Two brutal tests — can you pass them?
We all give people "tests" when we meet them, whether we are consciously aware of it or not. Here are two of mine:
1. The chess test. When I played chess in my youth, I would commonly analyze games with other players. You would then rapidly learn just how much and how quickly the other player could figure out the position and see imaginative variations. Some players maybe had equal or even inferior results to mine (I had a good work ethic and took no drugs), but it was obvious they were greater talents at analysis. Top chess players who worked with Bobby Fischer also attest that in this regard he was tops, not just "another great player." That was true even before he was good enough and steady enough to become world champion.
When talking ideas with people, the same issue surfaces — just how quickly and how imaginatively do they grasp what is going on? You should put aside whatever they have or have not accomplished. How much do they have this Bobby Fischer-like capacity to analyze? No matter what their recent results have been (remember how Efim Geller used to kick Fischer’s butt in actual games?).
2. The art test. Take a person’s favorite genres of art, music, whatever. But something outside of their work lives. Maybe it can even be sports. How deeply do they understand the said subject matter? At what kind of level can they talk about it or enjoy it or maybe even practice it?
Remember in Hamlet, how Hamlet puts on a play right before the King’s eyes, to see how the King reacts to "art"?
Here we are testing for sensibility more than any kind of rigorous analysis, though the analysis test may kick in as well. Just how deep is the person’s deepest sensibility?
If you are investing in talent, you probably would prefer someone really good at one of these tests over someone who is "pretty good" at both of them.
3. All other tests.
Now, people can be very successful while failing both "the chess test" and "the art test." In fact, most successful people fail both of these tests. Still, their kinds of success will be circumscribed. They are more likely to be hard-working, super-sharp, and accomplished, perhaps charismatic as well, while lacking depth and imaginative faculty in their work.
Nonetheless they will be super-focused on being successful.
I call this the success test.
Now if someone can pass the chess test, the art test, and the success test with flying colors…there are such people!
And if the person doesn’t pass any of those tests, they still might be just fine, but there will be a definite upper cap on their performance.
Comments
"Remember in Hamlet, how Hamlet puts on a play right before the King’s eyes, to see how the King reacts to "art"?"
No, Hamlet didn't put on the play to see how the king reacted to the art of it. He put it on to see if the king reacted to the poisoning scene, which doesn't have a lot to do with understanding the play on a deep level.
You failed your own art test.
Exactly so, and what I was going to post. 'Twas not art but innuendo that was intended to prick the conscience of the king.
"not art but innuendo" is beaucoup elegant example of a false dichotomy
Thank you, Sir. May have another?
"You failed your own art test".
He fails most of my tests too. Does he really believe that that only chess and art are critical measures and that success in any of the "All other tests" condemns people to lacking depth and imaginative faculty? How about the Arrogance and Inflated Ego Test?
Maybe I misunderstand, but sounds like you took this too literally. Chess and art are just examples here. We are not literally testing somebody’s chess skills, but rather their analytical ability / imagination. This can cover a broad range of actual "tests".
He fails most of my tests too. Does he really believe that that only chess and art are critical measures and that success in any of the "All other tests" condemns people to lacking depth and imaginative faculty?
Yes, there are plenty of other tests. For example, I don't know how Einstein was at chess or art analysis, but I read somewhere that other physicists would talk to him about their work and what was puzzling them, and he would immediately start asking brilliant questions and offer amazing insights. They marvelled that Einstein was able to start solving problems they'd been working on for years.
So Tyler should have greatly toned down the emphasis on chess and art, and stuck with *this* point (quoting him):
When talking ideas with people, the same issue surfaces — just how quickly and how imaginatively do they grasp what is going on? You should put aside whatever they have or have not accomplished. How much do they have this Bobby Fischer-like capacity to analyze?
That's how people described John von Neumann: he often immediately understood exactly what was going on and could offer solutions that even brilliant people were unable to see, in multiple fields. But then, even one of the greatest minds of the century was apparently lousy at poker.
