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James_Miller comments on How big of an impact would cleaner political debates have on society? - Less Wrong
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We would need better informed and more intelligent voters for this to have much of an impact, and even then I doubt it would matter because high IQ, well informed voters already have a very good idea of what candidates will do when elected.
I would much rather have candidates take IQ and general knowledge tests than participate in honest debates. And in the near future what I would like to see is a DNA analysis of Presidential candidates to identify those with genes predisposing them to being sociopaths.
I think you focus to much on the individual candidate themselves. When trying to understand what a president will do after an election, look at the kind of people who he picks as his advisers.
If president takes mainstream economists as his economy advisers instead of a bunch of bankers, that says something that might be more important than a quiz on economic knowledge. A president isn't going to write his own economic policy anyway. It's the job of the president to pick the right expert to write the economic policy.
I continue not to understand this. A high-functioning sociopath is not the same thing as a sadist. The sociopath's objective is amassing power and aggrandizement, not making people suffer. There's no reason to assume the policies they support would be different from those of any other office-holder who wants to keep getting elected.
I'm assuming (perhaps incorrectly) that the chance of a President doing something very bad (such as make himself a dictator) would be higher if he was a sociopath.
Alternatively they might be more willing to shut up and multiply than a candidate who was swayed by their emotions, I want a leader who will happily kick a puppy to increase GDP by 1%.
FiftyTwo might be referring to studies showing that sociopaths are more likely to flip the switch in the trolley problem, or as put in the abstract:
We probably want politicians who will do things like push for iodized salt even though it kills older people in formerly-iodine-deficient areas.
I doubt an IQ test would be useful at all. One has to be quite intelligent to be a real candidate for presidency.
But it could make a big difference if a president is only two as opposed to, say, three standard deviations above the mean.
Sure you would. And if even a significant minority of the electorate agreed with you, you might see something like that happen.
Would you vote for the more sociopathic or the less? I'm pretty sure in a competition between societies the last thing you want in a leader is someone who constrains how your team competes, especially if the other team is not so constrained. And given the competitive nature of the world, there will be teams out there that are barely or unconstrained.
This sort of argument doesn't make sense to me. If I'm operating purely on self-interest, the rational thing to do is to not bother voting. If I'm motivated by altruism, why should I give preference to people who live in the same country as me over people who live in another country?