Will read the rest later but this triggered me because we have two young children. One is kinda handy with stuff, the oldest… well, not.
If it sounds good, it is good… Ron 
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Yes =]
Mr. Mathews may be a great guitarist and teacher, but I doubt he knows much about genetics if he believes this.
Of course everyone gets better the more they put into something, esp. if they have effective learning methods, but it’s also patently clear that some people learn some things much faster than others.
Our individuality/difference is our beauty (and also the reason we shouldn’t compare our progress with others’)
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There is also scientific evidence that musical aptitude is heritable, i.e. passed along genetically. Here is a quote from a Scientific American article on the subject of talent:
In a study of over 10,000 twins, two of us found that music aptitude was substantially heritable, with genes accounting for around half of the differences across people on a test of music aptitude.
@brianlarsen does the rule of three apply in this situation?
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Well… what about pompiers (pronounced the Flemish way, of course)? 
But as Lieven said, we do love our neighbours, and as a show of my appreciation, I will just call you Rog(i)er
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I think you can be good if you concentrate on what you love.
For me,its blues and thanks to Justin ,I have a decent skill set .I have concentrated on blues and will happily play that and write my own music .
I suppose I have a limited skill set,but a keen sense of rhythm. Again,the skills were taught to me by Justin-I just added application and practice.
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There’s a book called ‘Mastery’ by Robert Greene that people might find interesting as it relates to the debate of nature vs nurture with respect to learning skills etc.
By studying the world’s most famous high performers, historical and modern, he finds that hard work, deliberate practice and learning from mentors trump natural ‘talent’ or inherent genius - and are crucial to mastery in any field.
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I believe that barring actual physical limitations, the majority of people can learn to do most anything if they’re willing to put in the time and effort.
This does not necessarily mean that the level of mastery achieved will be the same as a true master of whatever skill it is. Many skills require years of dedicated training and practice to become truly proficient. So, as Joshua @Jamolay mentions above, if you’re a “late starter”, your body may become physically incapable of doing the skills you need as you age.
However, in defense of the genetic argument above, here’s a true story.
Years back, my son (13 at the time) came home from his first day of school after the Summer break. He told his Mom & I that the school band needed a drummer & he wanted to give it a try. We went & talked to the teacher about what we needed to provide & found that we only had to buy a “bell kit”… essentially a mini xylophone. So we bought one & surprised him after school the next day! He was so excited that he went into his room & started playing with it!!! Well, fast forward about two hours & he called the family to come watch him play a song 
! We all rolled our eyes thinking of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star or some such.
No… he played the entire theme to Star Wars completely error-free!!! I practically had to pick my jaw up from the floor!!! He went on to play drums for about 4 years, picked up electric bass playing, guitar, uke & mandolin only to completely lose interest when he turned 18. Now, at 35, he’s expressing an interest to start drumming again…
Moral of the story, there are those people who have a “gift”… whether it’s genetics or something else, who knows? Nobody else in our family history has any musical ability to speak of… our son does have it though!!!
Tod
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An interesting example is Peter Green who took over from Eric Clapton in the Bluesbreakers at the age of 19 when arguably he was greater than EC at his peak. A few years later he effectively dropped out.
Many decades later he was encouraged to come back with the Peter Green Splinter Group. I believe he had to pretty much relearn the guitar. Although he was good he was not the great player he once was.
Substance abuse could also have had a lot to do with that.
I do think that some people learn things easier than others, and I think genetics play at least some kind of role in it. If you think about how fundamentally different the brains of neurodivergent people are, and how much variation has already be found in that group alone, I cannot help but think that this goes for everyone else as well. In my personal experience, I pick up things a lot easier than my sister, and we both came from the same nurturing environment.
Does it mean that I have to work less hard than my sister to get to the same level? A little bit, yes. But 99.900 hours of practice feels about the same as 100.000, doesn’t it? 
If it is just learning for a school test, it matters a lot that she needs 2 hours, and I only 5 minutes. But once you cross over into the first few hundred hours, it becomes irrelevant. And since guitar is a marathon, not a sprint… well, you get the drift 
I think ‘talent’ or ‘success’ in the context of music (or any art, really), also means something else, something that is harder to describe. What makes one work of art, one person playing guitar, stand out among others who are on the same (technical) level, and have put in roughly the same hours? A good portion of it is certainly luck and circumstances, another portion is something like originality, maybe, or idk, a vibe? It’s very vague, and I’m sorry I cannot describe it better. ‘It-factor’, maybe, or ‘je-ne-sais-quoi’? Charisma? Presence? Confidence?
I don’t think it’s something you can learn, but I think you can nourish whatever ember of it you find inside yourself. You’ll need experience, and courage, and confidence, and passion for what you’re doing, and it might not burn as bright as a Curt Kobain or a Jimmi Hendrix. But it’ll burn inside of you, and it’s you who gets to experience it, and in my opinion, that is very, very precious.
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