My instant read was he was playing on the art/artifice shared origin. Dunno.
Shakespeare is great--the great master of words and metaphor--but he's overrated as a playwright. In fact in many ways he's quite bad as a playwright, as Tolstoy argues quite well in his essay on the matter. And so this often occurs: encouraged by enthusiastic critics, people see depth and meaning in the plays that aren't actually there.
Another test: The comedy test.
What is the quality of their humor. Do they laugh at lame jokes especially lame jokes they themselves tell? If so they fail at my comedy test.
My comedy test is a lot simpler. The more things you find funny, the better.
It takes a true comedic genius to understand that everything, the entire universe, existence itself is funny.
Indeed, a keen sense of humor is definitely g-loaded!
And that’s my take on Tyler’s first two tests - they are both looking at simultaneous breadth and depth of analysis and understanding, which is pretty much the definition of g-loaded.
Grasping unfamiliar concepts quickly is another g-loaded test. Talk to someone about a nontrivial subject they are largely unfamiliar with and see how they pick up on it.
I know an old man who laughs at his own jokes. But he has the most charming way of doing it that it's absolutely hilarious.
"Do they laugh at lame jokes especially lame jokes they themselves tell? If so they fail at my comedy test." Diving a little deeper, I think if they are laughing at their own jokes, that can be an indicator that can show they have to be the one in charge/running the show, and many times that's just covering up one of their insecurities. If they are laughing at other people's jokes, that can show they can pass the focus, and coexist well with others. If they make jokes that are based on them actively listening to others, and that are not overly demeaning/putting anyone down, then that'd be a great indicator of a good listener. This is someone you'd want to have as a friend/on your team at work.
Great post. Thank you for sharing, Tyler.
Among students and professors, the success test is a super-important screening device. Most of us know people who are amazing at analysis and have deep understanding of a variety of areas but who are either perfectionists or somehow unwilling to take the risk of calling something good enough and finishing it before moving on to the next thing. These are people who are great to run your ideas by for critique, but they are not the kind of people who you want to hire as employees.
> These are people who are great to run your ideas by for critique, but they are not the kind of people who you want to hire as employees.
I'm unconvinced. The issue is that once you finish with all these critiques of the "success test" and move on to creating an alternative, the alternative always seems to shake out to be "which kid's parents do I know?" or "which person seems like they grew up in a similar social/class background to me?"
This is a common cycle in the 21st century.
"Remember in Hamlet, how Hamlet puts on a play right before the King’s eyes, to see how the King reacts to "art"?'
Screw the fruit loops, Sam.
These are all written in the Bible, you know how I know why? They're all written down. So it appears film and fiction are not so anti-local.
I will raise an army against you!
Lay upon the light.
You must see it by now.
if you ever, ever lie, you're finished with me.
That’s a great example of some of the worst consequences of utilitarian capitalism. That such short term time pressures could so powerfully influence decisions in areas where we should be thinking in centuries, not years, is quite disappointing. No Sagrada Familias I’d thought happening here, just another mobile home park please!
Or alternatively, that is the greatest strength of utilitarian capitalism. It keeps focus on the immediate and leads to consistent marginal improvement.
Ultra long term thinking, in years or centuries frame, sounds impressive. But without some payout represents a tremendous waste of resources and opportunity. And let’s face it. Most new ideas suck. They’re not going to payoff. So the longer it takes for that reality to actualize the worse off everyone is. And there is no way to know what the physical, social and technological environment will look like decades to centuries i the future - precisely no one in 1980 successfully predicted life in America in 2020. Let alone some one doing so in 1920 or 1820. So such long term plans are little more than fantasies.
His son came down with a basketball from Updike, armor from Homer, a sword from Murakami, two tennis shoes from Anderson, a pair of jeans from Einstein and a pair of shades for O’Connor.
