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Comment by nohat | Hacker News Reader

My impression is that people are overconfident in their ability to plan an invasion and under-confident in their ability to pitch manure. There are other examples, but in general there seems to be much less variation in results than there should be. Some of the things listed are very easy, some are very hard.

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Give orders and take orders were the standouts for me. Nearly 95%! I chose no for both, since I can be unclear, and generally distrust authority.

I figure there's a bit of Dunning Kruger going on here, even amongst the very skewed sample that would be answering such a questionnaire.

Then again, I could just be in the bottom 5% and trying to justify it.

My thought process was: "Could I plan an invasion?" "Sure, how hard could it be?" pause clicks no.

I definitely think there's a lot of bias happening, but the results are definitely still interesting. Most non-baby related "hard skills" (butcher hog, con ship, build wall, set bone, etc) scored the absolute lowest.

I'd love to see a dataset from a different audience that is more used to working with their hands.

Anyone can plan an invasion. Planning a successful invasion may be a little trickier.

Anybody who isn't Hemophobic can butcher a hog. Successfully butchering a hog may be a little trickier.

I'd actually disagree with that, but I probably give the word "plan" a stricter definition than you.

But I've battle-tested my inability to plan an invasion in many RTS games. I know I can't do it. :P

If you have ever played Hearts of Iron, you could probably plan an invasion.

That said, I am sure most gamers who have played something like Red Alert could probably do a half-decent job.

Glad you someone mentioned HoI !! Definitely the right game on this matter.

RTS like Red Alert do not really help you to plan well. It's too deep into micro-management, there's hardly any strategic planning going on. Most of the time you just try to survive first, then build up your base, and build up your offensive forces. It's very entertaining but not very "rich". I always felt that Total Annihilation was way better in that sense: huge maps, lots of differents ways to attack, lots of important strategic choices before any confrontation even takes place. A good balance between a HoI type-of-game and a RTS like Red Alert.

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