Originally published on Medium on August 17, 2018

Bryan Caplan and others have talked about how education is a signaling device for competence and compliance. I have noticed a compliance test that is beloved by folks in high status positions with low signal fidelity, where the cause of results can’t be easily ascertained nor competence easily assessed. This is more frequent with people who went to top rated colleges and are not engineers.

It goes something like this:

Decision maker: “How would you feel about doing (menial task)?

OR

“What do you think about (something you will dislike)”

The correct answer for the interview is to reply

“I would love to!”

or

“Everyone has a right to their opinion and I support it. ”

Even though both parties know the answer is complete BS, and asks about feelings rather than actions. You don’t meet a lot of janitors who love cleaning bathrooms, but they will do the job because it is their job.

The “Thank you sir, may I have another” interview question is a charade to measure how closely candidates will follow the party line, and how little of a threat they will be to the established order. Remember, when signal transmission fidelity is low, status becomes the signal, status is hierarchical, and hierarchy is imposed via compliance