Please drop your possessions.
His son complied. He handed him Don Quixote.
But these are my things, his son stammered. I will trade you this book for my things.
No one likes my scream either, his dad said. Come pick up your things, he took the book. I’ll read it to you.
"So the longer it takes for that reality to actualize the worse off everyone is."
I would consider this statement to be false, depending upon your definition of "everyone". It does make sense from a utilitarian perspective to say that making people with finite lifespans who are alive today wait longer for some positive experience probably lowers their welfare. But what about people who aren't even born yet? And if you assume that there are more lives yet to be lived in the future than have been lived today or in the past (which to me seems reasonable), then I would think the conclusions that would be drawn would be the opposite of yours?
Also, I really don't have a problem with that point of view in private businesses. But the author was referring to a University, unless I misunderstood. What's wrong with perfectionism in academia? Most of the ideas and projects that have stood the test of time weren't done for money.
If you grew up in an extremely judgy family, who found the littlest reason to look down on people, this post gives you the creeps. It’s much more edifying to keep an open mind. Most people have something interesting and know something you could learn, so stop testing and open your ears. People might actually enjoy being around more, as well.
Nobody likes to be tested.
Come on. Having personal "tests" still means you can keep an open mind and learn from others. It's a subconscious test, with results rarely delivered to the testee. These "tests" are just part of how humans think, not an intentional structure we choose to build.
Two Brutal Tests - in Computer Science there are two hard problems: 1. Naming things, 2. Cache invalidation, and 3. Off-By-One errors.
I once assumed that that high IQ people who excelled at math and chess would also excel at STEM-like problem solving; the pandemic has disabused me of this notion.
Tyler scores well on his Two++ Brutal Tests but he is missing an intangible creative problem solving dimension that scientists like E. O. Wilson, applied technologists like Paul Graham, and traditional engineers like Henry Petroski have in spades. We need a test to measure this creative applied STEM dimension, IMO.
RAD,
Re:
… CS hard problems … Off-By-One errors …
+1000
Personally…
I would flunked test 1 - I’m a terrible Chess
player.
OK with test number 2 - I don’t like ‘Elvis on Velvet’ or ‘Dogs Playing Poker’ "Art".
As to success … I’ve been retired over 5 years and we’re not eating Cat food … so I’d say I was successful enough.
Yeah, I was good at the kind of CS problems RAD mentioned, and still am around many people with poor analytic skills at tech problems. Tyler is right that people with system-wide thinking and analytic talent are hard to find, and I'll add that they are hard to assess among the very young. Regarding his examples, I was never good at chess, and my math skills ran out short of the talent to write papers. For CS, most people don't need more than that, and many of the math disciplines are irrelevant anyway.
I assume Tyler's post is related to his book on finding talent.
Jeez Louise I'm brutal at editing in these 3-line by 40-character text boxes. Sorry about that that :-)
I agree that none of the 3 tests correlate with problem solving ability which requires an inquisitive curious tendency likely entwined with "Imagination".
Being good at math correlates with being good at music and not with getting get rich. I Q test were designed to predict grades in school, and most teachers to not value creativity, they want "right" answers.
And let's always put "right" in scare quotes. Who's to say what's "right" when determining the weight capacity of a bridge?
I'm a teacher. I would be thrilled with creativity as it implies deep thinking. I don't know one currently working teacher who wouldn't be.
This is a joke, right?
Judging people, and putting them into "useful" and "useless" categories, is probably the #1 defining trait of liberals like Tyler. They don't even think doing this is obscene, as this post demonstrates.
My town is developing a historic housing development law.
The buildings are either contributing or non-contributing.
Reminds me of BSG episode Razor
Everyone needs to choose among people at some point. Choosing a partner for school assignments, choosing a co-founder, dating, choosing which company to work for, which group of people to go to the pub with this Saturday, who to sit next to in class, which doctor to visit, who to ask for mentorship ... etc.
