History Main / SecretTestOFCharacter

* Apparently, Vlad the Impaler did this when a foreign merchant reported that he'd been robbed of a bag of gold while traveling through Vlad's kingdom. Vlad asked him how many gold pieces he had lost, then told the merchant he would send for him if found the gold. A few days later, the merchant was called to the castle and Vlad handed him a bag of gold. Opening it up, he counted the gold pieces and then handed it back to Vlad, saying the gold wasn't his because there was one more gold piece in the bag than what he had lost. Vlad told him to take the gold, because it was just a test of his honesty and the merchant passed. ''Vlad also made it very clear what would have happened if the merchant had not admitted that the gold was not his.''

* Anna of Cleve's failure of Henry VIII's test was a disappointing start to a disappointing marriage.

* Goofy employs one on Max in ''WesternAnimation/AGoofyMovie''. The two eventually come on a junction where going left on would lead to what Max wants, and going right would lead to what Goofy wants. [[spoiler:Max changed the route on the family map to take them to Los Angeles instead of Lake Destiny in Idaho. Goofy already knows this, but wants to see what Max is going to choose after proclaiming to Pete that he trusts Max to make the right choice. However, Max chooses to go left. While Goofy complies, he immediately enters TranquilFury as a RageBreakingPoint, knowing that Max failed the test. This results in a ThirdActMisunderstanding.]]

This will sometimes occur in the context of a TrainingAccident or TheGameNeverStopped. A reversal of ThresholdGuardians. A CareerBuildingBlunder operates on a similar principle.

* In ''Webcomic/{{Spinnerette}}'', Dr. Universe, an [[UsefulNotes/{{Objectivism}} Objectivist]], proposes to do research on Spinny's PowerIncontinence that he claims could help billions, at the cost of her life. When she refuses, he [[NotSoDifferent congratulates her on her selfishness]] and gets down to their real business.

* In the little-known sequel of ''WesternAnimation/AtlantisTheLostEmpire'', Milo confronts a Native American wind spirit who can control a bunch of sand coyotes. He says that as Milo, Kida, and their group know about him, he must kill them so they never give away his secret. He says he will spare them if they tell him one of their ''own'' secrets (Atlantis), but Milo decides not to. The spirit spares them, saying they understand the importance of keeping a secret, and lets them go.

* Serbian ballad "Wise girl outwits Marko" ("Devojka nadmudrila Marka") is about a poor girl who is asked to be a wife of three folk heroes, Marko Kraljević, duke Janko and Ustupčić Pavle. They all come to her house on the same day to get married, followed by thousand wedding guests each. Marko comes with a test: each hero would put a blanket in front on himself and put his golden signet ring and a golden apple on it. Whoever's ring or apple the girl picks up she will marry. The girl doesn't touch anything and tells the following "Goodbrother Marko, Godfather Janko, The apple is a child's play, the golden ring is a sign of a hero. I will go with Ustupčić Pavle." . Marko gets angry, because she didn't choose him and he had failed to trick her. He reveals that if she so much as touched an apple or a ring, he would have cut her head off, because she would have revealed herself as greedy and foolish wife.

** the [[YoungestChildWins youngest daughter]] agrees to redeem her father's promise and marry a filthy, hairy man wearing a bearskin without knowing he will be able to take it off and clean up once his DealWithTheDevil is done. Her sisters, who refused him, are so envious they commit suicide, and the devil happily makes off with their souls.

* Goofy employs one on Max in ''WesternAnimation/AGoofyMovie''. The two eventually come on a junction that going left on would lead to what Max wants, and going right would lead to what Goofy wants. [[spoiler:Max changed the route on the family map to take them to Los Angeles instead of Lake Destiny in Idaho. Goofy already knows this, but wants to see what Max is going to choose after proclaiming to Pete that he trusts Max to make the right choice. However, Max chooses to go left. While Goofy complies, he immediately enters TranquilFury as a RageBreakingPoint, knowing that Max failed the test. This results in a ThirdActMisunderstanding.]]
* In the little-known sequel of ''WesternAnimation/AtlantisTheLostEmpire'', Milo confronts a Native American wind spirit who can control a bunch of sand coyotes. He says that as Milo, Kida and their group know about him, he must kill them so they never give away his secret. He says he will spare them if they tell him one of their ''own'' secrets (Atlantis), but Milo decides not to. The spirit spares them, saying they understand the importance of keeping a secret, and lets them go.

