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The author doesn't make the case for why these types of reasoning skills are important, or why IQ is important for that matter. This isn't the first time that I
by karmacondon 12y ago
The author doesn't make the case for why these types of reasoning skills are important, or why IQ is important for that matter. This isn't the first time that I've encountered brain teasers, and I know that I dislike them because I generally suck at them. The author characterizes this as being a "cognitive miser" (I also hate it when people make up terms), or not putting forth the effort to thoroughly think through the problem and just going with the easy answer. I can accept that this is what's happening, but what the hell does it mean?
Should we be hiring people who are good at brain teasers? Does that kind of thinking indicate the ability to ship products, come up with novel solutions or understand things in a way that leads to significant increases to the bottom line? In my experience, everybody is some kind of stupid. Even puzzle masters occasionally lose their keys or say embarrassing things at parties. Intelligence and the lack there of is so fractured and interconnected that it doesn't seem like any kind of test is going to be able to measure it accurately, or even nail down what 'it' is.
Some of the smartest people I know were good at questions like this, or maybe I just think they're smart because they're so good at these questions. Big companies love to use them during interviews and there's probably a reason for that. It's definitely a skill I would like to improve myself, but I still don't fully understand the value. Life isn't a series of puzzles, it's a series of problems punctuated by sheer randomness. Being able to take this or any kind of test can't be highly correlated with "success" by most measures, and certainly not in the ways that matter to most organizations.
- leoc 12y agoThe article mentions one context where this kind of proper reasoning is highly important: doctors assessing the value of treatments for their patients, the usefulness of screening tests and the likely menaing of test results.
- anextio 12y agoThe point is that these are not just brain teasers, these are just distilled examples of problems with which the brain often chooses a short-cut algorithm. The implication is that analogues of these situations happen all the time, and your ability to apply rational thought is proportional to the likelihood of achieving desirable outcomes.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- dllthomas 12y ago"(I also hate it when people make up terms)" The term is from 1991, and is really only a weak specialization of what the words "cognitive" and "miser" mean when you combine them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_miser http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_miser
- pm215 12y agoI think the key insight is that there are whole classes of problems where the answer your brain is likely to come up with by default is just flat out wrong. That way when you encounter them in real life you know to break out the mathematics, or sit down with pen and paper, rather than just blithely assuming the "obvious" answer is the right one. (The article has a long list of real life situations where you can run into this kind of thing in para 2.) Should we be using this as an interview selection mechanism? No, there are more useful and directly applicable ways to see how good they are at the job (and the article doesn't suggest it as an interview filter). Is the ability to solve brainteasers and puzzle questions useful in itself? No, it's pretty useless (and a lot of it is simply having seen the question before). Is knowing how the brain works and what its failure modes are (a) an worthwhile subject of scientific investigation and (b) potentially helpful at a personal level for avoiding mistakes? Yes and yes.
- the_af 12y agoThe brain teasers are merely examples. The real point is that "intelligent" people make these mistakes when it matters, e.g. when deciding on a medical treatment, or where to spend money and time.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- phaemon 12y ago> The author characterizes this as being a "cognitive miser" (I also hate it when people make up terms) ?? Where else would terms come from?