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

10 points

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.

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7 points

Sounds a bit like the rivet-counting wargamer grognards of the past, who have a reputation of being a bit… obsessive.

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6 points
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Hmmmmmm

https://www.reddit.com/r/wargame/comments/86ohj3/why_is_wargame_chat_full_of_nazis/

I was inspired to search “wargame red thunder forums racism” by this though-provoking post, which I got from somewhere (here? search gives me nothing)

https://kotaku.com/the-struggle-over-gamers-who-use-mods-to-create-racist-1826606138

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5 points

oh I fucking knew it, just look at the vibe of the thing

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4 points
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Deleted by creator
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6 points

last name Ix

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4 points

@kuna @gerikson Had no idea they were that bad. Well guess that is a thing I will never play.

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3 points

the perfect game for lesswrongers! or a certain contingent thereof

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10 points

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.

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.

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9 points

Here’s a theory of Alzheimer’s I developed

Ahahahahahaha

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5 points

what test score does that correspond to?

I dunno, let’s ask someone who peer reviewed it.

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7 points

When I was at school there was a kid who earnestly believed that he would, as an adult, build a nanobot machine to do modern day alchemy by rearranging the component particles of atoms, but he is, as far as I know, doing good and normal things out in the world today

I find myself thinking about this story frequently in a sneering context

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

I read this as:「These feeble minds cannot possibly measure my intelligence ! It’s over 9000 !」
This «I am very smart» lad must’ve received a disappointing score, which I suspect explain a great deal of his rant, humblebrag and all.

That or it is indeed satire (although too much effort as gone into the author’s blog, that if is satire it’s more sad than funny).

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4 points

Lol, in many video games figuring out what the developers had in mind gives huge advantages, that person probably isn’t very good at videogames lmai

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9 points

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)

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8 points

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)

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5 points

wait so how do the IQ test designers get their IQs tested?

and moses came down from the mountain, bearing with him the holy slates of psychometry with which to measure which animals shall be allowed to board

– (the actual reason there’s no more unicorna)

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-1 points
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video games have value and IQ tests absolutely do not

IQ tests have proven to be a good predictor of job performance, health, and likelihood of being convicted for a crime

Predicting those does have value, because it can help companies making hiring decisions and help those struggling before they start having bigger problems.

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-2 points

video games have value and IQ tests absolutely do not

IQ tests have proven to be a good predictor of job performance, health, and likelihood of being convicted for a crime

Predicting those does have value, because it can help companies making hiring decisions and get those struggling with help before they start having bigger problems.

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-6 points

video games have value and IQ tests absolutely do not

IQ tests have proven to be a good predictor of job performance, health, and likelihood of being convicted for a crime.

The main study for this was the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, which took IQ tests and followed the same participants throughout their life. IQ was shown to be a better predictor than family income, and other factors.

Being able to predict job performance has value for companies who want long-term reliable employees. It has value for schools and students so that those struggling can get additional help before bigger problems pop up.

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8 points
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and likelihood of being convicted for a crime.

do you think there are any confounding factors there

EDIT: actually, forget it, you’ve been deleting and reposting to try to promote this stuff, bye now

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8 points

aw fuck, my baby’s first post defending iq got d-d-d-downvotes! the only high iq move here is to delete and repost it and then post a pop science youtube video that supports my point. that’ll show em who the real @mind in the room is

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3 points

@dgerard @sneerclub IQ is a metric for how sneaky people are.

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-4 points

The conclusions made about IQ were done after controlling for factors like race and family income, which you would know if you even did a cursory study of the research behind these tests, because you weren’t the first person to ask that. Controlling for confounding variables was always a big part of IQ research.

I’m sure we both know that race and family income will have a big effect on life outcomes, regardless off who you are as a person. To account for that, you can control for both factors and see how IQ impacted life outcomes when those stay the same.

According to the NLSY, a big study often referenced to establish how good IQ is as a predictor, shows that even with a race or income bracket, a higher IQ is linked to better life outcomes.

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4 points

You know I misread this post due to the janky format of the new website and I just wanted you to understand as you go that I really thought you could have had something great with the version of this where you’re arguing that very defensive gamers are predicted to be more intelligent and do less crime than black people, but no: you just had to be the brainlet with the oldest fuckin’ “actually IQ test are real and magic” shtick on the internet

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2 points
*

this is how we know nu-sneerclub* is a success

* much as nu-metal

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8 points

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.

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SneerClub

!sneerclub@awful.systems

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Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.

AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)

This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

[Especially don’t debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]

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