katydee comments on (Virtual) Employment Open Thread - Less Wrong

35 Post author: Will_Newsome 23 September 2010 04:25AM

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Comment author: itsunder9000 24 October 2010 11:36:44PM 1 point [-]

Want some brutally truthful tests designed to see how competent you are?

Take the SAT test, , which measures math ability, and verbal ability. Find a few psychology tests that try and measure memorization ability(like, how quickly and well you can memorize a topic)

Why? Because real world success, in intellectual endeavors, is largely a combination of how large your fluid intelligence is+memorization ability+ work ethic. The rest is due to combos of other factors.

Besides the SAT, you can take the LSAT, and study for a few things on there that require specific knowledge. The test is the single largest predictive factor of success in law school, and blind tests of competence.

There are a few other tests you can take. I recommend the AMC, which requires studying some topics outside of the regular school curriculum, but not too much.

Or, you could play starcraft for 3 months, and see how high you end up ranking.

Beyond these,I don't know of many good tests to see how competent you are.

Comment author: katydee 25 October 2010 06:04:26AM 3 points [-]

Are you joking? Starcraft isn't even a well-designed game-- it has all kinds of crazy barriers to entry and elements that explicitly exist to make it unnecessary difficult for people to pick up. Besides, it's easy for even a bad gamer (see: me) to achieve a high-looking ranking (top 25 Diamond) in Starcraft II thanks to its nonintuitive rating and placement system, and true rankings are only maintained for the top 200 people in each region.