Could we replace college with something like Chess or Go, for general intelligence requirements?
With the general inaccessibility of college in the US (with AGI, they're basically pay to play), would Chess or Go be a good qualifier for job mental acuity?
Both can be monitored on the spot and certified by third-party associations.
48 replies
I'm a 3 dan Go player and active in the scene. This idea is horrible. The players are nice and tend to be smart but that is absolutely no proper criterion for educational admission.
No.
The purpose of college isn’t to measure your intelligence, it’s to teach you new things.
No it isn't. I was doing about 10 college kids' homework, right out of high school. $40 an assignment. Now, they have ChatGPT. And the professors are using ChatGPT to review papers. It's literally a pay to play system in the US.
Learning strategy demonstrates an ability to learn, not from instruction, but experience.
Yes, it is. Just because dumbasses spend the money to not learn anything and leave school under qualified doesn't mean that the school wasnt intended to educate them.
Yes, classes could change how they do things to mitigate LLM usage and structure classes in a way to weed out these people, but that's a different thing. College is about educating, and your example is just of people failing to allow to be educated.
Learning strategy of those game will definitely help build a person's analytical thinking skills, but it won't teach them the specifics of a topic they need to be successful. It could be a good elective course, but learning chess won't teach a person about history, algebra, business, or computer architecture.
Or doctors... How do you figure learning the strategies of a game of Go will make someone understand human anatomy and how to perform arthroscopic surgery? Will it maybe help them get better at learning which they can use to gain that knowledge? Maybe to some degree, but where do they learn that information from then?
College.
If a system has become so degraded that there’s only one remaining semi-useful function left, it doesn’t follow that we should replace the system with one that only does that thing—the functions the system is failing to perform are the ones in need of replacement.
And yet that has not happened in decades.
Probably all first year students. I guarantee you won't know shit for anything past the first year. First year is basically grade 12 review and to get everyone on the same page.
So you got they college learning and they didn't.
We were lucky that first year University classes were avaialble at highschool via a special accreditation. So Algebra, Calculus, Functions and Relations, English, and Physics courses were free.
At college I learned descriptive geometry, database design and programming, filesystem management, metallurgy, welding, moldflow analysis, etc. They all helped formulate / solidify ideas and methods of working through problems.
When you judge a fish by it's ability to climb a tree...
That's what college does. My stepdad had a third grade education and could do math better than most bankers.
What kind of math?
Compound interests n all?
I disagree that college does that, but different experiences I suppose. If you want to improve college, how does admitting people based on a game improve things?
I'm not admitting people to college based on a game. I'm saying, as far as general education goes, such games demonstrate a pattern of dedication. And would be a perfect comparable skill for those who cannot afford college.
The trouble is you can have a kid who's parents taught them chess and all they focused on was the proper moves by rote. And that kid can be shit at everything else in life.
Graduating college is less about finding the right answer, but knowing how to get to that answer and why you pick a certain method over other things. Its why the profs hound people to show their work in a problem.
I had a programmer dude working for us, he would achieve results but he (and we) never quite knew if they were valid because he had a hard time explaining how he got to certain assumptions. He had no formal college training, he just picked up stuff quickly by trial and error. It was suggested to him he go back and take a programming basics course to get the fundamentals down on how and why of projects, but he didn't see the value in doinf it, but everyone else he reported to could see the gaps in reasoning.
Then they would still fare poorly against those who both excel at chess and have gone to college.
I don't think that's how skills work.
Let's say you get your wish and everyone is judged on their ability to play chess. You now have two prospective employees for an administrative role and both have a similar chess rating. Which of their other skills or achievements are you going to factor when making your decision?
College is not a general intelligence test. It trains and certifies a particular knowledge and skill requirement depending on your course.
I love Go and I'm working on my chess, but these are also very specific intelligence tests. They will quickly just become proxies for social class again based on which families can afford chess and Go tutors and/or have previous generations that have been trained in those skills.
The YouTube channel WebGoatGuy recently ran an event you might be interested in. It was called Strategy Jam. A new abstract strategy game was designed and tested in secret, then revealed one hour before a tournament was held for it.
Just because you surround yourself with the uneducated doesn't mean everyone is. I'm in law school and some of the people here are truly brilliant, and yes they read. We all do, for hours, every single day. AI is there, I'm sure some use it. But the professors know about it as well and have pivoted. Lockdown browsers and handwritten exams are more common, and there are less take home exams than there were a few years ago.
this whole "I never went to college, so it must be useless" trope is annoying. Education is important, and "does it get you a job?" Should not be the benchmark for an education. Frankly we as a society would be way better off if we had a more educated populace. We need people who are critical thinkers, because critical thinking promotes intellectual independence. If you don't have the skills to challenge authority with clarity, logic, and reasoning, you will be at the mercy of people who WILL tell you what to think. Studying subjects like History or Sociology teaches you how people think and why they might act differently, and allows you to approach problems from a broader understanding of the human condition.
Also a Chess or Go tournament will show recruiters how good an applicant is as Chess or Go. It won't tell them anything else.
You've misread the situation, mate. I am very much pro college. I've been.
I also know of several studies showing that laymen are better problem solvers than the college educated, because they aren't confined within the academic box.
A chess or Go ranking shows dedication -- often years of it.