We're physically and temporally limited and so can't say yes to everyone.
If you're not consciously thinking of your reasons, as Tyler is outlining here, aren't you using unconscious gut-feeling to make the choice? Is that less obscene?
ps. Choosing a preference in the above scenarios doesn't require looking down on others.
"We all give people "tests" when we meet them, whether we are consciously aware of it or not." Well maybe not ‘we’. I’m always suspicious of someone attributing his motives to everybody. When I meet someone for the first time, I just take them in, in the widest sense. I made a habit of asking their name a second time, because my attention overwhelmed a memory of the name. I don’t know if anyone else has the same approach, but that’s how I do it.
The title says two brutal tests, but Tyler actually lists three.
There are 3 kinds of people: those who can count and those who can’t.
There are 10 types of people-those who know base-2 notation and those who don’t.
There are 10 types of people - those who think the joke is in base 2, those who think it's in base 3, those who think it's in base 4 (...) and those who reserve judgement.
There's another test. Can a person be utterly arrogant and still be charming and approachable?
Not that I have anyone in mind.
My test is whether a person is able to recognize our common humanity, that I’ve are one human family. This is a sign of advanced emotional, intellectual and spiritual intelligence if there is such a thing.
Talking all the time about or spending a lot of time on art, chess, professional sports or career success would be a predictor, but not determinative of pretty low results.
Call me old fashion.
I have a test I sometimes find myself applying to people.
If the Nazis occupied us tomorrow, would you be more likely to hide me in your attic, or get a job working the gas chambers?
It's a bit extreme, but occasionally when I meet someone I just get such a strong impression of moral weakness that I can't help but think of it on this way.
The CoVid Hysteria has demonstrated that a majority of people are willing to trade liberty for the illusion of safety. That westerners have a high propensity for social conformity. And that a substantial fraction find it acceptable to use compulsion, and implicitly violence, to enforce social conformity.
In Germany, in the dark times, the people that engaged in murder were a vanishingly small minority - the extreme tail of the distribution curve. The majority of the distribution that enabled that tail just conformed to the zeitgeist of the times, accepted their authority’s narrative and went along to get along. They didn’t think through the consequence because they didn’t want to.
> The CoVid Hysteria has demonstrated that a majority of people are willing to trade liberty for the illusion of safety.
You consider it an "illusion of safety". Most others (including myself) don't consider it an illusion. And I think pretty much all sides tend to valorize making sacrifices for the common good in the face of a real threat.
It's simply a matter of whether you consider this threat to be large enough to warrant such actions.
Most others (including myself) don't consider it an illusion…
Sure, people suffering from delusions rarely realize that they are not real.
Here is what is real. CoVid is a not very dangerous disease. Certainly less lethal than the Spanish flu of 100 years ago. And less lethal than many other diseases that humanity has dealt with throughout recorded history. It’s basically in line with the Asian flu of 1957. Which few today have hear of because society took it in stride at the time
The response to this not very dangerous disease has been forced lock downs and shelter in place orders from governments. People cowering in fear, dramatically reducing their social interactions.
The rise of a bizarre ritualized wearing of face masks - for which their is no scientific evidence supporting their efficacy. And the sacralization of vaccines.
Which are seen as a magic potion, that works, but doesn’t, and requires a willful rejection of theory of vaccination. IE that exposure to a weakened pathogen triggers an immune response in individuals that protects against the organic pathogen. The hysterics simultaneously hold that the vaccine someone produces a better response than actual exposure and at the same time leaves the vaccinated at risk for that exposure. Leading to the belief that they must be universal to provide protection and so must be forced on those who resist participating. This is all pseudo scientific nonsense in line with the religious response to previous high mortality pandemics.
First, "acceptable risk" has simply changed. The risk that my father would accept when he was young seems crazy to me. The risk that I accepted when I was young seems crazy to my kids.
