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LessWrong: video games > IQ tests

www.lesswrong.com video games > IQ tests — LessWrong

IQ tests are a type of test given to people. What makes them different from other tests given to people? …

video games > IQ tests — LessWrong

Video games also have potential legal advantages over IQ tests for companies. You could argue that "we only hire people good at video games to get people who fit our corporate culture of liking video games" but that argument doesn't work as well for IQ tests.

yet again an original post title that self-sneers

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44 comments
  • You can test people with bigger problems, like remembering the units in Wargame Red Dragon

    The fact that this "bigger problem" is rote memorization aside, it looks like there are a whopping 1700 units in that game. With names like M113A3 Super Dragon, CH46-C Phrog, or LVTP-7A1. Imagine some horrible dystopian future where you get to lock yourself up in your room for a couple months with an Anki deck trying to memorize as many Wargame: Red Dragon units as possible.

    Your brain would probably be fried by the time you edge out the competition for your completely-non-Red-Dragon-related job.

  • The entire article reads like a stealth sneer.

    Is it "consistency of results on a single IQ test type"? Not really. Wikipedia says: […]

    That's a best-case scenario for tests designed with that criteria as a priority, and the range is still significant.

    Is it "consistency of results across different IQ test types"? Not really; that's obviously worse than the above, and many "non-IQ" tests have comparable consistency.

    Yea to be fair to IQ tests horoscopes are also really inconsistent.

    Is it "practice being mostly irrelevant"? Not really. A few practice runs can often be worth +8 points

    Is it "working for an unusually wide range of intelligence"? Not really. IQ tests are notorious for working poorly above ~135

    Wow, sounds like IQ tests kinda suck. Maybe we shouldn't place so much importance on them.

    and I'd say they only really work well for -20 to +0 relative to the designers, with a somewhat wider range for teams.

    Source? I Made it Up

    My ACT score was in the top 0.1%, but I don't feel particularly proud of that, because it wasn't evaluating any of my actual strengths. I left college after a semester (while that was a failure from the perspective of society, school was holding me back intellectually) but I still took the GRE for...reasons...and got a top 1% score without studying, but that's not something I consider particularly meaningful either. Here's a theory of Alzheimer's I developed - what test score does that correspond to? As for IQ tests, I had a couple proper ones as a kid, and my scores were probably as high as was very meaningful, but probably less impressive than reading Feynman in 3rd grade.

    Spoiler tagging this doesn't make it not an irrelevant humblebrag.

    It might not be as objective, but people could compete on aesthetics too.

    Oh shit, this guy invented art competitions!

    When people smarter than the test designers take an IQ test, they often have to guess what the designers were thinking, but with video games, evaluation can be completely objective.

    Guessing what a test designer thinks is a cognitive task so surely high G people can do it better. I don't see the problem.

    The bandwidth and scope possible with video games is much higher than with IQ tests. You can test people with bigger problems, like remembering the units in Wargame Red Dragon, and multidisciplinary challenges, like optimizing both cost and visuals of fireworks in Kerbal Space Program; そういえば、ゲームのウィキの英語を理解することはまたテストのもう一つの側面でしょう.

    Random-ass Japanese for no reason. Weeb detected. Ironic how the non-English sentence muses about testing proficiency in reading English.

    I propose that from here on out people will be ranked by a test that involves dad jokes and making spiteful remarks about TESCREAL fandom.

  • not gonna lie i clicked to see if they mentioned any games im good at. ended up both disappointed they didn't and disappointed at wtf im even reading.

    i propose we measure people based on how much they are able to enjoy sims 4.

  • I agree with the post title, but only because video games have value and IQ tests absolutely do not

    IQ tests are notorious for working poorly above ~135, and I'd say they only really work well for -20 to +0 relative to the designers, with a somewhat wider range for teams.

    wait so how do the IQ test designers get their IQs tested? if the scouter explodes when it measures your IQ, do you get to design the tests?

    Have you played something like Slay the spire? Or Mechabellum that is popular right now? Deck builders don't require coordination at all but demands understanding of tradeoffs and managing risks. If anything those skills are neglected parts of intelligence.

    nice! by the Slay the Spire metric, I’ve got like a 180 IQ. time to dunk on these nerds

    (I’m also gonna download Mechabellum cause it looks like entirely my shit. not the first time I’ve ignored all of the “salient” points in a rat post and went straight for the game recommendations)

  • If you're going to hiring discrimination*, don't talk about your discrimination strategy in public.

    *(I assume the lesswrongeurs are assuming that IQ tests are going to be made illegal because black IQ test scores (on average) are lower than white IQ test scores (on average) and rather than interrogate this weird data the lesswrongeurs seem to have accepted as gospel that this test gap is immutable and possibly just the natural side effect of having melanin rather than a product of 100s of variables that had nothing to do with biology)

44 comments