BlackRock Interview Question Reveals Evil

sociopaths tend to hire sociopaths, apparently

A recent Twitter post really made me think. Why ask a question like this on a job interview and what kinds of answers would get a passing score on this test? What kind of person is capable of thinking like this? Would someone hired for this job be expected to “bury the bodies”? WTF???

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First, the question:

Quantitative Analyst Interview Question

Murderers in a field

You are guarding 100 murderers in a field, and you have a gun with a single bullet. If any one of the murderers has a non-zero probability of surviving, he will attempt to escape. If a murderer is certain of death, he will not attempt an escape.

How do you stop them from escaping?

The original graphic from a Twitter post. Is this a genuine question or something faked?

Companies have tried all sorts of ways to determine the best potential hires for their businesses. Once they get past the basic IQ filter (went to an Ivy League uni - check), GPA, test scores, background check, etc. they need to evaluate “fit”, which is tied to a company’s culture. Will this new hire share similar values and fit into the organization’s culture? Do they have what it takes to excel at the job? WILL THEY DO WHATEVER IT TAKES? (without moral qualms to do whatever they are told to do)

Let’s examine a range of possible answers… (I’m hoping my readers who are very wise will add a few possible answers to the comments):

-You are a Saint. You can use supernormal powers to pacify all the murderer’s minds. None of them would have a bad thought and they would all be on the path to goodness without a single wicked thought. The problem with this solution is the person applying to work for this company is mainly interested in doing “whatever it takes” to make a lot of money. They could never be a Saint because Saints have no interest in money and ordinary people can never get these kinds of supernormal powers.

The rest of the potential solutions involve the concept of incomplete information, which is the point of this question. An analyst must assess risk in an investment with incomplete information. Is the investment target’s management not telling the whole story? If you have perfect information and the other guy has incomplete information, can you take advantage of him?

-You are not a Saint. To keep control with only one bullet and 100 murderers, you will have to play some mind games and get them to believe you have a lot more than one bullet. You also must wonder if real murderers would play odds like this and stay put (one person with one gun would get overwhelmed by the 100 murderers)

The most obvious answer to the question is to observe the group for a short period of time to determine who the leader is, then shoot him in front of the other murderers, then tell the lie “if anyone else gets out of line, I’ll shoot you, too with all the other bullets I have”. The inmates have incomplete information, they do not know you only had one bullet and are bluffing, but they know you are willing to kill. Murderers understand willingness to kill…

Variations on “Shoot One Murderer” include CCP style organizing the inmates to fight against each other and control each other to increase your odds and save the bullet for when you really need it.

-What does the AI say? You can imagine scenarios like this are already being war-gamed using AI. The weakness is AI “follows the rules”, but real life is messy and murderers already demonstrated they don’t follow rules. This hasn’t been built into the AI yet…(from Chat GPT).

“To prevent the murderers from escaping, you need to create a situation where every murderer believes they have a non-zero chance of survival, while also ensuring that no murderer actually attempts to escape.

Here's a strategy:

1. Randomly Select a Target: Tell the murderers that you will pick one murderer at random and shoot them. Each murderer, therefore, has a 1 in 100 chance of being shot.

2. Communicate the Randomness Clearly: Make it clear that the selection process is entirely random and that you have no preference. Because the choice is random, each murderer believes they have only a 1% chance of being the one to be shot.

3. Induce Uncertainty of Survival: Because each murderer knows they have a non-zero chance (1%) of surviving, they will not be "certain of death." According to the rules, if they are not certain they will die, they won’t attempt an escape.

4. Reinforce the Rules: Reiterate that if anyone tries to escape, you will shoot them immediately. This reinforces the idea that staying put is their best chance of survival.

By creating a scenario where each murderer perceives their chance of being shot as low (1%) but also knows that an escape attempt guarantees death, you effectively prevent anyone from trying to escape.”

Using the AI strategy, you would probably still end up shooting someone — these are violent criminals after all.

What kind of people will you end up hiring based on this question? Management hires people who mirror themselves and if the organization is full of sociopaths, they will hire sociopaths. Security agencies, big corporations and banks all look for people who are very smart and willing to “do what it takes” — that’s why they recruit at Ivy League colleges. One friend of mine related the story how she was interviewing to work for the CIA after college (40+ years ago) and failed the lie detector test after 8 hours BECAUSE SHE WOULD NOT LIE. They expect people to lie because after all “spies lie for a living” (though some of them are good people who were misled). I told her she “dodged a bullet” and was a good person. She had looked at that as a personal failure, but now she understands an honest person will never be a “good fit” with liars. She was happy to have a new understanding of that ordeal.

Then again, one jokester suggested that maybe the best use of that bullet is to use it on the person who thought of this question in the first place.