So yes, life is simply worth more than it used to and the level of acceptable risk that I grew up with is simply obsolete in modern society, which makes sense. Society is very different from 50-60 years ago and risks that we could not mitigate then are now a matter of choice.
And for comparison, during WWII, Europe has a population of ~2.3 billion and lost 25m dead in the war, or... about 1%. So yes, in my opinion, I consider a 1% fatality rate worth taking fairly strong measures to try to avoid. (and no, they're not equivalent, but it does give some idea of just how terrible 1% fatality actually is.)
Honestly, this reminds me of seatbelts. I remember the hue and cry when seatbelt laws were first introduced. Nobody knew anyone whose life was personally saved by seatbelts, everyone knew someone who knew someone who would have died if they had been wearing a seatbelt.
30 years later, and almost everyone is wearing seatbelts, and we're all much safer for it.
For reference, I live in Canada - very similar culture and population to US, but somewhat better conformance and we have 1/2 the deaths. Maybe coincidence, but I think my fellow Canadians have decided over-all not to take that risk.
Europe’s population in 1940 was not 2.4 billion. Maybe 1/10that.
Yes society has become extremely risk adverse over the last half century. At some point, extreme risk aversion is a form of mental illness. Especially when the risk aversion is driven by an extreme over estimation of the risk presented by some activity. All of that is present with CoVid hysteria. Many people believe that generally health people under 70 face a likely death if they get CoVid. They don’t. The actual risk for such people is little more than that from the flu.
Seriously, you consider that the NPI have made you safer? That making two-year old kids to wear masks all day made you safer? The fact is this: after 18 months of strong NPI, and a huge campaign of vaccinations, the number of cases is high in many country, even amongst vaccinated: see the US, France, Israel, for a few striking examples.
I go for the "Can they recognize that they might do either, or hide out in the murky middle, depending on circumstances?" test.
I don't much like this as it tests how people behave in a generally unfree society; it's easy to be a hero when you don't live there. Such environment often causes even good people to do bad things. They themselves often sincerely regret it later, but it cannot be undone.
I have a different one: if you lived in that era and given your current ideological framework but without knowing the history lesson:
- would you vote for the Nazis in the 30s
- would you vote for the Communists in the 40s
- would you vote for eugenics in the 30-50s
Unclear how one knows if one has "passed" either of your tests, Tyler. How good must one be to pass either one. Is 95% as good as Bobby Fisher passing on the chess test?
Guess I am hopeless for passing any of them as I cannot even figure this out.
If you can analyze blog posts to identify (a) the self-regard and (b) the political virtue-signaling, you have passed the first test. If you can riff from NPR book reviews and Amazon's "look inside" feature to make it sound like you read seven books a day, you have passed the second one. But be sure to intimate that there are unidentified people out there who are even better at these tasks than you are, so people see that you're humble.
You will pass "the test" when you find who Economic Logician is! That’s the grail for you, Barkley
I am particularly interested in the Bobby Fischer anecdote. Salieri, for example, was well known as primus inter pares at court - and the court was the most musical court in Europe - and then Mozart showed up.
If Fischer had remained in competition long enough, would he not have . as Salieri once did, also meet his Mozart, and if he would have,does not that invalidate the Fischer portion of the comment?
Before getting frustrated with what you think is my lack of insight, please remember that among the sort of people who can become great chess players, very very few are tempted to take that route. It is not a useful bell curve when you account for the prior sieving process.
The most impressive of athletes are NOT the athletes who win at a sport that few kids in high school try out for - the most impressive athletes are the ones who play a game that the greatest percentage of their peers tried to play.
"And if the person doesn’t pass any of those tests, they still might be just fine, but there will be a definite upper cap on their performance."
I thought it was true of everyone.
Damn, I can't even pass the Rorschach test...
Not if they keep showing you those dirty pictures, you can't.
