drawing with a critique. "It seems timid. Looks amateurish." Etc.

Problem is, I wasn't sending them a drawing I did. I was sending them a drawing from one my teachers who is WAY more accomplished and better at drawing than both of us. The *belief* that it was my drawing--a programmer's--made them see it as full of flaws. There's more.

Another test I'd do is use some form of cheating to do the drawing. My favorite is a camera lucida, which gets it about as perfect as you could, or copy a photo. I know for a *fact* the drawing is dead accurate because science. But, I'd send that to the "experts" and...