I dodged the draft and in partial atonement, I did some work with Operation Code, which is for vets and their spouses to learn to be techies. I did a podcast with them:
These people are not in any way, shape, or form "dumb." A lot of them go to 4-year colleges on the GI Bill, but a few did code school. One works for Google now. Almost none of them actually saw any combat.
My favorite was Dick Sonderegger, who enlisted in the Marines during the Vietnam era. He said he wanted to fly close air support in 'Nam, and they said, "No, you're going to be a computer programmer." He never left the States.
They do yell at you in Basic Training, all of them said.
There are a lot of dumb people in the military. There are also some, usually in special forces, that can run mental laps around most of the people here, then physical laps, then shoot you in the chest from a half a mile away, then give an incredible speech about it all.
Vet in tech here. Vets are generally socioeconomically disadvantaged compared to the average tech employee. They rarely come from great school districts, and the military is one way to give them a leg up on the system that held them down, via a decent paying job, and path to “free” college education and retirement.
Rich kids and those from top school districts (generally) don’t end up in the military. In the end, it’s all about education and opportunity. Most folks who enter the military see it as a way to get more of both.
Surely most employers use IQ which varying degrees of effectiveness?
I expect in most settings IQ 100-140 is very hard to guess from an interaction. Harder if there is a specific field being assessed where someone has experience/training.
But everyone will pick up IQ <90 almost immediately and that's not even necessarily abnormally low just borderline.
De facto they are, mostly[1]. The corollary that there exist jobs where intelligence isn't pertinent is perhaps somewhat baffling to common sense, but then the law often is.
Huge tech companies have used the Wonderlic IQ test as recently as the last 10 years. Somebody here, if this thread isn't moribund, can chime in to say which; I'm not saying. There's a meme that IQ tests are a powerful hiring tool that have been suppressed by political correctness or gunshy HR departments, but the real reason they're not ubiquitous is that they're not fit for purpose.
My dream. Over my entire Army career, I went between failing and barely passing the sit-up test. I did just fine on the run and push-ups and was always doing a ton of additional sit-up exercises, but it was always a major stressor whether I'd pass that damn test on any given morning.
I knew a short stocky SNCO who just struggled with crunches, no matter how much effort he put into them. I found crunches easy because I have long arms and a short torso, so the distance I had to travel to do a technically-correct crunch was minimal. But I've always struggled with pull-ups....because those same long arms make the pull-up distance feel like I'm free climbing the Dawn Wall.
I also think doing sit-ups in the Army on stupidly-hard surfaces (parking lots, etc...) before I switched to the Corps is one of the main sources of my lower back pain.
"In the past decade, every branch of the U.S. military has begun to phase out sit-ups and crunches from their required testing and training regimens, or else they have made them optional, alongside more orthopedically sound maneuvers such as the plank. Spokespeople for the Army and the Marines confirmed to me that these decisions in their branches were made in part to avoid the high rates of lower-back injury found among troops training for speed sit-up and crunch tests."
>these decisions in their branches were made in part to avoid the high rates of lower-back injury found among troops training for speed sit-up and crunch tests."
And yet if you are in the USAF, the GP's will prescribe 500mg-1g of nicotinic acid and ibuprofen for lower back problems, to be taken when working out in the gym.
The nicotinic acid on an empty stomach spikes your growth hormone well above peaks seen during puberty, and believe it or not, can have you mobile and working doing hard exercise and lifting within 30mins, in fact you dont need the ibuprofen, just the nicotinic acid when the flush strikes.
The only downside with doing nicotinic acid long term is it will increase the chance of osteomalacia, aka putty bones, where you can push your finger into your bones and leave an indent in the bone, like pushing your finger into fresh putty around a window. Its not nice and it will deform your bones unless you take appropriate action namely changes to your diet to increase you vit k and omega 3 intake.
The pain killing effect of nicotinic acid comes from the release of calcium which binds to the body's own catecholamines because calcium binding to the catecholamines amplifies their effect. Its probably also explains those video's of people lifting weights when their bones snap and break, you dont feel osteomalacia until its too late.
Nicotinic acid can also harm the liver so appropriate dietary changes need to be made to compensate for taking it, even though it can be prescribed as a statin, and was the first drug used in the US for chemo purposes, decades ago.