1 Quick on the uptake?
2 Pick up allusions?
3 See jokes?
4 Understand irony/sarcasm?
5 Terse not wordy?
Come to think of it, #5 should read "Terse?"
I have a much simpler test - take them out to dinner and watch how they treat the server. Says a LOT about a person.
The CEO of Charles Schwab would sometimes take executive job candidates out to breakfast or lunch, meet with the server ahead of time, and tell them to screw up the candidates order. He would then see how the candidate reacts.
There's also the 'getting shit done' test.
If you fail that then you're only really fit to shovel said shit into a pile for others to deal with, regardless of any other test results.
A relevance test - Does someone choose to work on something important, or, more commonly, do they choose to work on something that just seems important if you don't analyze it too carefully. The motivations to do the latter are myriad, but it usually boils down to signaling ~ seeming relevant is quite often more beneficial to an individual than actually being relevant. It is something of an intellectual honestly evaluation. I'd much rather have a relatively stupid person muddle along on a valuable task than have a very intelligent person excel at something that is predictably useless.
In high school I always liked the "bonus" problem test as a distinguishing factor.
What I mean is, several of the honors math teachers would teach the problems with the usual steps but then give a related proof as a bonus on a test. Most students did reasonably well on the test but typically few did well on the bonus - and the ones who did well on the bonus often weren’t the ones who did well generally.
Also, as it was honors in a fairly good HS, many of the regular achievers ended up at big-deal private schools or at least the state flagship.
The ultra-super successful (in business, profession, and contribution to humanity) individuals I’ve worked with all meet Tyler’s criteria. And all were alpha males, with alpha male personal lives: broken marriages, younger mistresses, children out of wedlock, and a trail of ruined colleagues, dysfunctional offspring and suicides behind them.
The moral is that you should hire that success-focused individual, with the analytic mind, great laugh, and deep knowledge of the arts, but don’t marry him or be his kid.
Given that 99% of talent screening or talent selection talk on the internet is specifically about picking tech bros (either as employees or as founders), somebody ought to be testing these people for whether they believe that being an expert at x also makes them an expert at y. It would cut down on the number of medium posts I have to read by people who believe because they're great engineers or founders, they also have insight to provide in epidemiology, voting system design, or any dozens of other fields.
These various tests are well and good, but I can't shake the sense there's something provincial about them. They make sense most to a modern college graduate, someone being tested for aptitude related to our existing institutions. Conversely, I can't imagine historical geniuses answering this question in anything like similar terms.
Useful accomplishment usually involves other people, so social skills seem de rigueur. Also some sense of history and connection to a historical community, for the advantage of wisdom, accumulated knowledge, and social support.
I second the suggestions above that Tyler's standards don't adequately include an engineering perspective, of how things work independently of our mental brilliance.
Finally, I adduce Harold Bloom's point that genius recreates and redefines the standards of value in new and original terms. Tyler's are not that.
I don't get this post at all. Doesn't the GRE cover everything?
#2, in my experience, is more useful than #1. #1 requires that you have a very good grasp of the subject matter to begin with, else you can be fooled by the rapidity with which one can generate plausible sounding BS. As such, it is of limited use. Another trap here is having over-confidence in your own grasp to begin with.
Some of the smartest people I've spent time with would not do particularly well with #1, especially in casual conversation. It's a type. They are reluctant to spew plausible sounding BS, perhaps for the reasons above, but catch up with them at a later date, and they can reveal themselves to be particularly insightful.
My initial thought was ‘I don’t do this!’ And then I remembered all the times I’ve recommended Tyler to friends way to his left saying ‘you’ve just gotta listen to someone who has nuanced opinions on Morton Feldman and Szechuan cuisine’
Another test:
The narrative test:
How easily to people conform to / reject a narrative pushed by an authority or their social group.
Examples of such narratives are systemic racism, AGW, CoVid Hysteria, GWT.