* Another military joke where you [insert branches of choice here]. Three officers (in different units, say Army, Navy and Marines) are arguing about whose soldiers are the bravest while standing on building/a ship. The first two each call up a private/seaman/other "grunt" and tell him to jump off. The soldiers say "Yes Sir!" and jump. The last officer smiles, calls up a private from his unit, and tells him to jump. The private stands up straight, salutes, and says "Fuck you" before leaving. The officer turns to the others and says, "That, my friends, is true bravery."

* In the ''Podcast/CoolKidsTable'' game ''Small Magic'': Partway through their journey, the party comes across a father and his ill daughter in the middle of the woods and help cure the daughter with some of their supplies. They later find out [[spoiler: the house where the family supposedly live does not exist, and eventually that the two were testing the group to see if they were willing to extend kindness to strangers]].

** In 4e canon there is a group called the Sable Lancers that use this on potential recruits (often without their knowledge). The potential recruits are hired to carry a chest to a nearby town, with the stipulation that they not look inside it. Along the way they encounter several moral dilemmas, such as a woman whose child was carried off by goblins, two wagons crashing on a bridge, and an unconscious man in a ditch with a large sum of money on him. If the characters ignore the problems or fail to complete them satisfactorily, they fail. It goes without saying that if they look in the chest, they fail.

* Richard Strauss' fairy-tale opera ''Die Frau ohne Schatten'' (The Woman Without a Shadow) The daughter of Keikobad, king of the spirits, has married the Emperor, a mortal man, but has to gain a shadow (that is, the ability to bear children) or the Emperor will turn to stone. She tries to con a human woman to sell her shadow, but in the end, although the Emperor is turning to stone before her eyes, she will not take the woman's shadow, having seen what misery this will bring the woman and her husband. She then gets her own shadow and the Emperor turns back to flesh and blood.

** The Emperor convinces Karamazov that his order to disband the Inquisition was him testing whether the man would stay loyal even if it meant disobeying orders. [[spoiler:Double subverted, as Emperor wasn't testing that – he was checking which Inquisitors have to be gotten rid of. The ''good'' Inquisitors would either obey the order or disobey it and continue to do good for the Imperium. The bad Inquisitors would assume the letter was heresy and go to Terra to root it out.]]
** In the same episode, [[GoodShepherd Decius]] passes ''his'' test when he remained faithful to the Emperor even when Emps had just disbanded the Ecclesiarchy. [[spoiler: Because he still tries to protect the Emperor and warn him about Karamazov's invasion of the palace, he gets to remain leader of the reformed Ecclesiarchy.]]
* The ''WebAnimation/NoEvil'' episode "Tlaloc's Test" is built around one of these, using the setup from the Kingston Trio's song "Desert Pete": there's a dry-looking pump in the desert and a jar of water to prime it, and the note left encourages you to use the water on the pump and not just chug it. In the episode, Ichabod supports just drinking the jar, but Calamity uses it as suggested...and the handle snaps off and reveals itself to be [[MakingASplash Tlaloc's magical, water-controlling tuning fork]].

* In Chapter 2 of ''Webcomic/{{Zeldanime}}'', Link's second test is to drink from a blessed fountain filled with the "water of judgement". According to Zelda, a [[IncorruptiblePurePureness pure-hearted]] person will be rejuvenated by drinking the water, but a corrupt-hearted person "will meet a very slow and dreadful fate." She tells him to leave if he doesn't want to take the test, but he stands his ground. He hesitates for a few moments given a few past minor misdeeds, but takes the risk and drinks the water... and nothing happens. Zelda then reveals that it was ordinary water all along and an evil person wouldn't have drank the water, so Link passed.

