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PaperclipPerfector  20hr ago (text post)   857 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 27, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Emil Kirkegaard has a new test, a "Multifactor General Knowledge Test". Link here: https://taketest.xyz/mfgkt

It's short and takes maybe 5 minutes. The percentile rankings are fun. Surely The Motte can drag the distribution rightward.

My results. (Foiled again by my working class upbringing.)

Satisfactory 294, but I got absolutely wrecked by the aesthetics section: https://i.imgur.com/565DOyw.png

Currently making my girlfriend do it to see if there's a difference as she likely knows all the fabric patterns and makeup brands.

299 - Got really stumped on the pyramids.

286, with the technology/computer stuff predictably clobbering me.

287, which is apparently terrible for the self-reports here.

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I got 276, which is the best score if we are going by golf rules.

Nah. I got 275, and have been amused by the "oh no, I got 290, I suck so bad!" posts. 😂

You have bested me, but just barely. Next online quiz I will be seeking you out.

Got 295.

Most points lost on cultural knowledge ;_;

Also did not read the instructions and it took a couple before I realized it was supposed to be 5.

I made the same mistake on my first attempt.

It is a fun test that shows how little I know about makeup and classical literature. I have a couple problems with it though. A few words appear to have spelling mistakes (the cancer is called is "leukemia" not "lukemia", for instance) so I am not exactly sure how those are counted. Am I supposed to notice them, or are they genuine mistakes by the author?

Some questions have a lot ambiguity to them. Like, one could use angstrom to measure distance, but is that a correct answer? And is a disease sexually transmitted if it can be transmitted through sex, but is not commonly thought of as such (would the common cold count as sexually transmitted)? Measuring book length in terms of pages is also weird, since it depends on the edition you got. Page and font size can be different, even if the content stays the same.

With that in mind, I can't take the test super seriously, but at least the categories are interesting, and legitimately span a wide array of topics.

The first spelling mistake (Cribbidge) fucked me up for a minute because I started second guessing if obvious-seeming answers were slightly misspelled as a trap (making it appear 6/10 are correct) until I realized they were just typos.

290, I'm sorta annoyed at the low literary score. For most of them I was really only guessing 4/5 answers every time. the 5th one was always really hard to get. Though I did perfect international knowledge, beating the stereotype of dumb self-centered americans I guess.

f37ac702-4bc1-4f26-a6e7-cde2080eaf75

300, apparently dragged down by my literary knowledge at the 78th percentile. 58/60 for technical knowledge though. I guess I really am a codecel.

Is 420 a slang term for marijuana?

Yes. I mean, no. I mean, yes. I mean...

284, though I don't really know english/american litterature much, so my litterature score is (I hope) understandably affected. 91st percentile non-anglo western.

290. Does that make us general knowledge midwit eskimo brothers? I didn't follow the directions and guessed 5 answers on each section. I did not think I was firing wildly on 5th answers for any of the sets .

My lowest score was international knowledge which feels bad, stupid Nubians. I did feel like the test skewed Millennial male, especially the technical section, although I appreciated the effort for balance with sets like tools vs. make-up brands. Not what I was expecting from a Kirkegaard general knowledge test. Good fun thread post.

I got 290 which is about as I expected, there are a few of rare English words that I must have missed, and I also am pretty low on pop-culture knowledge.

You guys are stacked holy shit

I got 291, I actually thought I did terrible bc I'm so lost on the arts/literary stuff but tech autism + years of grinding MCQ in university saved me I guess.

I'm 97th percentile in the US but 90th percentile vs the site, explains why I like it here.

291, but why did it default me to the 50-69 age bracket? I assume scores would be positively correlated with age.

Failed at cultural knowledge, but I already knew that would be true.

It did that to me as well.

291, and I thought I was being overcautious and not guessing enough.

The test felt biased toward a particular urban, educated, cultured professional's "general" knowledge, and there were topics missing that I would consider more representative of general knowledge than makeup brands or HTTP codes.

294, which I’m pretty happy with. I didn’t guess and as per the guidance didn’t mark anything unless I was sure. I got one PC cable wrong/missed the right answer and realized it as soon as I skipped to the next question (it was SATA). My intuition was right about the poets but I didn’t trust myself.

92nd percentile for US. 96th for non-Western. 77th for the site. Raw score of 284.

If it helps, I managed to do even worse on aesthetic knowledge.

301/320
99th percentile for all demographics apart from "this site" (98th).

Worst: Literary (25/30)
Best: Cultural and technical (78/80 and 39/40 respectively)

I played it fairly conservatively by not blindly guessing just to use up all 5 chances.

Similar, 302. Also lowest on the literary (26), and missed only one between both technical and computational. I also only chose options I was reasonably confident in and did not guess at all.

294 points, or 99th anglophone percentile.

My weakest category was aesthetic, at the 71st percentile.

