Intellectual?
Show HN: I Built Paul Graham's Intellectual Captcha Idea
11–20 of 49 posts
Re: Show HN: I Built Paul Graham's Intellectual Captcha Idea
#12One issue with this is that it mixes hypothetical formal logic style problems (where there are clear, inflexible rules) with real life examples (where group membership/traits, cost estimation, and causal attribution are less clear) without always disambiguating which one is which. Fun quiz though!
Re: Show HN: I Built Paul Graham's Intellectual Captcha Idea
#13I opened it, it told me it was impossible to build a house in california for less than 350K, i closed it
Worse: the author probably assumes it's $350k per year since they are comparing to a yearly expense.
Intellectual captcha™
Re: Show HN: I Built Paul Graham's Intellectual Captcha Idea
#14> "Make users pass a test on basic concepts like the distinction between necessary and sufficient conditions before they can tweet."
If twitter ever became what he says he wants, he'd quit using it within a month. He already has the option to close twitter and seek out experts' writing. Why is he choosing to bask in the emotions generated by people being wrong on twitter?
It's like listening to a friend complain about twitter being "full of" content that you rarely/never see on your feed. Nah, that's their algorithm and they just told you exactly who they are.
Re: Show HN: I Built Paul Graham's Intellectual Captcha Idea
#15Reminds me of IQ tests I took as a kid.
"Finish the sequence" with 4 options and "no pattern" as the choices.
It becomes "what does the moderately intelligent person who wrote the test thinks counts as a pattern" not the intended exercise at all. There was never enough samples to even guess at a real pattern in them.
Re: Show HN: I Built Paul Graham's Intellectual Captcha Idea
#16One issue with this is that it mixes hypothetical formal logic style problems (where there are clear, inflexible rules) with real life examples (where group membership/traits, cost estimation, and causal attribution are less clear) without always disambiguating which one is which. Fun quiz though!
Yes - I was given a syllogism that was logically correct but the Truthyness of the premises where wrong or misleading in the real world.
All pilots need a medical exam to have a license.
John is a pilot.
John has had a medical exam.
Pilots can be licensed without a medical exam. It is illegal for them to fly without a valid medical but the 2 are separate issues. Also LSA pilots do not need a medical.
Re: Show HN: I Built Paul Graham's Intellectual Captcha Idea
#17This is weird political propaganda. The first post misrepresented annual costs of housing.
Yeah this was my immediate impression as well. The assertion that homing every homeless person is the same as putting them up in unique per-person accommodation that ends up costing 65 billion is absurd.
Re: Show HN: I Built Paul Graham's Intellectual Captcha Idea
#18I opened it, it told me it was impossible to build a house in california for less than 350K, i closed it
Same. And I'm not even focused on whether this is a reasonable number or not. The quoted tweet also says "But our politicians would rather spend that on genocide." And I'm asked to evaluate whether this is "accurate" with a thumbs up or thumbs down. (According to Mentwire, it is not accurate). So I'm evaluating both the cost of housing the homeless, but also whether politicians would rather fund genocide. So, this seems like it is not really an intellectual CAPTCHA, but rather an ideological CAPTCHA.
And just to disclose my biases, I would tend to believe that $350k is an absurdly high figure and that politicians are obviously not holding a vote where they are forced to choose between ending homelessness and funding genocide. But I believe that people who disagree with me can be considered intelligent and not "too dumb to pass an intellectual CAPTCHA".
Re: Show HN: I Built Paul Graham's Intellectual Captcha Idea
#19> Try sample questions here without signing up
It's very gracious of you to let us fill captchas without signing up first.
Re: Show HN: I Built Paul Graham's Intellectual Captcha Idea
#20Two mild concerns: first, I missed one and it told me I didn’t miss any at the end. Second, some of the logic problems have flawed premises (eg All licensed pilots must pass a medical exam. Jake is a licensed pilot, therefore Jake passed a medical exam.) If you see the flaw in the premise (it assumes no fraud) then the conclusion does not follow. Im not sure you’re going to be able to actually improve human discourse…
I took the pilot one as an abstract logic type question where you're supposed to assume the premise is true, so I said yes and the page said I was right, because that's a "valid logical deduction" or something. Then there was another question in the same format that said "if you study hard enough you'll pass the exam. You didn't pass, so you didn't study hard enough." So I thought, oh, another logic one, and said yes…
And if, as OP says, it’s necessity and sufficiency we’re testing—whether or not there were also other reasons contributing to your exam failure, wouldn’t failing that one necessary condition be sufficient to fail the outcome?