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RE: OSC's column discussing Trivial Pursuit. Has anyone ever done a study comparing success in recalling (or deducing)trivia in Trivial Pursuit with other measures of intelligence or talent? Most of the information the game uses is pretty useless in any work environment. Is knowing this kind of stuff simply a by-product of basic intelligence, or does it indicate some real component of intelligence--or of certain kinds of creativity? I first played the game in 1984 when I was traveling home to Utah with my brother and his wife, and we stopped overnight in San Jose to see his best friend from High School. My brother is a CPA, his friend a nuclear power technician and computer design tech, and both their wives have college degrees, so the competition was fierce, but I pulled out ahead. When it came to the ultimate question I needed to win, they knew my weakness (like that of OSC) is sports trivia, so they selected that category. But the question they pulled was "Who is the Japanese Babe Ruth?" Since I had worked in Japan from 1980 to 1983, I knew the answer to that sports question immediately: Sadaharu Oh (A man of Chinese ancestry--Oh is not a typical japanese name--who was famous for a batting stance in which he ballanced on one foot). They couldn't stand the fact that I won. Since then I have won the game so consistently that now my wife and grown kids simply refuse to play with me, or they will do it only if I get questions from a "hard" version of the game while they get something easier, like the Jr. Edition. One way that Trivial Pursuit mimics real life is that success with one question leads to an immediate new opportunity to advance again. Opportunities to advance in life come to those who have already advanced the most. The opportunities are not allocated evenly, or even more, weighted to give more chances to the less successful. The net effect in life is to accelerate success, so that the gap between those who achieve and those who do not keeps growing and widening. The reason for this is that when other people are looking for someone else to hire, or otherwise work on their behalf, they tend to look for those who are more successful. Thus, those whose success accelerates are those who are better able to reward other people for their investment in him or her. The result is wide disparities between the most successful and least successful, but the key thing to note is that the disparity is created by the differential ability of the successful to benefit the other people they work with. Except where government or criminal action can force people to act against their own best interest, the more successful person has also been more beneficial to others than the less successful person. this is a generalization, with plenty of particular exceptions, but it is certainly one of the factors creating the disparity in education and incomes.
Posts: 8 | Registered: Feb 2002
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I think OSC partially answered your question - games like this aren't a test of how much you know - they're a test of your deductive abilities. We had several games of Trivial Pursuit in Hatrack Chat a month or so back, and lost of the time I found that I could truncate the question and get the same result. Rather than typing out the tedious "What Italian river has its source at... yadda yadda blah blah..." I could ask (a bit flippantly): "Name an Italian river" and get a right answer in seconds. This same thing occurs with standardized testing and is the sole reason I did so well on my ACTs. Learning how the questions are asked is 3 times more important than knowing the answers.
So there - OSC backs me up. Nobody better ever accuse me of memorizing the Trivial Pursuit cards again. Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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I, too, suffer from people refusing to play Trivia Pursuit with me. It started in college, and continued when I had to go out of state for an extended period for job training.
Most of my fellow job trainees were older than me, and one was a lady who held a Masters degree from Temple University. She was in her early 30s. I was 21. When I had two pieces of pie after ten minutes, she quit. AND spent the rest of the training session putting me down every chance she got. I think she was pissed because I was young and sorta pretty, fairly popular with the other trainees, and only had a BA (which I got in three years, thank you very much). Plus, she had a Master's degree, and we were in training for the same job at the same pay.
The Trivial Pursuit was the last straw. She would have continues to hate me and say nasty things about me even if I'd given her a kidney. I told myself it wasn't my fault, that she saw as a bilboard saying she'd wasted the last ten years of her life and God only knows how much money. Truth is, though, I was SMUG about it. Looking back, I'd have hated me, too.
But Trivial Pursuit is suited to someone with my particular brain defect. I rarely lose info that has been input, though I have retrieval difficulties. The most useless and minor details of which seem to be near the top of the pile, though. It gives me an advantage, but I don't think it means I'm smarter than anyone.
Plus, a big part of it is luck-- blind chance. So, NO. Not an IQ test.
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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