I’ve just described to you a person that really wanted to learn something, and did it. Put in hours of mental and physical effort. And your response is that nobody wants to learn, and that people only learn what they want to learn? Which is self-evident and vacuous.

No need to be rude man. You also described the same person as unwilling to learn something. And I didn't say that person wanted to learn or not, I generalized and said people don't want to learn.

I believe we are both trying to say the same thing with different emphasis.

You are emphasizing that people do like to learn, but there are external forces that encourage/convince them not to.

I am emphasizing that people don't like to learn, unless they want to overcome the external forces. I just don't buy the excuse of external factors stopping people from learning, that's part of the learning process.

Your example talks about a person building a pc. Yes it takes time, energy, money, and learning. But it also has A TON of resources to help with that on the internet, definitely makes it easier. It is now a famously recommended project for anybody, even kids. It was also something that is 'new' to them, I assume.

Typing this out made me realize a distinction I failed to bring up. People do like to learn, but people HATE to UN-learn ideas. The person in your example wanted to learn something new, but did not want to unlearn the iphone walled garden.