Intelligent and highly educated people fall on the wrong side of this test, to high social conformity, because deference to authority is embedded in education and becomes reflexive over time.
It is rich irony to cite your flavor of anti-CoVid-Hysteria as objective truth. There is obviously no social in-group driven narrative underlying your Elites-are-Lying position [sarcasm].
I didn’t say that elites were lying, although I suppose the implication is there.
So to clarify, the narratives above are all examples of emergent belief systems. At some point they become conventional wisdom that everyone knows are true. They are not the result of active conspiracies by a few "lying" elites. They gain further traction when elites latch onto pushing them as a means to retaining or increasing their own status, but they are not the originating source. And they usually believe the narratives themselves, even if doing so benefits them materially, so they are not lying.
If the examples above are too controversial due to their relevance, consider the daycare child abuse hysteria that swept the country in the mid 80s. It started with wild claims by a few schizophrenic parents, was pushed by "therapists" and gained traction with anxious parents nationwide. Prosecutors jumped on and initiated spurious prosecutions that resulted in destroying many lives. All of that before the internet a d social media existed to amplify the hysteria. It ultimately burned out, revisiting the original claims that kicked the whole thing off leads to complete incredulity - how could people take this nonsense seriously? But they did, at the height, most people did, including the elites and experts.
It was only the other day that I saw a claim that a prosecutor who did very well out of it was Janet Reno who ended up as the federal AG. You know, the woman responsible for the slaughter at Waco.
Afterthought: I never see Waco on lists of American mass murders. Why is that?
I look for reflexive contrarianism. Those people are annoying AF and more likely to spend their time trying to own the line than getting anything done. They listen to people like Jpe Rogan and the Weinstein brothers and whine about the MSM without realizing that those podcasters get far more consumers than a typical CNN primetime show.
I’d be curious to hear some examples of who passed all three tests.
The first two tests remind me of the now close to 100 year schism between analytic and continental philosophy, with British and American philosophers endeavoring to be chess masters of clarity while German and French philosophers set their minds to rendering a world that is reflective of the real world with an intensity that approximates to transcendental truth.
Is there some connection here to Isaiah Berlin's discussion about Tolstoy, the hedgehog and the fox and the integrative power of the latter vs the "ecrivasserie et avocasserie" of the former? That a defining feature of Tolstoy's genius is that he describes power not just as intellectual prowess but as a an emergent attribute of a wider integrative ability beyond mere reason? Not just having sensibility, but having some deeply rooted experientially-based sense of how (a) thing(s) will play out? What does it take to "succeed" in... perhaps?
Judging from some of the job ads I read for journalists, even someone passing all three tests is barely good enough.
That's really funny. Judging by their product, many journalists seem both badly and narrowly educated and remarkably lacking in analytical skills. I recall one TV "journalist" reporting years ago from a disaster site, describing triage, obviously a brand new concept to him.
It's become something of a running joke in our household to call out news reports that are so poorly written (lacking the basic who, what, when, where, why, let alone any cogent analysis) that it's impossible to determine what the "news" is purported to be.
What about dating shit tests?
That's how girls assess talent in potential partners.
How many people do you meet who are aware? Of their surroundings, of what's occurring, who listen, who observe, who are conversant about current events across spectrums?
You seriously feel the need to "test" everyone to measure their utility? And to see if their utility will "cap out" at some point?
I can see why you always vote Democrat. If someone can't serve the state, what good are they?
Hikaru Nakamura beat Mr. Beast (the most watched and quite an imaginative youtuber) with only a queen on his side multiple times. What should one make of that?