An awful lot of military live on legal painkillers. They have to, since they can't just quit & rest when they get sore. The medics hand out Tylenol and Advil like candy.
Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not: I also heard of kidney stones among vets. This is nothing like a scientific study; just anecdotal.
It's certainly "a measurement", but needs to be taken in context. The first time I decided to see how far/fast I could run, I had been doing martial arts and crossfit for two years. I had never really run more than a mile before. Ended up running about 16 miles in 3 hours. The next two weeks I couldn't walk and my knees were permanently injured. So, sure, you can pass a fitness test, but that doesn't mean you can (or should) sustain it.
I've seen what the training is like for those who do direct commissions (e.g. Jags, doctors, high end computer specialists) and it looks like a god damn daycare compared to even regular officer school. I think their basic training is half as long and less than half as difficult. Also no one was yelling at them. Not saying that's a bad thing. Quite the opposite, it convinced me that even I could have a place somewhere in the military if necessary.
And don't even get me started on "state defense forces".
Medical/JAG/chaplain corps officers are generally not considered 'line officers' and cannot command combat forces which is one of the reasons for the different training.
The 99th percentile for a two-mile run was 11:50 for 17–21 year old males. I managed to beat that exactly once in life and then never again.
These days I purposefully slow down when running if I find my heart beating too quickly. I wear a Garmin heart rate monitor. Even if I feel like I could push myself to a heart rate of 200+ per minute, it's best not to.
If people are willing to memorize CLRS cover to cover for google. they can also probably also master the enjoyable(with time) study of being able to do 60 push-ups.
The Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT) was replaced with the Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT) which is currently being rolled out.
Many soldiers find it much easier, at least to meet the minimum requirements. The ACFT comprises six events: 3 repetition deadlift (MDL), standing power throw (SPT), hand-release pushup (HRP), sprint-drag-carry (SDC), plank (PLK) and 2 mile run (2MR).
Minimum scores for the ACFT for males 17-21 are as follows:
MDL - 120 lb x 3 reps
SPT - throw a 15 lb ball 6 meters / 19.685 ft
HRP - 10 pushups
SDC - 3:15
PLK - 1:30 plank
2MR - 23:22 for 2-mile run
All of that is quite easily achievable for the majority of males 17-21, I would say.
Oh gosh, the good old army and it's effective measurements techniques. I remember wanting to be a military officer after undergrad and getting disqualified at MEPS for a nonsense issue (which I'll omit for privacy) and the guy next to be getting green lit to continue processing with the Marines with a ...wait for it... 11/100 on the ASVAB.
And it isn't "x/100," i.e., got x questions right and everything else wrong. It's xth percentile, i.e., better than x% of graduating high school seniors.
"better than x% of graduating high school seniors."
A very easy standard. I think I got a 96 or something like that and I missed a question about what was written on a light bulb (I said lumen which they largely do have, but they wanted watts). Stupid mistake still bugs me even though the score was meaningless.
MEPS stands for "Military Entrance Processing Station" and it's where you go to do a bunch of checks to see if you're fit to serve. It's also often where things like the ASVAB (Armed Service Vocational Aptitude Battery) and DLAB (Defense Language Aptitude Battery), basically aptitude tests are held.
It's where you do testing, select your contract, swear in, leave for basic combat training or boot camp, and also do physical examinations, including some kind of odd ones, like duck walking across a room in your underwear with a bunch of other men.
MEPS = Military Entrance Processing Station
ASVAB = Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery
MEPS is an initial processing station where the military makes a final determination that you are physically, morally, mentally, and legally able to serve in the military. The process includes things like physical exams, drug tests, and reviewing your records.
ASVAB is a standardized test developed by the military that helps determine what jobs you're eligible to do.
It's not really like the SAT at all. The SAT is pure academics.
>Appropriate for evaluating military recruits
Again, not clear if you're trying to be condescending. The ASVAB has logical reasoning portions (order the shapes based on labels of points), mechanical questions, I remember getting asked questions about force distribution of pulleys and tackle, but also questions like volume of a cone, basic trig, knights and knaves questions, what is the name of this screwdriver orientation, what's this engine piece called? ( Camshaft), and now there's even a computer science focused addition the Air Force uses.
It's a test that actually tells you about what you know and can understand, and is far more useful than an SAT or ACT exam.
> It's not really like the SAT at all. The SAT is pure academics.
