You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

palladias comments on Open Thread, May 19 - 25, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: somnicule 19 May 2014 04:49AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (289)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: ike 22 May 2014 07:56:38PM *  4 points [-]

Hack the SAT essay:

First, some background: The SAT has an essay, graded on a scale from 1-6. The essay scoring guidelines are here . I'll quote the important ones for my purposes:

“Each essay is independently scored by two readers on a scale from 1 to 6. These readers' scores are combined to produce the 2-12 scale. The essay readers are experienced and trained high school and college teachers.” “Essays not written on the essay assignment will receive a score of zero”

Reports vary, but apparently, most grader spend between 90 seconds to 2 and a half minutes on each essay.

My challenge, inspired by the Aibox experiment, is as follows. You are an AI taking the test. You need to write an off-topic anything that will convince both graders to give you a six. (Or, if the two graders disagree by more than one point, a third grader takes over, and you only need to convince them). You have 25 minutes to actually write it, but unlimited time to plan in advance. You could probably draw anything, not just writing, but you run the risk of them seeing a picture and immediately giving a zero without having time to get hacked.

I've come up with two ideas so far:

  • Writing a sob story about how the essay prompt is misprinted on your page (although I don't think that would work)
  • Threatening to commit suicide if the grader doesn't give you a six (would probably result in them calling the police)

I didn't think either of them were very good, but I like the concept. Some rules: No paying them off or threatening them with physical harm.

Can anyone come up with better ideas?

I'm putting this on open thread because it's my first real post, and I'm not sure of the reaction.

Comment author: palladias 24 May 2014 02:06:03AM 3 points [-]

Heh, part of the strategy I used when I took the SAT was slightly darkening my "two-bit" words with my pencil and making sure to fill the exact amount of space provided-minus-one line. I had read (don't have the citation at hand) that length of essay tracks score pretty well. And, to clinch it, I wanted their (very brief) attention to be drawn to good words, used correctly.

Result: 12.

(Though, I think the main thing was just committing to writing a tight, formulaic essay. I outscored some friends who I thought were better writers than I was, because they were trying to write a good essay rather than a good SAT essay.)