Guessing candidates personality and look at life based on hobbies is perfect receipe for hiring based on various biases, prejudices and wrong guesses HR manager will make about hobbies he/she knows little about. Savy candidate will pick a hobby that will make him look good anyway. (Don't mention metal or rap, don't mention you actually don't have one, don't mention stereotypically girly hobby, do mention reading and…
Lying about these things is trivial to see through. One or two follow up questions and now the candidate is a likely liar. I'm definitely biased against liars.
I rock climb, listen to jam bands, and play video games. They're all very real hobbies I could pass any reasonable test on, in the bizarre event that someone considered it appropriate or worthwhile to "test me" on my own hobbies.
But I certainly don't think all three of those hobbies are interchangeable in an interview setting. The article talks about the question having a 'catch', so apparently the author agrees that they weren't asking the question in good faith - there were specific hobbies that were better!