I mean, it's a test that takes less than an afternoon where you answer questions by filling in bubbles and such. That's quite a lot like the SAT.
>The ASVAB has logical reasoning portions (order the shapes based on labels of points), mechanical questions, I remember getting asked questions about force distribution of pulleys and tackle, but also questions like volume of a cone, basic trig, knights and knaves questions, what is the name of this screwdriver orientation, what's this engine piece called? ( Camshaft), and now there's even a computer science focused addition the Air Force uses.
Is this not all "subject matter appropriate for evaluating military recruits" ?
You may be reading a bit much into what I wrote. My high school had everyone take it to fulfill a state requirement that we take so many standardized tests which gave schools the option of which ones to give.
>It's a test that actually tells you about what you know and can understand, and is far more useful than an SAT or ACT exam.
Being a bit condescending yourself here.
It's a standardized test appropriate for military recruits. For somebody who doesn't know was ASVAB means at all... this would seem a pretty good concise description.
They care about those scores primarily because the army trains people for various jobs and it takes longer to train dumb people for extremely complex jobs especially when you include the possibility of failure.
However, even people scoring 1/100 is still someone that graduated high school so it’s not as incompetent as you might think. They just aren’t sending someone like that to flight school.
I got a score of 96 on my ASVAB and made the decision to pursue a career in Infantry as an MOS 11-B after completing OSUT. As a highlight, I had the opportunity to attend Airborne School, which was an incredible experience. At that time, when I was 20 years old, the Army offered a substantial $60,000 signing bonus, the highest among all branches (save the Navy). Although I did explore the possibility of joining the Navy, they turned me down due to my GED qualification.
Fast forward to today, at 39 years old, I can honestly say that despite some challenges with my lower back, I have absolutely no regrets about the path I chose.
99 ASVAB, 132 GT score. Went 0311(rifleman), and eventually 0313(LAV Crewman). High ASVAB scores in the infantry are more common than people think. My recruiter tried to push me to computer networking, but I had already done that in real life, and wanted to try something I couldn't do in the real world.
Thank you. It's the kind of thing I fantasize about as a very bored mid-late 20s dev who likes fitness and the outdoors, so datapoints like yours are always interesting.
Would you recommend it to a young man, given the state of the military today? I'm old for the military (31) but was seriously considering it around 24-26. But I just couldn't get past report after report of the military happily doing obviously stupid/harmful stuff to its own, like burn pits.
It's complicated. When I joined, I was single, dirt poor, and it was an obvious way to climb out of poverty.
I'm not sure what your situation is, have you considered the National Guard? It's still a massive commitment, but it might just scratch that itch you have there. If you love it, its very easy to go active duty
Joining is a young man's game. I saw many 25-35 year olds at Basic Training suffer broken bones and dislocated joints. Many more than the 18 year olds.
As to recommending it, I do not. There can be greatly positive outcomes, but the risk of injury or death is too high for me to recommend to anyone. Unless it is your way of escaping poverty, which is the story for many veterans, the risk/reward isn't there.
I'll leave you with what I tell everyone who asks me in real life: Do I regret it? Sometimes. Would I do it again? Absolutely not. I saw too many of my friends die in a bankers oil war, or a politicians re-election strategy. Take your pick, they're all equally valid.
That sounds like a really amazing early life experience. I definitely do not side with people who denigrate military enlistment as beneath intelligent, skilled individuals, a set of people which included my parents at the time (early 1990s).
TIL, then. I know abilities have a range, and some people have a bad day, but my personal impression of that test was that it would be impossible to fail it, as such.
Anyways, if my anecdotal experience interacting with the military is accurate, the main requirement for being an Officer is enjoying LOTR/super hero/Sparta movies. Being able to do pull-ups or string together coherent sentences are less important.
If you want to know what's actually valued in the military, look at the names of recent defense contract startups. That tells you everything you need to know.
https://operationcode.org/podcast
These people are not in any way, shape, or form "dumb." A lot of them go to 4-year colleges on the GI Bill, but a few did code school. One works for Google now. Almost none of them actually saw any combat.
My favorite was Dick Sonderegger, who enlisted in the Marines during the Vietnam era. He said he wanted to fly close air support in 'Nam, and they said, "No, you're going to be a computer programmer." He never left the States.
They do yell at you in Basic Training, all of them said.