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V_V comments on AI risk, executive summary - Less Wrong
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Comments (51)
..., Bush, oh wait!
Anyway, even if successful politicians tend to be smart (with some exceptions) it doesn't imply that being smart is the primary property that determines political success. How many smart wannabe politicians are unsuccessful?
It is worth recalling that Bush is estimated at 95th percentile when it comes to intelligence. Not the smartest man in the country by a long shot, but not so far down the totem pole either.
(It would be interesting to look at the percentiles politicians have in various dimensions- intelligence, height, beauty, verbal ability, wealth, etc.- and see how the distributions differ. This isn't the Olympics, where you're selecting on one specific trait, but an aggregation- and it may be that intelligence does play a large role in that aggregation.)
Found this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Presidential_IQ_hoax#IQ_estimations_by_academics
I suppose my perception of him was biased, and I'm not even American! Well, time to update...
I recall reading somewhere that somebody bothered to check and it turned out that height and physical looks correlate with political success. Which is not surpising considering the Halo effect.
Bush was very smart as a politician. He made rhetorical "mistakes", but never ones that would penalise him with his core constituency, for example. At getting himself elected, he was most excellent.
Isn't this a circular argument? Bush was smart because he was elected and only smart people get elected.
No, this was my assessment of his performance in debates and on the campaign trail.