Asklemmy

The purpose of college isn’t to measure your intelligence, it’s to teach you new things.

When you judge a fish by it's ability to climb a tree...

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.

Could we replace college... for general intelligence requirements?

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.

No, you are not better off being less educated.

Relevant SMBC

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.

No.

if we're doing big societal shifts, can we just make education free for all?

I swear to god somebody please take away OPs posting rights.

I’m pretty smart at a lot of things but I’m shit at games like that.

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.

Phrenology with extra steps

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.

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.