The hedgehog and the fox: the former knows one big thing and the latter knows many things. Not surprisingly, many have attempted to peg Cowen as one or the other; and Cowen has attempted to peg some of his colleagues as one or the other (I am referring to you, Hanson, who knows one big thing). Cowen , a polymath, is a fox; indeed, this blog is a fox. If one Googles "Tyler Cowen and the hedgehog and the fox", one may be surprised by the number of hits. Of course, the hedgehog obsesses about the one big thing he believes he knows (such as signaling), while the fox sees the world as a compilation of many things. I read obituaries in the NYT. Every day. Today I read the obituary of Ernst van de Wetering. He devoted his entire life to one big thing, Rembrandt. No, not the entirety of the life of Rembrandt, but the identity of his paintings. I suspect all of us have met a Wetering, the first meeting a fascinating encounter. My advice? Avoid any further encounters.
Imagine being off the charts intelligent and exceptionally knowledgeable. Imagine being more accomplished and productive than 99.9% of the population and having a thoroughly wonderful life. Then imagine reading the obituary of this person and realizing that all of their accomplishments in life are mere footnotes, at best.
My point was not to slight either Rembrandt or Wetering. One of my dearest friends, an artist (he is French), named his daughter Saskia, Rembrandt's influence on my friend was so profound. My friend is a hedgehog, but as to art: he is known for his paintings but sculpture is what he prefers, his sculptures often multi-figure presentations, the individual pieces impressive works of art but the presentations evoking something much bigger. I begin my mornings looking at the front page of the NYT and reading anything profound that happened overnight, most mornings nothing profound to read. My next stop, the NYT obituaries. They are fascinating reading, reflecting fascinating subjects. I want to know them, I want to know how they would describe their lives, their accomplishments and their failures, and how, if given another life, they would change the one they lived.
By the way, re drugs and chess what is the deal with performance enhancing drugs? Do players take modafinil and the like?
Surely THIS piece fits THIS Tyler Cowen post:
http://fictionaut.com/stories/strannikov/a-quiz-show-audition
--even without a chess citation. (If only Marcel Duchamp had showed up!)
--and if not that one, then SURELY this one, with its acute, cogent, and impeccable analysis of drug experience (given Tyler's stated reluctance to sniff either fentanyl or LSD):
http://fictionaut.com/stories/strannikov/essay-on-cranial-electrification-and-empirical-clarification
(Still no chess citations, but no Shakespeare, either.)
The academic test: how much serious research -- defined as publishing articles in respectable academic journals-- do after he/she receives tenure and starts a blog?
Need to screen out jerks. TC filters could get you cognitive superstars incapable of working with others. Add a test for humility/ability to be coached/‘brilliant jerk’ prevention.
"I had a good work ethic": does he mean he worked hard, or that he pursued good works? He's an economist so the second seems unlikely.
I have a much simpler and less elitist test: if you meet someone for the first time and they ask no questions about you in the first 5 minutes, they are not worth knowing.
I’d think the guy who passes all three would be deshaun Watson. Star NFL quarterback (success, art). And becoming a good chess player to inform his football. https://www.google.com/amp/s/theathletic.com/1893860/2020/06/29/seth-makowsky-chess-quarterbacks-coach-football/%3famp
big housewife leaves unclean coffee pot for new maid test vibes in this post
a brutal false equivalency test- cnn/taliban edition
one of these things is not like the other
You forgot about the Science/reality test. Some people see the interconnections of reality rapidly and easily and many do not.
Even basic observations like, "you can't fully describe an N-dimensional problem in N-x dimensions", are not understood as we see social scientists look at complex multiple variable issues using only a couple of variables that give them the PC results. We then wonder why their "advocacy science" doesn't reproduce.
I suggest a "bowling test" with anyone you're thinking of doing business with. You learn a lot from an hour of play with a stranger. Anyone can bowl, maybe not good, but that's not the point. What's important is how they play.
TC: "[on chess]I had a good work ethic and took no drugs), but it was obvious they were greater talents at analysis." - what drug helps improve skill in chess? Some claim Adderall is one such drug; maybe caffeine?
Bonus trivia: I'm low expert in chess. Means I can beat 95% of all players. But that 5% bothers me. I need to gain another 100 points.
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