math is harder to fake. failure is much more obvious. so, math can work as an okayish filter of intelligence and, more importantly, do it at scale BUT history/philology absolutely can play the same role. in fact, they did, until like 5 min ago just base it on greek/latin

i am perfectly serious. base it all on translation, discussion and analysis of the primary sources, written in ancient (= hard) languages, and you will see the absolutely atrocious rates of failure and dropout and you need a dropout for the social filter to work

basically, a great deal of classical education was about solving a logical problems, inherent to analysing the ancient texts with very complex grammar. reading latin texts in original does actually require a great deal of logical reasoning, that is absolutely impossible to fake

what is worse: when there's no objective filter, and no objective criteria for selecting someone out or in, it is all increasingly depending upon social consensus. basically passing does not depend upon being smart or competent, but upon being accepted by others (-> conformity)