Hmmm, then I guess my confusion is as follows:
College, like being good at Chess or Go, also shows dedication for years. But one is dedicated to learning applicable skills in certain academic fields, while the other is showing dedication in Chess or Go. AI can be used in both academia and gaming, so the real test would still come down to the interview process. I guess I don't agree that dedication is the sole thing that is measured in an interview, or that being good at Chess or Go is a better metric of dedication than a college diploma. I think that adding a Chess or Go ranking on your resume could be a good ice breaker, and a good chance to show your dedication outside of academia, but I fail to see how it shows you are more dedicated to studying. And again while games are great for mental health, they don't teach you anything other than the game itself (maybe some tangential soft skills in cost benefit analysis or risk assessment or something). But even then, those skills wouldn't show up in a one off chess tournament at an interview. Further, a structured learning of those same skills culminating in a test of those skills with comparable metrics to others who have tested those skills, would give a better idea of how the applicant has mastered those skills, a la, a diploma.
I would disagree, and say there's a reason tech companies prefer hiring self-educated programmers over college-educated ones.
https://cybernews.com/editorial/experiment-tech-companies-eager-hire-self-taught-pros/
https://www.workforce.com/news/companies-eagerly-tapping-self-taught-tech-talent
https://medium.com/@coders.stop/why-self-taught-developers-are-outperforming-cs-grads-at-top-companies-57df7305b8ab
https://www.ciodive.com/news/rise-of-the-self-taught-developer-disrupting-recruiting-education/416869/
https://workshift.org/amid-ai-and-labor-market-changes-companies-look-to-grow-their-own-skilled-workers/
Do you have a source for that claim?
Everything I'm reading is saying the opposite. AI can do what the self taught programmers can do, so the barrier to entry is higher, and degrees are more important in a post AI world.
https://research.com/advice/is-a-software-development-degree-better-than-experience-alone-salary-hiring-career-growth-compared
https://www.burningglassinstitute.org/research/skills-based-hiring-the-long-road-from-pronouncements-to-practice
No, you are not better off being less educated.
But are college kids getting an education?
Yes, spending thousands of hours reading books does make you better educated than someone who didn't.
Read my other comments.
They aren't reading. They're skimming and paying others to read.
People do the readings. Also, even if they didn't, they're still sitting in lectures and learning substantially more than people who don't. Saying you learn the same amount as someone who put in years of work, when you have done nothing to learn, is just cope. The fact is, you don't develop the skills without putting in the time.
And what do you think people who learn these games are doing?
Those are artificial rules and boundaries in a game Life and work often follows no rule or boundary, and you have to adapt to new information.
How many chess masters can do open heart surgery?
Not learning about anything except maaaybe a bit of game theory (and only the practical side, not the actual theories)
So you think every college student just phones it in and skates by?
I can’t play chess for shit but am generally quite smart and a good problem solver with an acuity for breaking down information and re-communicating it to others along with myriad other complex mental tasks involving abstract input (life, people, objects, etc). How will chess ever identify me as “smart”?
Nothing has a simple answer like this, period. I can’t tell you what the solution to all of this is, but I can tell you when something is definitively not a solution. Our problems are systemic and societal, if you want to actually have a discussion about how to fix any of these things the answers, unfortunately, lurk in a distinctly messy realm; philosophy, psychology, and society not logical problem solving.
I’ve started saying to myself recently “it’s not logical to think only logic is required to help humanity” we are not logical creatures, and that’s ok, it’s actually beuatifull really. But pretending we could or should be solely logical beings while eschewing the reality of our basic nature in order to come to conclusions about humanity and its “best present and future” is just magical thinking. Ugliness always arises from these attempts to redirect our nature.
Relevant SMBC
I swear to god somebody please take away OPs posting rights.
No. You'll end up with people who are good at chess or go, which does not predict how well would they do a job (unless it's "Chess Player" or "Go Player").
No, those would be good qualifiers for chess and go tournaments though. Maybe for a date if you’re into those games.
if we're doing big societal shifts, can we just make education free for all?
Phrenology with extra steps
I’m pretty smart at a lot of things but I’m shit at games like that.
Yeah, I went to Uni/College, and my wife says I'm the smartest person she knows (she must not know a lot of people). Her own personal motto is "Im cute not smart" But if its Tetris or Scrabble she is going to win every single time, and by a lot. She played Tetris every single day as a kid, and has an amazing Scrabble skill.
Do you even want to play the game? What if a smart person doesn't want to play a game. Are they no longer smart. You gotta like what you do. A better world is people doing what they like to do. Fuck chess. I want to go to a school that doesn't suck in a world that cares. We need more than the gipity, cheese burger farts, violence and nonsense. I am glad the empire is getting its shit pushed in.
I like your energy.
We could! IMO college gets you ready for reading, writing, and problem solving in a workplace. Anyone who can study chess and then perform on the board would IMO be qualified to study in the college setting.
Is this realistic in the world we share? Another question entirely.
What you're saying is if someone got good at chess then they would be better suited to succeed in college. There may be merit to that to some degree, but in the end, that person would be going to college to get a better education, and may have a leg up on other less analytical people. OP is suggesting replacing college with things like Chess or Go. College also teaches specifically in different fields. Knowing how to play Chess doesn't teach a person about seg faults, stack overflows, or computer architecture. A college can if that's the field a person decides to pursue.
Oh yeah, I see that. I read this as college admission, not the four year degree itself. In that case, no I don't really think it could be replaced.