Your Bayesian prior should be that I know more about Scott's mathematical potential than Scott does. :-)

I don't think so. Your priors aren't worth much until you have been on both sides of the fence. There are people who are bad at musics. There are people who are bad at language. There are people who are bad at sports. Some people are bad at programming. And Scott is indeed bad at math.

He can certainly internalize some math he finds relevant, but if you take him and someone of his age but with aptitude for math and try to teach them, to the best of your abilities, some math they have never been exposed to and have no intuitive frame of reference for, you will see the difference in the uptake rate immediately. Maybe elements of abstract algebra, or something.

This is an experimental fact that you must have come across many times in your tutoring, and I don't understand why you seem to be denying that. Some people learn faster, retain better and can learn more about certain subjects than other people. Some people can use their aptitude elsewhere as crutches. The aesthetical discernment you mentioned is one of those crutches. Scott is certainly multi-talented enough to be able to do that when he has to learn math. But he will never be as good as you at it. Sure, some sub-par math teacher probably impaired his mathematical skills, but, just like you will never be Beethoven, he will never be Jonah Sinick.

I'll substantiate my claim that aesthetic sense drives a large fraction of mathematical accomplishment in future posts.

This claim seems clearly true to me, but no "aesthetic sense" is enough to do meaningful research if you don't "get" math. Scott is bad at math, and he can shore up this deficiency, to a degree, with hard work, aesthetics sense and by generally being brilliant at many other things.