I've noticed quite a few very 'non-technical' questions coming from hams
lately. What does it take to pass the technical part of the lisence test
these days? Way back when I was a ham, any novice could have answered
stuff
like this....

I'm not so sure. A friend of mine owned a company and he personally hired
the electrical engineers. He used to ask them to draw a simple circuit
using an op-amp to give a voltage gain of ten. He told me that very few of
the graduate EEs from respected colleges and universities could draw the
circuit or answer the question in any form.

You cannot easily measure human prowess, and perhaps cannot measure it at
all (with a simple test). Life is the only test that matters.