Rationality Quotient Test

[dr froyd]

rationality quotient (RQ) was proposed as an alternative to IQ by Shane Frederick in the early 2000s, following the observation that intelligent people usually use their intelligence to rationalize preexisting biases rather than analyze things.

I have slightly re-written the original RQ questions in case you've heard them before. Have a go and I'll post the answers later to not spoil the fun


1. Bob and Jane drank a combined total of 7 glasses of wine. Jane drank 4 more glasses than Bob. How many did Bob drink?

2. If it takes 5 monkeys 5 minutes to eat 5 bananas, how long would it take 100 monkeys to eat 100 bananas?

3. The population in Doubletown doubles every year. If it took 24 years for Doubletown to reach 1 million citizens, how long did it take to reach half a million?

4. You have 4 cards with pictures of animals on one side and a color on the other. The animal can only be either cat or dog, and the color is either red or blue. You have the cards in front of you and they are showing: cat, dog, red, blue. If you are told that "if a card is showing a cat, then it is red on the other side", which 2 cards do you flip to prove or disprove the statement?

 

[Cognisant]

1. Bob and Jane drank a combined total of 7 glasses of wine. Jane drank 4 more glasses than Bob. How many did Bob drink?

Jane is the spy.

2. If it takes 5 monkeys 5 minutes to eat 5 bananas, how long would it take 100 monkeys to eat 100 bananas?

Shakespeare.

3. The population in Doubletown doubles every year. If it took 24 years for Doubletown to reach 1 million citizens, how long did it take to reach half a million?

42

4. You have 4 cards with pictures of animals on one side and a color on the other. The animal can only be either cat or dog, and the color is either red or blue. You have the cards in front of you and they are showing: cat, dog, red, blue. If you are told that "if a card is showing a cat, then it is red on the other side", which 2 cards do you flip to prove or disprove the statement?

True.

intelligent people usually use their intelligence to rationalize preexisting biases rather than analyze things.

Lemme guess Shane Frederick is religious? Because what's being described here as "intelligence" sounds like faith to me.

 

[Hadoblado]

Spoiler

1) 1.5
2) 5 minutes
3) 23
4) cat and blue

I agree about rationality being more valuable than intelligence (at least, I value it more). It also has the advantage of being teachable.

 

[Tomten]

What percent of the differences between individuals in RQ can be explained by IQ combined with numeracy?

 

[dr froyd]

"IQ and RQ thus measure different things. While IQ measures the ability to handle abstract verbal and quantitative mechanics, particularly algorithms, RQ focuses instead on what comes before those algorithms are applied: Before analyzing the facts, does the subject carefully lay out the problem's logic and consider alternative analytical approaches? And after arriving at an answer, does she consider that her conclusion may be wrong, estimate that probability, and calculate the consequences of such an error? A high IQ, it turns out, provide little protection against these pitfalls"

from "Delusions of Crowds" by Bernstein

 

[dr froyd]

hado the RQ savant got all the correct answers

 

[onesteptwostep]

They all seem like math questions to me.

 

[Hadoblado]

There's certainly overlap. Math feels like more of a highly trained pure abstraction requiring rationality.

I struggle more with maths than I do rationality, but this is likely more about the higher expectations for mathematical ability than rationality. Even simple maths requires higher computation power, rationality I think is more about how you approach and interpret novel contexts.

The monty hall problem is solvable with statistics but apparently tricked a lot of mathematicians when it was first conceived because while they were mathematically capable of the computations required, they struggled to apply them correctly.

The card problem is similar. You could solve it mathematically, but the problem is phrased to lead you to instead invoke heuristics of confirmation bias. In fact, all the questions in the OP were designed to have the reader latch onto the wrong info.

 

[dr froyd]

math is really not much more than rationality in the context of quantities and shapes.

I didn't really view math that way until I studied the original works of people like Newton. There one can see that what one learns in school is neatly packaged and highly condensed knowledge, stripped of all its origins, into a form which is mostly unintelligible and separated from its organic forms.

I'll admit I would be at a loss of how to solve the first question fast and reliably without knowing algebra though

 

[Daddy]

So what does a math/physics riddle fall under? Is it IQ or RQ or both?

/riddle
You are going to run exactly two laps of a track. You can run the first lap at any speed you want as long as it's a constant speed. How fast do you need to run the second lap for your "total average speed" to be twice the speed of the first lap?

