
A step toward systems that can assess competence using neurological data - em1305
https://www.wsj.com/articles/brain-scans-can-detect-who-has-better-skills-1538589600
======
lettergram
I think it’s really detecting who has more connections in a given region.

That being said, I was born with a condition which leaves the sections of my
brain loosely coupled. Usually this leads to dyslexia, schizophrenia,
retardation, etc.

Luckily, the mutation that runs in my family is not the kind that lowers your
IQ (it increases it, with a ~30% schizophrenia chance).

Because of that, I assume this scan would detect me having low skills. When
I’m reality I’ve always excelled (as has my whole family). My only symptom is
I don’t read linearly (kinda bounce all over the page).

I hope this doesn’t become a thing, else it’s kind of like judging job fitness
based on genetic markers (I.e. race)

~~~
louthy
> I hope this doesn’t become a thing

It's useful in that it's another way to find companies you don't want to work
for. The whiteboard interview being another signal.

------
isthatart
The Science Advances article is
[http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/10/eaat3807](http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/10/eaat3807)

"Seventeen surgeons and 13 medical students participated in this study."
According to Table S1 they were classified as:

\- 8 expert, mean age 35, 700 laparoscopic procedures in average

\- 9 novice surgeons, mean age 31, 60 laparoscopic procedures in average

\- 7 trainees and 5 controls, medical school year 1-4, 0 laparoscopic
procedures.

The article has 8 authors.

------
beautifulfreak
From a Facebook nonpaywalled link: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/brain-scans-
can-detect-who-has-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/brain-scans-can-detect-
who-has-better-skills-1538589600?mod=e2fb)

------
tomc1985
Awesome... another loss of privacy at the hands of convenience and data for
ignorant decision-makers

------
neonate
[http://archive.is/yjIwH](http://archive.is/yjIwH)

------
l0b0
Either some scientist must have broken their wrist facepalming over this
heading, or else it must be a scam. How have we suddenly advanced X00 years in
our understanding of the brain, to the point where our scans can _reliably_
tell the difference between a brain expending slightly more energy in a
vaguely defined volume and a brain fine tuned to deal with a specific problem?
Of course, business owners would pay a great deal of money to make their
hiring practices even 1% more "accurate," no matter how many candidates they
end up rejecting because the computer says "No."

------
cryoshon
surprised the article didn't bring this up, but anyways, let's defuse this
entire idea with a very simple thought experiment so that we'll never have to
think about it again.

the tech they have measures brain activity in different regions. great. the
article mentions in experienced personnel there is less activity which would
indicate conscious planning and more activity which would indicate doing. or
maybe it's backwards. it doesn't really matter. what it's really saying is
that people who are more experienced are more efficient at performing a task
on a neurological basis, which is measurable.

but the efficiency of a brain circuit at performing a task is irrespective of
whether that task turns out correctly or incorrectly. you can learn how to do
things incorrectly. your brain's efficiency for performing a task in a certain
way increases the more you do things that way, regardless of whether the
outcome is what is desired.

so, here's the thought experiment: we have one master surgeon who is known for
getting great patient outcomes via consistently meticulous, premeditated, and
intentional application of tradecraft, and another surgeon who is awful,
having killed half of their patients. the awful surgeon is very experienced --
just as experienced as the master surgeon, in fact.

the master's perfectionism leads the master to see small flaws in each of
their executions, driving them to do better next time via careful applications
of past lessons. in contrast, the awful surgeon thinks they're pretty good,
but that the patients they've had who died were more or less beyond helping or
perhaps that another member of the surgical team did something wrong. the
awful surgeon never really learns from mistakes, and spends most operations
thinking about dinner rather than thinking about how to help the patient.

who does the brain scan say is more skilled?

on the basis of the science described in the article, it's the awful surgeon
every time. the awful surgeon doesn't put in as much conscious effort, leaving
them to rely on the incorrect patterns that they've learned and never engaged
with, which is what the scan will see. in contrast, the master surgeon's
attentiveness will be perceived as inefficiency and lack of skill, even if the
corresponding motor regions are as efficient as the awful surgeon's.

to put it differently, this isn't a "we can do more technology and get around
this" so much as a fundamental drawback of the tech itself. you'd need to
introduce other data to even start to make a case for the scans as
corresponding to skill, and even then there are plenty of other issues.

------
joe_the_user
There are all sorts of ways that correlation between brainscan images and
skill might not be causation. This might just be how familiar a surgeon is
with the setting, so an experienced but incompetent surgeon shows as "skilled"
and an inexperienced but competent surgeon shows as "unskilled".

I don't know if this using machine learning but one might see the whole
machine learning field as resulting in a rush to correlation-based "cargo-
cults" of various sorts (see "racist AI" and etc).

(wsj paywall articles are annoying)

------
platz
It only detected a activity on a motor skills task in the motor cortex.

This has not been generalized to cognitive skills beyond, "the subject is
inactive"

------
known
Should provide impetus to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility)

------
m3kw9
If you are novice of course you have to think more and things don’t come
automatic. That’s basically how they are measuring this.

------
pfdietz
Numchuku skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills...

------
emtwo25
I would choose a brain scan over whiteboard interviews any day.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
In the end you will be getting that brain scan while you whiteboard.

------
nxc18
Can’t read the full article due to paywall. Two important points:

For anything team based, skill, beyond basic competence and trainability,
doesn’t matter very much. A team full of mediocre team players is going to
perform better than a team of selfish rockstars. Implication: focus on soft
skills, organization, facilitation rather than picking the best people with
brain scans.

Job aids are a really significant factor - see the checklist manifesto. It
doesn’t matter how good the surgeon is, they’re still human. Things like
checklists, automated code analysis/testing/fuzzing, best practice review
processes, pair programming, and agile can make or break projects regardless
of the skills of those involved.

Another implication: as a manager, you have a lot of control over how your
team performs. When you say that you need to hire Johnny because he has the
best brain scan, you’re totally ignoring the fact that Sally can totally learn
to do the work.

