Some people, not necessarily the same people who can ace tests without studying or learn math easily or even do well in sports, are still naturally good at responding to real-life, real-time events. They can manage their stress, make decision on the spot, communicate flexibly, and even have fun while doing it.

We call them "winners".

I think a similar thing happens in dancing. I've taken hundreds of dance lessons, in most styles of dance, over a period of ten years. I still can't go out onto the dance floor and dance. I've probably taken 200 salsa lessons; and at salsa lessons, I routinely have to ask people who started a few months ago for help. I literally can't perceive what the instructor is doing. Visually, I can see everything in fine detail; but if you asked me what they did, whether they spun left or right, or the man held the woman's left hand with his right or her right with his left, I couldn't say. It happens at a speed far above what my brain is able to process. Many instructors refuse to believe this, and will not demonstrate a movement at half-speed because they think it's wasting time. Instructors usually teach as long a sequence as they can in a lesson, guaranteeing that I won't remember any of it. They teach what a person can learn to mimic in one lesson, and don't understand that that's far beyond what a person can learn and remember in one lesson. In fact, after taking lessons from maybe 2 dozen different dance instructors, I would say that being a great dancer almost guarantees someone will make a lousy instructor. (A shout out to Michael Rye of Dance Bethesda, who is the best dance instructor I've had.)

When I tell people I have difficulty dancing, they always assume it's because I lack coordination or rhythm. In fact I have decent coordination and outstanding rhythm (though I have difficulty spelling it). But in dancing salsa, the man needs to keep in his head a list of about 100 different moves or short sequences, and every 4 seconds, he needs to review what he's just done and choose a new one that fits the previous sequence but isn't mere duplication of it. It takes the average man about 10 lessons to surpass me in salsa.

I had similar difficulties in martial arts, which I also studied for about 10 years. I did well in fights, because I only needed a set of about 10 precondition-attack combos to fight at the sub-blackbelt level where people don't get a chance to study their upcoming opponents. But I could never learn the kata (ritualized, pointless dance-like routines that are part of the belt exams), so I gave up advancing. And karate in particular was never fun for me - it was always stressful; I generally dreaded going, a feeling which just got worse and worse over time.

This is a reason why I'm skeptical that pickup can be taught to everyone. It's a skill that relies on deeply-embedded personality traits that might not be changeable. There can be many people who lack the skill but have the necessary traits, and they can learn. People who lack the skill and the traits, and fail to learn, are dismissed as not trying.