Apparently I know stuff about things?

299/320.
Worst category: aesthetic, 42/50.
Fewest attempted: literary, 30/30. I guess I was less willing to guess.

That was fun!

/images/17746341642146423.webp

I got 280 points. 88th percentile. The overall score was tanked by my lack of aesthetic knowledge, where 37/50 was only enough to put me in the 25th centile. Surprisingly in that light, my cultural knowledge is superb.

71 percentile among anglophones. Naturally, carried by technical and computer knowledge, heavily tanked by aesthetic and literary domains.

The question about number of pages in the books seemed completely arbitrary, because books can be printed in different font and paper sizes?????

I agree, that wasn't a fair one.

I've been banging this drum for a long time.

98th overall, but only in the 60s in technical.

Interesting test. Probably my weakest question was http errors.

75th percentile in US, 79th in Anglo, 50th percentile among test takers on that site (?).

Greater than 70th percentile in everything except cultural info where I'm 8th percentile. I'm not sure what kind of upbringing I had but I think the test is saying 'sheltered'.

Rip. I know you IRL so I find this surprising.

Thank you! Much appreciated.

I think this was the category with different names for weed, different brands of cosmetics, etc. so that’s how I’m preserving my dignity.

I lurk /r/Redscarepod for fun (and field anthropology), so that gives me an unfair advantage when it comes to feminine insight.

Hell, even I'm a bit miffed at "only" 77th percentile for the site, I want to believe I'm special :(

Another RSP patrician.

I'm sad Reddit broke all the fun APIs, because that "users of X sub also like Y" tool was really fun, and I'm pretty sure slatestarcodex and RSP had a decent overlap and I've always found that very amusing.

I've never once listened to RSP, but I love their sub.

You couldn't pay me money to listen to the actual podcast, but it's an interesting crowd. I used to see @2rafa active there on occasion, and it was weird. Akin to running into your pediatrician at a rave.

I loved the podcast but Anna got xanax’d out and the subreddit degenerated into a sad hybrid of ChapoTrapHouse and MDE that I didn’t enjoy.

I'm not surprised. Disliking the podcast but appreciating the community is... very common. Almost universal on the sub, in my experience.

No answer key after the end? Aw.

Beat you by 1 point though.

Which of these countries possess nuclear weapons?
Israel

Lmao.

296, but I absolutely lol'd at that one and the 420 one, in exactly the same way as @sarker.

There's also US nuclear weapons in Germany. They're under a shared US-NATO command structure. German officers are nominally in charge of delivering these weapons in a time of war. Does that mean Germany "possesses" nuclear weapons? Only the test author knows :(

My impression is that there were lots of ambiguous questions like this where some answers could be reasonably argued either way.

There were. The one that got me was the French colonies. I'm guessing that they wouldn't count India, and that most educated people wouldn't guess India, but only because most people don't know about the colony at Pondicherry.

My results: 280/320.

/images/17746329662482057.webp

I only noticed afterwards that exactly five answers are correct and five false. Curious if I can improve my score armed with this knowledge.

Second attempt: 288/320.

/images/17746366354556532.webp

Congrats! Better than mine...

How do you upload an image?

When you post a comment, select the rightmost icon below the text window. It goes bold–italics–quote–link–image.

How do you upload an image?

There's a button underneath the text-entry field.

I just get an error when I use it. Thanks though.

He also mentions:

Of course, this test has massive cultural bias!

There also seem to be a lot of typos in the options.

KnowledgeScore (out of maximum possible)Percentile out of USAians of ages 50–69…out of Anglosphere* people
Computational58/609999
International47/509797
Cultural74/805576
Aesthetic41/504253
Literary24/307068
Technical39/409697
Total293/3209798

*US, CA, IE, UK, AU, and NZ. (Insert angry Éire noises?)

I think the typos are deliberate foil questions, under the assumption that a person genuinely familiar with the topic would notice that the word was misspelled.

If that's the case, that is dirty pool given he didn't say "misspellings don't count" up front. I chalked the misspellings up to test creator error, and picked them (except for one where there was a misspelling and the correct spelling both as options).

Same. Quatar is a major producer of oil!

That would be crazy not to tell you and just have it as a trick. Anyway, I picked the typoed options as if there were correct, and got 304 overall, broken down into:

Computational Knowledge

56 / 0–60 97th centile Site: 86th

International Knowledge

47 / 0–50 97th centile Site: 70th

Cultural Knowledge

78 / 0–80 97th centile Site: 97th

Aesthetic Knowledge

47 / 0–50 95th centile Site: 95th

Literary Knowledge

28 / 0–30 96th centile Site: 90th

Technical Knowledge

38 / 0–40 91st centile Site: 78th

So I don't think the typos can be traps or I'd have done worse. Embarrassing score on Literary for a wordcel like me though.

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