Maybe it becomes a little more agreeable if you flip it around: consider as &quot;basic&quot; whatever level people would reach after 100 hours of quality learning. Should someone with this kind of &quot;basic&quot; level in neurosurgery be allowed to even think of live subjects? Certainly not. But as one of the many possible squishy definitions of &quot;basic&quot;, this would not be the worst.<p>An interesting discussion is the optimal distribution of those hours for different kinds of learning. Between the intensive trial&amp;error of learning software tools and the slow motor skill buildup of learning a musical instrument I could see anything from two 50h weeks to fifty 2h weeks to be the best match.