I wasn't actually drawing any sort of comparison between those disparate fields, for whatever that is worth. Hopefully the inclusion of Oprah provided some amusement, at least.
Setting aside judgements about the relative worth of endeavors, my point there was that each requires a set of specialized skills beyond that possessed by most (average) laypersons. Worth noting that not everything that LOOKS easy actually
is. That's as close as I'll come to defense of television personalities, I promise. LOL.
Are there not people for whom one or more of those occupations would be entirely unsuitable? Is the reason for that due to "defect" or is it "difference" in cognition? I'd argue yes, just as some children are born introverts, others are born 'mathy,' musical, or with exceptional language acquisition skills.
I'm perfectly willing to grant that a greater number of people may be suited to some endeavors than to others. The pool of people who would be marvelous electricians may well be significantly larger than the pool of those that are innately well-suited to be astronauts, for example. I'm also perfectly willing to cede that there is no person that is destined for a single outcome from birth (even though in the case of singularities, it's difficult to envision)-- someone who eventually becomes a stellar neurosurgeon might well have been outstanding as something else, instead.
I was pointing out that pretty much ANY broad endeavor/occupation has its "singular" success stories. They are by definition
anecdote, and therefore, broadening one's definition of "success" to include more cases may be useful in terms of determining underlying contributing factors.
When examined, as Malcom Gladwell has done, one finds what one looks for, it seems to me; that might be passion/drive, it might be innate ability (genetic potential, if you will), it might be effort (hard work, 10,000 hours, Chinese parenting, or whatever else one chooses to call it) or it might be environment/opportunity. The real question in my mind is whether or not any of those correlations would exist if one could examine the phenomenon with objective tools.
It seems most probable to me that the truth owes something to all of them. Perhaps being merely average in any of those areas is enough to doom a person to relative mediocrity/obscurity, regardless of compensation in the others. As long as it is a happy and meaningful obscurity, I don't know too many people that wouldn't be perfectly fine with that outcome.
I was using examples to show that successes are definitely not just individuals for whom that level of success was entirely due to situational advantage or hard work, or even the two in combination-- both are necessary, in other words, but not
sufficient. There may be endeavors for which superlative performance has no relationship to innate ability, but I am hard-pressed to think of any examples.
As for some fields drawing disproportionately from particular types of non-neurotypical folks, I didn't mention Aspies in particular precisely because the phenomenon is broader than that. Elementary and SpEd teaching tends to draw people with what I would term empathetic gifts, as does veterinary medicine. Engineering, of course, draws Aspies so reliably that Aspie traits have almost come to represent the engineering archetype, but it is NOT necessarily the case that "most Aspies are engineers." I seriously doubt that.
In my opinion, it is disingenuous to appeal to egalitarianism using untapped cognitive potential/environment as a means of sidestepping the possibility of being labeled elitist, or at the very least, fatalistic ("my genes made me who I am"). This strikes me as very close in
sentiment to "all children are gifted," without SAYING it.
I mean, sure, it
sounds nice to think that the bell curve doesn't exist as anything but an artifact created by circumstance alone, but problematically, it seems to persist no matter how one looks at population data, and most of the people that I hear using that kind of rhetoric certainly should know this full well. It only holds up if one is willing to redefine the terms. Ergo, disingenuous.
I have no idea if any of that was what Iucounu intended. I would be astonished if it were. I wasn't trying to be provocative or inflammatory with that statement, in any case, and it wasn't directed at anyone in particular.
My apologies if that wasn't clear. I ramble, in case nobody has noticed. 
I'm not suggesting that possessing a sufficiently high IQ score makes one "special" in any sense of the word. What I
am suggesting is that a particular set of cognitive quirks is fairly fixed for most people from birth, and that this probably has pragmatic consequences related to occupational "fit" later. Even so, traditional IQ is probably not the best description of that phenomena. The language here is imperfect, I am afraid. (And yes, I'm well aware of studies done on "training" children's brains to be more neurotypical as interventions for ADHD and specific visual processing disorders-- but the jury is still out on whether or not this is simply a learned skill like reading phonetically or doing long division, or if it's truly a functional cognitive change.)
It's probably better to note that some fields seem to be best suited for a
particular cognitive arrangement/toolbox. That's undoubtedly somewhat independent of IQ, but it dovetails with the evidence that some occupations/fields seem to draw particular types of people who are cognitively quite similar to one another.
Being verbally quick on one's feet and having terrific people skills probably makes one a good salesperson-- or talk show host. I know that
I don't have the ability to be Oprah-- or David Letterman, if you prefer. Now, that may not matter much to me since I am also not disappointed by that particular shortcoming. One could argue that I
could be better at the required skills if I were passionately interested, which is, I gather, what Iucounu is suggesting; that with sufficient training and motivation (hot-housing), an average person (such as myself) could match David Letterman or Oprah. I'm skeptical of that conclusion, and it's largely because I simply don't think that hot-housing is capable of that sort of shift in potential.
Then again, maybe I'm just looking at my part of the elephant.
(I really try to be brief. I do. It's just that... well... it's a cognitive limitation. If brevity is the soul of wit, however, I think I know where this leaves me.
LOL.)
