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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   22850 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

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Tests and meritocratic hiring already exists. Look at top quant firms or top tech firms. You got to be whip-smart to get those jobs. They already have tests, like Wonderlic, white board/leetcode, or phone interviews (typically multiple gauntlets of testing). These tend to be 'on the fly', so harder to practice. Even crap jobs have huge screening and long applications.

The problem with any exam system is those are really prone to being gamed or people cramming for them. So you end up with a situation where lots of people score well on the exam, yet there isn't much useful information gleaned from this. This is common with the AP exams, where almost everyone gets 4s and 5s, so elite colleges have ignored them. Employers instead have learned to rely more on surprise-- hence phone interviews, Wonderlic (in which it tests for literacy/numeracy, but also acts like an IQ test, and you cannot really raise your score that much for it), on-the-spot coding or other challenges, brainteasers, and so on. or college degrees, which not only screen for competence, but also conscientiousness due to the large time investment.

This is common with the AP exams, where almost everyone gets 4s and 5s

Ouch. 4-pleb detected. The cool kids are over here getting a dozen 5s each and couldn't imagine getting a 4.

But more seriously, getting good AP scores isn't going to guarantee admission anywhere, but getting bad or not enough AP scores is gonna tank your application unless you have something else like dark skin to compensate.

Wonderlic

Wonderlic is the test that literally lost Griggs. The burden of proof is on the employer to "prove" that the test isn't discrimination, and now Wonderlic (and Indeed and co) has a team of lawyers you need need to pay millions to who will preemptively produce tomes of legal documents to prove that, yes, being retarded will in fact reduce job performance on your specific job. Those tomes will of course need to be paid for and recreated for every distinct job title you have.

If disparate impact is actually ended, expect every Walmart level job to have the equivalent of an IQ test.

a team of lawyers you need need to pay millions to who will preemptively produce tomes of legal documents to prove that, yes, being retarded will in fact reduce job performance on your specific job. Those tomes will of course need to be paid for and recreated for every distinct job title you have.

I have closely followed every major disparate impact case related to cognitive testing in the US over the last decade or so. One thing they all have in common is that the victims were astoundingly stupid in their lack of evidence.

Since g is correlated universally with job performance, you don’t need to spend millions of dollars on lawyers to obtain enough evidence that a Democratic justice department will decide not to bother investigating you. You simply need to be able to produce (BEFORE the investigation) the most basic evidence that smarter people perform better at the job.

Ouch. 4-pleb detected. The cool kids are over here getting a dozen 5s each and couldn't imagine getting a 4.

is this supposed to be a diss. Maybe I can send some passages of the math paper I am working on, and you can proofread them, as you've obviously way smarter. You must be so successful at life with that attitude.

If disparate impact is actually ended, expect every Walmart level job to have the equivalent of an IQ test.

This what the Wonderlic accomplishes (along with interview, which also is a screening mechanism), and according to people on reddit, it's very common and many companies use it. AFIK, the Wonderlic or any company that has used it has never been successfully sued for disparate impact on the grounds off the test itself. https://old.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/x5qv4v/an_employer_gave_me_a_wonderlic_test_is_this/

What makes the Wonderlic particularly useful is it's not only very quick and cheap to proctor (no psychologist, unlike a full-scale IQ test), but it screens for both competence, like reading and math, and also functions as an IQ screen/filter on the high-end, due to rarity of top scores, which map to a bell curve and highly correlated with full-scale IQ.

Wonderlic is the test that literally lost Griggs.

The outcome is more nuanced. https://home.ubalt.edu/tmitch/645/articles/Cognitive%20AbilityTesting%20EF%20wonderlic.pdf

While the Griggs case is often mistakenly cited to call into question the lawfulness of cognitive ability testing, in reality the ruling on this case recognizes that these tests, as well as educational requirements and other hiring tools (e.g., criminal background checks, credit checks, experience requirements, physical requirements), are appropriate for assessing job applicants as long as certain criteria are met

My broader point being: The tests are widespread, as shown on reddit. Wonderlic and employers work together to ensure the tests are compliant and used appropriately, hence and there are a paucity of lawsuits, let alone successful ones, indicating it has been a success. I support unconditional use of tests for hiring, but it's wrong to say such testing does not exist or that a full-scale IQ test would be better, when the Wonderlic is by many measures better and already does that.

according to people on reddit, it's very common and many companies use it

Nice worthless anecdote

Jordan v. The City of New London

Absolutely irrelevant in this case

it's not only very quick and cheap to proctor

It's not cheap to get access. That's literally the point of my entire post, that the legal ass-covering needed to give the wonderlic is why testing is not done more often.

It is often, which was my point which you missed. I support the unconditional use of IQ tests for hiring/promotion, but it's wrong to say that testing is uncommon or that Griggs is preventing companies from using screening.

Wonderlic is the test that literally lost Griggs.

Well, that and the alternative requirement of a high school diploma. But no one ever mentions that part, for some reason.

I honestly don't know how you get anything else at an elite level. I got one 4 out of 8 AP tests, in a class I hadn't taken and hadn't really studied for. The AP tests just aren't that hard.

In fairness, themotte readers are not average. The average IQ here is probably at least 120

Absolutely--but neither are the kids taking AP tests to boost their college applications. There's no reason to do that unless your SAT equivalent score is well above that point.

At some point, I really need to do an effortpost on Admiral Rickover's infamous interviews of candidates for the US nuclear navy. He already knew their technical qualifications, so it was a matter of seeing what sort of person he was dealing with.

Yeah, way I heard it, his daughter was the nuclear navy, and he needed you to explain why he should trust you to take her to prom.

Please do. IMO there's a huge Rickover shaped hole in the sort of broader rationalist/slatestarcodex universe, he's massively under-appreciated.

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