* Done by jurors at the final Tribal Councils in seasons 2 and 8 of ''Webcomic/SurvivorFanCharacters'' along the lines of "Would you still be willing to be friends with me even if I don't vote for you?" More specifically, [[spoiler:Bitsy tells Ellise that she won't be voting for her and then asks her if they can still be friends after the game even if her vote costs her the million, and Johnny does something similar with Matt in Season 8. Of course, it turns out that both jurors had always been planning to vote for their respective friends and just wanted to make sure that their friends didn't view them as just a jury vote. Ellise passes Bitsy's test with flying colors, but Matt bombs Johnny's test in spectacular fashion, effectively screwing himself out of the only vote he could ever have gotten]].

* In the ''Series/{{Lost}}'' AlternateRealityGame "Dharma Wants You", the player goes through several flash-based tests supposedly used to test his/her capacity to join a reinstated Dharma Initiative. At the beginning of the test series, head recruiter Hans Van Eeghen warns you about the attempts of someone known as "Black Swan" to "undermine the testing program". Each of the tests themselves have a secret "Black Swan" option allowing the player to cheat. The final test (called the "Honesty and Integrity Test") is a simple video informing the candidates that they already completed the test: Eeghen himself is Black Swan and the cheats were used to test the candidates integrity. Eeghen then congratulates those who didn't cheat claiming "the officials reviewing your results will look very favourably on this outcome"
* The Orion's Arm short story ''[[http://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oa-story&story=dr_yes_jolonah Yes, Jolonah, there is a Hell]]'' features a murderer who is about to be given to the [[EldritchAbomination Queen of Pain]]. First, he is given several chances to earn a quick death, but rejects it. Then, he is told a baby can take his place in the Hell. He jumps on the chance, but naturally, that was the trope. The point, BTW, isn't that the Queen has mercy or has conscience. She merely has no use for anyone but the worst.

* In [[https://notalwaysright.com/we-have-a-feeling-we-know-what-the-rest-of-the-password-was/178864/ this]] ''Website/NotAlwaysWorking'' story, the submitter's boss uses one of these to weed out scammers pretending to be IT personell- when asked for user ID, he also gives out a fake password (he got as far as '[[PrecisionFStrike g-o-f-u-]]' before being interrupted). When the person at the other end yells at him to never give out his password, he knows that's the real IT guy.

* Some teachers use a simple test to see if the students can follow instructions: At the top of the paper, you are told to read the entire test, and then perform the tasks. The tasks can include anything from simple math, to standing on one foot while singing the national anthem. The trick is of course that one of the last instructions on the page is: "Ignore all the other tasks. All you need to do to pass is to write your name at the bottom of the paper." Most students will start carrying out the instructions before reading all of them, and properly look like fools to the few who actually remember what the test was about: following instructions.

* If you saw a young girl--let's call her Talie--wandering around a city, saying that she lost her mother, would you help her or walk away? If you answered the former, you may be in the minority. [[http://www.aol.com/article/2015/07/14/this-shocking-social-experiment-will-terrify-you/21209146/?interactionId=99999999999999999999002&utm_source=apester&utm_medium=scs&utm_campaign=apester2015#confab-comment-25837341 The experiment shown here]] shows rather shocking results. The most disturbing part of this experiment is that one man who ''did'' offer her help was a known pedophile who was not allowed to be around children. (Thankfully, two actual Good Samaritans became suspicious of his aggressive behavior and called the police.)

* A positive example: In the aftermath of the October 2014 Parliament Hill shootings in Ottawa which were perpetrated by a Muslim extremist, three students [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9rFprD_Qf4 performed a social experiment]] on the street in which one of them would dress in a typical Muslim attire while another one would verbally harass him and blame him for the shootings, the video shows many Canadians standing up for and defending the Muslim guy from the other guy's bigotry, one of them at the end even ''[[TalkToTheFist punches him in the face]]'' when he has enough of his prejudice.

* An executive takes a prospect to lunch at a restaurant. If he puts salt on the food before tasting it, he's clearly someone who jumps to conclusions without investigating the situation and is unfit for the position. [[SarcasmMode Because it's impossible that he's eaten there before and knows how they cook the food.]] This story is often associated with Thomas Watson of IBM or United States Admiral Hiram Rickover, the father of the "Nuclear Navy", both of whom were hiring people for technically-demanding, detail-oriented work.

