I remember some little shit trying to ask me a "gotcha" question in an interview. It was something he looked up on the internet. My answer to him was "Do problems like this one come up here on a routine basis?" I didn't answer the question and still got the job.
They don't think it's challenging. They think it's so *not* challenging, that if a person can't do it on command, they must be incompetent and contribute little to the organization.
And to be more specific, since race science types are running wild in this admin, there's probably a belief that this will weed out undeserving black and brown people from the government based on testing gaps they talk about constantly.
A grade 3 student, couldn't read or write but he could fix my computer. So, I had his classwork put on the computer to be read to him. He could do grade 6 situational problems.. as long as they were read to him. Intelligence comes in many forms..talents..skills.
I know, I mean that pimply-faced salesman at Best Buy probably has powers of two memorized because those numbers are all any electronic that has memory chips. Doesn't mean he's smarter or even more knowledgeable than his average customer.
After a couple of weeks at the movie theater when I was a teenager, I could do multiples of 85 cents in my head and throw in the 45 cent popcorns too. I doubt that any customer could do that, I mean, why would they? They'd pull out a calculator if they wanted to know.
It's based on the idea that many people, when challenged, cannot do this. They're trying to use it as a filter to weed out people who they think lack basic ability. There's all kinds of problems with this, which is why you test people based on their actual job duties, but that's the idea.
Do these employees have to do old fashioned math in the course of their jobs? Did they have to balance chemical equations or name all the Begets from the Old Testament?
I'm a theoretical physicist, and I haven't done long division in years. Quick mental math for, e.g., reducing fractions to lowest terms in the middle of a blackboard calculation, sure. Long division, no. It's a bad algorithm, as Eugenia Cheng says in her latest book.
Plenty of the smartest braniacs you'll ever meet will (a) fuck up a long division problem if you ask them before they've had their morning coffee, and (b) solve the problem correctly by random scribbling.
Like Trump could answer any of those questions. DJT is not at all interested in reading, learning, or traveling the world. His whole reality is a golden throne and a golf course.
I know everything is evil chaos now but I’m confused because isn’t this kind of thing ostensibly the whole point of tariffs? Like i’m so confused, he wants to buy stuff from other countries or not? which is it?
This reminds me of the tests to read and write that the South put on the black people in the “old days”. They gave them reading material in foreign languages and required them to write on wax paper with a ball point pen. This is unacceptable.
Comments
(Not that people who can’t do these things aren’t smart, just that it has very little to do with it one way or another)
https://eugeniacheng.com/math/books/
Asking for an IQ test result = demeaning, pro-eugenics
Demanding a person do long division = demeaning, ignorant of what math is actually important math
I have my suspicions
Wait you didn’t try killing as many people as possible! You are fired for DEI!
To black employee: What is 397657 divided by 4972, you have twenty seconds.
How did he view 'intelligence'?
Especially not if he has to show his work….
And they claim to be anti-elites.