~~~
NegativeLatency
Click on “web” by the link to the article

------
phyller
If I'm a white male, but I have the brain scan of a Latino grandmother, does
that count as diversity in the workplace?

~~~
nickthemagicman
It might hurt your chances because of the fear of Las Chanclas!

------
Someguywhatever
If this means I don't have to sit through annoying whiteboard interviews, or
talk to HR bots, and all i have to do is just send them a link to my brainscan
on linked in. Nice!

~~~
booleandilemma
Hey so we checked your scan and noticed you only have experience with .NET
4.5, we’re really looking for someone with .NET 4.7.

~~~
setquk
HR will still ask for 8 years of .Net 4.9

~~~
rch
"Actually our engineering team is looking more for CLR experience right now."

------
valarauca1
Phrenology 2.0

~~~
21
Right, like Astronomy is Astrology 2.0 and Chemistry is Alchemy 2.0.

~~~
lostmyoldone
Well, that's not entirely fair. Identifying a difference between an
experienced surgeon an inexperienced is not at all the same as assessing skill
in some meaningful manner, but could end up being used as such.

While phrenology ended up really far into, or even outside the fringes of
science, one could argue that it was "based" on a true fact. A zero volume
brain is going to be less useful than a brain with non zero volume. Then some
rather brutal extrapolations happened, and the results were both terrible, and
disastrous.

I fully believe the risk for a similar repeat of history is very real. Not
because science fails us, but because society still posses many of its old
weaknesses as clearly shown during the last year or so. As the performance
improves, it is becoming more and more likely that we'll have to outlaw
functional brain scanning for any non-medical purposes, or it will be somehow
co-opted by actors wanting money or power at any price.

I don't think I'm either malignant, or creative enough to figure out how, but
someone will, because the tech will become endlessly abusable when it becomes
- or seems to be - sofisticated enough.

------
ourmandave
Maybe someone can make this an SaaS for dating app profiles.

I've heard girls only want boyfriends who have great skills.

------
just_myles
Hm. Wonder if they have a brainscan for aholes.

~~~
dang
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

