I believe there are certain "born that way" arguments for things that are dominantly physical, such being very short playing basketball, but that stuff is obvious. The issue I have with "born that way" when it comes to dominantly mental skills is that there are many ways of doing things mentally.
For example, a short person may have their own strong qualities physically, such as lung capacity. That doesn't mean they will benefit from putting the ball against their lips and attempting to blow it over the heads of their opponents. There is really only one way to put a ball in a basket from across the court, and that is a simple arch. You can increase the angle of the shot from the ground along with increased force and still get it in, but there isn't much else you can do because it's not conceptual, it's physical.
However, when it comes to something mental like speedsolving, there are always many different ways of approaching learning and practicing. Everyone has a chance to make use of their own strengths and their own way of seeing things. If one way isn't working for you, try another.
sneaklyfox said:
And also, there is a limit to the cuber who did it with hard work. I'm not sure where that limit is in terms of cubing, but I think there is one. And after they reach their limit, no amount of practicing will do very much.
A solver can definitely get to the point of not improving at all no matter how much they practice, but that's what deliberate practice is for. Mass solving reaches one's potential, and deliberate practice introduces new potential to reach.
A simple example is full OLL. One can practice hundreds of solves a day for months, but if they never actually take the time to deliberately learn one look OLL, they will never know it. They're not going to just wake up one day and magically know 50 new algorithms just because they practiced X amount of hours. That's an obvious example of how just solving over and over will not cause improvement in all possible areas.
A more complex example is multi-slotting or x-cross. If a person only ever figures out two or three pieces of their cross and then starts the solve, they can practice like that for years if they want to and they'll never go further than that. Only when they force themselves to actually take the time to figure out the full cross, and later the x-cross, will they increase their potential. After they take that time, they can then just mass solve to improve and reach their newly created potential. Multi-slotting is the same. How can one improve at optimizing the solving two pairs when they just insert one pair after another as fast as they can, never even considering the next pair until the current one is done?
My rule of thumb is that if what I'm practicing is not frustratingly difficult, then I'm doing it wrong. As soon as I realize I can watch TV while practicing, that's the time to find something new to introduce to the solve and make it hard again. Right now I'm able to see two or three pairs at a time, and I'm practicing picking which one to do next based on the orientation of the edges. If the top sticker (or front/back for edges in the E layer) is not one of the colors of the Z axis, then it's not oriented and I'll need to do a fancy insert or a rotation, so I do the other pairs where the top edge color
is the same or opposite the front color. It's hard, or it was, but I'm becoming able to only have to do one rotation per solve if any at all by solving all pairs with correct orientation before rotating. I've even started to use hammer-ins to reorient F2L edges that would otherwise require a rotation, and so I avoid rotations and awkward algs. I've also been looking at ZZ and EOLine, and forcing myself through the inspection of five full EOLines every day, and it's paying off even though it was hell just trying to keep track of bad edges for the first few days.
I think many people just become complacent without realizing it, and then think they've hit their limit or that they're close.
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