And like the first question you could try and get the answer mathematically,

(lap_one_speed + lap_two_speed) / 2 = average_speed
average_speed = 2 * lap_one_speed

(lap_one_speed + lap_two_speed) / 2 = 2 * lap_one_speed
lap_one_speed + lap_two_speed = 4 * lap_one_speed
lap_two_speed = 4 * lap_one_speed - lap_one_speed
lap_two_speed = 3 * lap_one_speed

But that's not correct because
(lap_one_speed + lap_two_speed) / 2 = average_speed of traveling one lap, which trips up Rational minds I guess.

But anyway, just wondering what this riddle would fall under and why.

 

[dr froyd]

@Daddy I would say clearly RQ

I guess the answer is it's not possible? no matter what time I use on the first lap, say 1, the second lap time, t, results in average (1 + t) / 2 which always larger than 0.5 unless speed is infinite

if that's correct it's not necessarily a math problem in the sense that you need to to apply formulas and algebra, one can deduce that by saying like: I spend 1 minute on first lap and 1 second on the second, the average is obviously larger than 30 seconds, and can never be 30 seconds unless second lap is run at zero time.

 

[Daddy]

That's true. I guess you can look at it in terms of time or distance or both. I just think of it as distance/time. So it's really

m/s = (distance_lap_one + distance_lap_two) / (time_lap_one + time_Lap_two)
and distance_lap_one = distance_lap_two, so d being one lap, then

2d / (t1+t2) = total_average_speed; and 2*d/t1 is the average speed we want to reach, so
2d / (t1+t2) = 2d/t1, so d/(t1+t2) = d/t1, t1 = t1+t2 and t2=0.

But the first time I came across this I did the first maths I posted without realizing that what I did, didn't make sense.

So RQ, interesting.

 

[Hadoblado]

What I see when people fail rational questions is different from what I see when they fail maths questions. When they fail rationality questions, it's often the case that they felt they knew the answer when actually they didn't. It's almost like they answered the wrong question because they were trying to make the question fit the tools they have learned.

In maths, when someone fails a question it's usually either due to an execution error where they fucked up something relatively simple which then "corrupted" the rest of their answer, or they give up because it's too complicated for someone who doesn't know the correct approach.

So while I think that

math is really not much more than rationality in the context of quantities and shapes.

Is true, but I think that this misses the difference in cognition that tends to take place in answering them.

 

[math_insanity]

Hmm, this could be turned into a math problem and it becomes simpler

 

[ZenRaiden]

Bob did not drink any glasses.

If he did he be sick. Definitely don't recommend.

1 minute for 1 bannana for 1 monkey. But the top monkeys who got 5 bannanas will face a revolt. CLASS WARFARE!

Kind of reminds of Red Alert where you had cloning vats, with units.
For every living unit you got one cloned unit for free.
In double town things double with each year. 24 years 1 000 000
23 years 500 000
22 years 250 000

I believe this town is facing some serious overpopulation.
Unless it was built in China.

You flip the cat card, and then the red card.
The cat is either red or blue.
The red card is either cat or dog.
Either way you either get cat and red, or cat and blue in both cases.

I have noticed hado gave a different answer.
But I think if you flip the blue card and get cat, it still does not negate the fact that the red card is dog or cat.

I may have interpreted the wording of problem wrong?

 

[ZenRaiden]

ok I get it now. Hado is right.

 

[Old Things]

1. Bob and Jane drank a combined total of 7 glasses of wine. Jane drank 4 more glasses than Bob. How many did Bob drink?

Jane is drunk

2. If it takes 5 monkeys 5 minutes to eat 5 bananas, how long would it take 100 monkeys to eat 100 bananas?

Monkeys love bananas.

3. The population in Doubletown doubles every year. If it took 24 years for Doubletown to reach 1 million citizens, how long did it take to reach half a million?

Something about Pi and 7, minus 1.

4. You have 4 cards with pictures of animals on one side and a color on the other. The animal can only be either cat or dog, and the color is either red or blue. You have the cards in front of you and they are showing: cat, dog, red, blue. If you are told that "if a card is showing a cat, then it is red on the other side", which 2 cards do you flip to prove or disprove the statement?

The blue one.

 

[Old Things]

Real answers:

Spoiler: Spoiler Answers

1. 1.5
2. 5 minutes
3. 23
4. Cat and red.

Very similar to what Hado got, but I think we have to flip the cat to see if the cat is always red and the red to see if red is always a cat.

 

[Old Things]

hado the RQ savant got all the correct answers

I was wrong. I was not the rational god.