In Robert Heinlein's early juvenile novel Space Cadet, the applicants are given a device and a set of instructions. The instructions make no sense for the device in question.
Assuming this is based on something real life, I suppose it was the same underlying idea. Nobody could complete the instructions. They wanted to see what people did.
How do people react to frustration and bad orders?
There is plenty of frustration in software work, and a good %age of incomprehensible or incorrect specifications.
'Sma, believe me; it has not all been "fun".' He leant against a cabinet full of ancient projectile weapons. 'And, worse than all that,' he insisted, 'is when you turn the goddamn maps upside-down.'
'What?' Sma said, puzzled.
'Turning the maps upside down,' he repeated. 'Have you any idea how annoying and inconvenient it is when you get to a place and find that they map the place the other way up compared to the maps you've got? Because of something stupid like some people think a magnetic needle is pointing up to heaven, when other people think it's just heavier and pointing down? Or because it's done according to the galactic plane or something? I mean, this might sound trivial, but it's very upsetting.'
'Zakalwe, I had no idea. Let me offer you my apologies and those of the entire Special Circumstances Section; no, all of Contact; no: the entire Culture; no: all intelligent species.'
'Sma, you remorseless bitch, I'm trying to be serious.'
'No, I don't think you are. Maps...'
'But it's true! They turn them the wrong way up!'
'Then there must,' Diziet Sma said, 'be a reason for it.'
'What?' he demanded.
'Psychology,' Sma and the drone said at the same time.
—— Use of Weapons, Iain M. Banks, London: Orbit, 1990
I was reminded of Space Cadet, too. Reading that passage again (for the first time in fifty years), I see that there were at least two tests with hidden purposes.
One is a simple task where the test-taker could easily cheat if he wanted to. (Our hero doesn’t.)
In the next, the test-taker is asked to solve a puzzle with complex rules, and the purpose is to measure how long it takes him to figure out that there is no possible solution.
Our hero doesn’t notice the hidden purpose of either test, while most readers probably do. It’s a clever narrative device for a novel aimed at clever young people.
The text of that passage is below. Search for “beans”.
Assuming this is based on something real life, I suppose it was the same underlying idea. Nobody could complete the instructions. They wanted to see what people did.
How do people react to frustration and bad orders?
There is plenty of frustration in software work, and a good %age of incomprehensible or incorrect specifications.