* [[http://luckycharmer.tumblr.com/post/153922919591/actual-conversation-at-a-party-last-night "Dude he said he doesn't care that means he's a real punk"]]
* The ''Freakonomics'' authors discuss a beautiful example of this. They designed an algorithm that looked at terrorists' bank habits and gave it to the government of the United Kingdom. The algorithm was very effective at turning in suspected activity, with a very low chance to flag an innocent person and a very high chance to snag a terrorist (in statistics, a sensitivity and high specificity - see note). However, because the innocent so greatly outnumber the guilty, many innocent people still wound up on a list thanks to the algorithm (in statistics, there was a low positive predictive value - see note). So the authors and the government went to press to discuss their project and revealed one of the algorithm's most powerful predictors: terrorists are young enough with enough family to justify life insurance, but they don't buy it (as it wouldn't pay off if they died in an attack). Naturally, the press was outraged that this secret would be revealed. The foolish Americans were excoriated by the British media - "How dumb are those Yanks? And how dumb is our government?" Despite the guffawing, the now in-place algorithm was watching that list of suspects to see who suddenly ran out to buy insurance... [[note]]In statistics, sensitivity is the percentage of people who actually have the condition you are interested in that your test identifies correctly. Specificity is the percentage of people who your test correctly identifies as not having the condition of interest. As an exercise, let's say that the test is an algorithm designed to ID terrorists. It has 99.5% sensitivity and 99.5% specificity. Wow! Near perfect, right? Surely you can take the answer the algorithm gives you to the bank? Well, not so fast. Imagine you have a country like the UK, with a population of about 50 million. Your intelligence agencies, collaborating with your allies, estimate you have about 500 possible terrorists to find. With sensitivity 99.5% and specificity 99.5%, an algorithm would positively identify about 497 of the 500 terrorists. That's very helpful. Unfortunately, with a population of 50 million innocent people, your algorithm correctly weeds out "only" 99.5% of them. That means 0.005% of 50,000,000 people are incorrectly flagged as terrorists - or 250,000. Your positive predictive value - the odds a person the algorithm has flagged is actually a terrorist - is 497.5/250,497.5, or about 0.2%. For every 500 investigations you launch, you might investigate zero-three actual terrorists. Clearly an algorithm which ID'd terrorists with a sensitivity and specificity of 99.5% would not be nearly good enough for a situation like what the UK was facing. The UK's algorithm was apparently good enough to keep using, and even to keep refining with the nasty little secret test discussed above.[[/note]]
* An escape room puzzle in the United States, unnamed here to preserve the secret for people who might play it (if you're dying to know, it is [[spoiler: "Summerfield Place", a game in Toms River, New Jersey]]) features this in its ending. The game has players trying to solve the mystery of a family's inexplicable disappearance from their home. It's eventually revealed they were abducted by aliens, and a page of the mother's diary reveals that the beings are planning some kind of "experiment" with the human captives. To complete the experiment, the aliens need a chalice that has been hidden on their ship, which must be placed on one of two pedestals in the room when found. If the players choose to put the chalice on the left pedestal, the captured family will go free in exchange for the players themselves becoming prisoners. Putting it on the right pedestal releases the players, but sentences the family to death. If the group chooses to sacrifice themselves, an alien appears on a TV screen and congratulates them: the experiment wasn't scientific, but ''ethical'', and the extraterrestrials were trying to see if humans were empathic enough to give themselves up for total strangers. By choosing this option, the players are rewarded with their freedom.

* The Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles has an exhibit at the beginning before people enter where they show a video with a long list about groups people are prejudiced against, starting with common targets (such as other races or LGBT people) and going on to more obscure targets. At the end the visitors are invited to enter through one of two doors, one marked "prejudiced" and one marked "Unprejudiced". [[spoiler: the "Unprejudiced" door is locked, in order to show no one is without prejudice. That said, some people [[DramaticallyMissingThePoint still bang on the locked door and demand to be let through.]]]]
* Anna of Cleve's failure of Henry VIII's test was a disappointing start to a disappointing marriage.
--> "(Henry VIII and his men), being disguised with mottled cloaks with hoods so that they should not be recognized, came secretly to Rochester, and so went up into the chamber where the said Lady Anne was looking out of a window to see the bull-baiting which was going on in the courtyard, and suddenly he embraced and kissed her, and showed here a token which the king had sent her for New Year’s gift, and she being abashed and not knowing who it was thanked him, and so he spoke with her. But she regarded him little, but always looked out the window…. and when the king saw that she took so little notice of his coming he went into another chamber and took off his cloak and came in again in a coat of purple velvet."

