I really don't understand why Nvidia doesn't just give every buyer a test to see their knowledge of either ML or gaming skill before allowing purchase of a GPU.

Either

(a) submit a history of gaming high scores with dates

(b) a Github repo with Tensorflow or Pytorch code that has commits from at least a year or two ago

(c) play a hard in-browser game to show your skill

What is it that I do not get about this joke?

That wasn't intended to be a joke. It might sound comical but it would solve the problem and would probably the first solution an 8-year-old would think of.

I don't think mentioning that an 8-year-old thinking of this idea actually helps your argument in this case

Which points out the the real answer to the question: Nvidia doesn't want it solved. Not just that they don't care, but they're making more money now — so they don't want it solved.

Not really, they're selling out and making the same amount of money because the crypto-nuts buying and hoarding them are still buying them at list price. And they are not making use of 90% of the features available on the cards.

Are gamer or ML engineer dollars worth more than those of the general public?

What about resale? Would you forbid that too? How would they enforce it?

Buying a 3090 is not a basic need.

Or they could just you know, increase the price until quantity demanded = quantity supplied

(c) could be cheated away, and (a) and (b)... I don't know, I guess if NVDA does this my best option is to sell my ML toy project repos to gamers :P

That is just a horrible suggestion... Doesn't matter what rules or what level of enforcement you take to try to control prices/allocate resources... people will find a loophole to get around your authoritarian restrictions, and rightly so.

You mean like the Verified Actual Gamer program Linus Tech Tips is doing?