Originally Posted by gloopy

Nope. Just that pilots (mil plus many, many other common pathways) shouldn't have to do the silly ab-initio aptitude nonsense. It proves nothing.

I'm trying very hard to play devil's advocate and justify the silly test by philosophically carving out an extreme case for it.

Military pilots shouldn't have to do it. (Feel free to just quote that sentence for another out of context discussion point). Neither should regional pilots. Or (at least) most corporate pilots. Or Boeing/Airbus test pilots. Or most (if not all) other cases.

If...and it's a big if...there is any real predictive prowess in the silly after the fact "aptitude" tests, the only case I can see for them even in high theory is for extreme cases like low time, mostly 172, bare minimum time in something turbine/jet with much less structure, supervision, standardization or quality control than the vast majority of other career paths. And I'm not even advocating for it there; merely attempting to come up with some philosophical justification for them.

Perhaps these types of tests are of some value for pre-career applications, like determining who is suitable for a primary flight training scholarship or something like that. But for a room full of dark blue suits and red ties, ATP's with military training and/or Part 121 type ratings and thousand(s) of hours of proven flight time (and training, and recurrents, and OE, and line checks, and FAA observations, etc) using a theoretical test to measure pilot aptitude to do the very job they've been doing successfully and consistently is just silly.

Unless you're in the "interview/test prep" business. In that case it’s as rock solid as it gets.