* The Oakland Raiders [[UsefulNotes/NationalFootballLeague NFL]] team was so disappointed with the poor performance and apparent lack of effort from quarterback [=JaMarcus=] Russell that they at one point gave him a DVD supposedly of plays to study at home that was actually just a blank disc to see if he would notice. When he came in the next day and said that he had liked "all of" the plays on the disc, they knew he hadn't even looked at it.

** The LawfulGood god of metallic (good) dragons Bahamut often disguises himself as an old man with canaries (which are really gold dragons), sometimes to travel without attracting attention, though other times to test people (especially his followers). 4e even had rules for setting up such an encounter: namely, he would pretend to be a traveling old man asking for the PCs to escort him somewhere, at one point he would set up camp in a place where monsters/bandits etc are likely to attack. If they do attack and the PCs try to protect him, he secretly helps them with really powerful buffs and healing to make sure they don't die, and typically reveals his true nature and rewards them after they win. If they [[DirtyCoward just chicken out and leave him to die]], they fail and he just teleports away with no reward.

* In Chapter 2 of ''Webcomic/Zeldanime'', Link's second test is to drink from a blessed fountain filled with the "water of judgement". According to Zelda, a [[IncorruptiblePurePureness pure-hearted]] person will be rejuvenated by drinking the water, but a corrupt-hearted person "will meet a very slow and dreadful fate." She tells him to leave if he doesn't want to take the test, but he stands his ground. He hesitates for a few moments given a few past minor misdeeds, but takes the risk and drinks the water... and nothing happens. Zelda then reveals that it was ordinary water all along and an evil person wouldn't have drank the water, so Link passed.

* The Oakland Raiders [[UsefulNotes/NationalFootballLeague NFL]] team was so disappointed with the poor performance of quarterback [=JaMarcus=] Russell that they at one point gave him a DVD supposedly of plays to study at home that was actually just a blank disc to see if he would notice. When he came in the next day and said that he had liked "all of" the plays on the disc, they knew he hadn't even looked at it.

* Music/VanHalen's infamous rider demand for M&Ms with the brown ones picked out was actually a secret test of character. They used the demand (which was buried ''deep'' in the technical specs) as a check on how closely the venue had carried out the rest of their rider, which included technical details that were important for the band's performance and safety. For perspective, the band usually travels with [[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/brown-out/ up to nine eighteen-wheelers full]] of complicated, heavy equipment that you do ''not'' want to set up unsafely. Brown M&Ms (or, worse, ''no'' M&Ms at all) indicated a slipshod job that would have to be double-checked by the band's crew, which according to Music/DavidLeeRoth inevitably found something technically wrong with the production setup which in some cases were grounds for the concert being cancelled.
** Van Halen's concern wasn't a substandard show. They were using so many lights, flying harnesses, and so much pyro, that people (band members, crew, or audience) could be crippled, burned, or killed if a rig wasn't up to standard.

* In [[http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/grimms/96threelittlebirds.html The Three Little Birds]], two brothers tell a fishing woman that she won't catch fish where she is, and end up failing their quests; then, their sister tells her "May God help you with your fishing," and receives a magic wand and advice.

* One common test for someone cleaning a house or other building is to put a bit of money under a carpet. The rationale goes something like this: if the money is still there after they perform their service, then they're sloppy. If the money isn't there, but isn't returned to the person who hired them, then they're untrustworthy. But if the money is found and returned, then they're honest and reliable.
* A viral social media post relates a "traditional" Chinese test of values posed to a toddler in the form of trinkets: to choose between wealth (a coin), pleasure (a toy), and knowledge (a picture book). In the described incident, the toddler [[TakeAThirdOption ignores all three and runs to his parents instead.]]

