Aaron_Luchko comments on False Laughter - Less Wrong

25 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 22 December 2007 06:03AM

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Comment author: Aaron_Luchko 23 December 2007 10:59:18PM 0 points [-]

Personally I suspect that the IQ of a political leader is somewhat independent of their decision making abilities. Judgement, in the sense of obtaining and assessing the opinions of experts, is much more valuable, and while there is some correlation with IQ the two are quite different qualities.

WRT to Bush, regardless of his actual IQ, he strongly portrays an image of a person who isn't particularly intelligent. Whether this is deliberate, or a side effect of an effort to portray other qualities ("trustworthiness" "down to earthness"), it is strongly conveyed in the media and I'm sure it's a quality he could change in his public persona if he really cared to. The fact that he continues to portray a "simple" image, which among other things carries with it an anti-intellectual and anti-science bias, means that jokes about his intelligence are quite valid.