* It is sometimes said that a way to test a forum or internet community is to join, post a deliberately flawed (though ''not'' to the extent of trolling) and controversial argument and judge whether or not to continue your membership from the responses -- if people are dismissive and unpleasant, rather than polite and reasonable, don't stay in. Now, even if you're not actually trolling, this is still a very manipulative thing to do and likely to get you ostracised if you're found out, especially if they've happened to "fail" the test. It's also quite likely (unfortunate perhaps, but still likely, given that you're dealing with human beings) that even the most patient and gracious forum members[[note]]who, after all, might have a bad day or inadvertently find their buttons pushed[[/note]] will [[SuffersNewbiesPoorly show less tolerance towards someone they don't know]] (see next paragraph for an example), so their reaction to a test like this may in fact not be a sufficiently good measure of their actual character. All in all, a quick test along these lines is probably not a good substitute for getting to know a forum or community (and letting them get to know you) over time.

** In "[[https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/humans-2 Humans 2]]", aliens demand 100,000 humans as mates to see if humanity will [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters sell out]] or [[HumansAreSpecial protect]] their own in the face of a perceived threat. The human leaders post the request on a fetish site and have more than enough [[BoldlyComing willing volunteers]] in ''minutes'' [[spoiler:including the Earth representative herself, in the votey.]] The aliens are at a loss since no one had even [[TakeAThirdOption taken a third option]] before.

** In "[[https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/humans-2 Humans 2]]", aliens demand 100,000 humans as mates to see if humanity will [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters sell out]] or [[HumansAreSpecial protect]] their own in the face of a perceived threat. The human leaders post the request on a fetish site and have more than enough [[BoldlyComing willing volunteers]] in ''minutes''. [[spoiler: Including the Earth representative herself, in the votey.]]

* At the climax of the play ''The Caucasian Chalk Circle'', a judge must decide whether a child should be returned to his biological mother or remain with the woman who had raised him as her own son. He settles it by [[TitleDrop drawing a circle with chalk]] and placing the child in the center of it. He tells the women to pull on the boy and that whichever of them can pull him out of the circle first will be considered the true mother. The birth mother pulls hard, the adoptive mother lets go rather than injure the child. Similar to the Judgment of Solomon story, the judge then reveals that it was a test, and that the adoptive mother has proven herself to be the better mother because she alone put the child's interests ahead of her own.

** Those stories have nothing on medieval judges according to research into trial by ordeal that is discussed by Freakonomics authors Steven Dubner and Stephen Levitt. Let's suppose you have some sort of tort - say, Rolf is accusing Wilhelm of using crooked scales last week at market - and you're a medieval judge who has fifty such cases before him. Good luck getting any evidence to resolve this case. So you send Wilhelm off to grab a red-hot iron bar before the congregation under the supervision of the clergy. We expect Wilhelm to get crispy, right? The research looked at 308 similar cases. In 100 cases, the defendant refused to undergo the ordeal, settling the matter nicely. In the remaining 208, only one in three ordeals resulted in injury to the defendant. This requires modest speculation, but it seems that the priests would tamper with the trial by ordeal. This accomplished several things:

* Michael Lewis discusses this in his autobiographical story of the Wall Street firm Salomon Brothers, LiarsPoker. First, the Brothers used all kinds of job interview stress tests to weed out people who were too "weak" for the kind of environment of 1980's investment banking. Even then, applicants weren't offered jobs. They had get the hint to come take the damn job and tell the interviewer to shove off if he didn't like it. After that, the trainees were thrust into a downright abusive environment full of these little trials. Anyone who wasn't cunning, charming, ruthless, aggressive, and manipulative enough to survive in that kind of environment had no business ripping off customers as badly as the Brothers did in the early eighties.

* A positive example: In the aftermath of the October 2014 Parliament Hill's shootings in Ottawa which were perpetrated by a Muslim extremist, three students [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9rFprD_Qf4 performed a social experiment]] on the street in which one of them would dress in a typical Muslim attire while another one would verbally harass him and blame him for the shootings, the video shows many Canadians standing up for and defending the Muslim guy from the other guy's bigotry, one of them at the end even ''[[TalkToTheFist punches him in the face]]'' when he has enough of his prejudice.

* When Creator/MattDamon and Creator/BenAffleck wrote the script for ''Film/GoodWillHunting'', they included a gay porn scene about 60 pages in. Harvey Weinstein, head of Miramax at that time, was the only executive who read enough of the script to notice. They gave him the movie [[note]]To explain the rationale, this was during the height of the spec script wars in Hollywood, where executives would often purchase speculative scripts without reading a single word of them--these scripts bought sight unseen are generally condemned to eternal development hell. Weinstein, by actually reading the script, demonstrated that he was the only executive who was invested in the script and was prepared to personally push the film to be made[[/note]].

* The Freakonomics authors discuss a beautiful example of this. They designed an algorithm that looked at terrorists' bank habits and gave it to the government of the United Kingdom. The algorithm was very effective at turning in suspected activity, with a very low chance to flag an innocent person and a very high chance to snag a terrorist (in statistics, a sensitivity and high specificity - see note). However, because the innocent so greatly outnumber the guilty, many innocent people still wound up on a list thanks to the algorithm (in statistics, there was a low positive predictive value - see note). So the authors and the government went to press to discuss their project and revealed one of the algorithm's most powerful predictors: terrorists are young enough with enough family to justify life insurance, but they don't buy it (as it wouldn't pay off if they died in an attack). Naturally, the press was outraged that this secret would be revealed. The foolish Americans were excoriated by the British media - "How dumb are those Yanks? And how dumb is our government?" Despite the guffawing, the now in-place algorithm was watching that list of suspects to see who suddenly ran out to buy insurance... [[note]]In statistics, sensitivity is the percentage of people who actually have the condition you are interested in that your test identifies correctly. Specificity is the percentage of people who your test correctly identifies as not having the condition of interest. As an exercise, let's say that the test is an algorithm designed to ID terrorists. It has 99.5% sensitivity and 99.5% specificity. Wow! Near perfect, right? Surely you can take the answer the algorithm gives you to the bank? Well, not so fast. Imagine you have a country like the UK, with a population of about 50 million. Your intelligence agencies, collaborating with your allies, estimate you have about 500 possible terrorists to find. With sensitivity 99.5% and specificity 99.5%, an algorithm would positively identify about 497 of the 500 terrorists. That's very helpful. Unfortunately, with a population of 50 million innocent people, your algorithm correctly weeds out "only" 99.5% of them. That means 0.005% of 50,000,000 people are incorrectly flagged as terrorists - or 250,000. Your positive predictive value - the odds a person the algorithm has flagged is actually a terrorist - is 497.5/250,497.5, or about 0.2%. For every 500 investigations you launch, you might investigate zero-three actual terrorists. Clearly an algorithm which ID'd terrorists with a sensitivity and specificity of 99.5% would not be nearly good enough for a situation like what the UK was facing. The UK's algorithm was apparently good enough to keep using, and even to keep refining with the nasty little secret test discussed above.[[/note]]
* An escape room puzzle in the United States, unnamed here to preserve the secret for people who might play it (if you're dying to know, it is [[spoiler: "Summerfield Place," a game in Toms River, New Jersey]]) features this in its ending. The game has players trying to solve the mystery of a family's inexplicable disappearance from their home. It's eventually revealed they were abducted by aliens, and a page of the mother's diary reveals that the beings are planning some kind of "experiment" with the human captives. To complete the experiment, the aliens need a chalice that has been hidden on their ship, which must be placed on one of two pedestals in the room when found. If the players choose to put the chalice on the left pedestal, the captured family will go free in exchange for the players themselves becoming prisoners. Putting it on the right pedestal releases the players, but sentences the family to death. If the group chooses to sacrifice themselves, an alien appears on a TV screen and congratulates them: the experiment wasn't scientific, but ''ethical'', and the extraterrestrials were trying to see if humans were empathic enough to give themselves up for total strangers. By choosing this option, the players are rewarded with their freedom.

-->-- From [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oL6HlzQZLo "You Know Better Than I"]], ''WesternAnimation/JosephKingOfDreams''

** There is no way in Heaven or Hell this passes an ethics review today. The 60's were a weird time.[[/note]]