I mean, a really good start would be to pump as much money as possible into education and anti-poverty initiatives. Of course, the people who would oppose that are the dumbest people on the planet, so we’re kind of back to square 1.
Democracy but you gotta pass an IQ test threshold to vote/run?
I really wonder what’s the advantage of having stupid people voting/running besides virtue signaling you believe in equality (and having whole society pay for it, because your ego being massaged is more important than the common good).
edit: Not gonna individually reply. ALL of you seem to not know the difference between literacy, knowledge, wealth and spatial, abstract, cognitive, matrix reasoning, etc (not even having a PhD or being able to score high in traditional education has anything to do with it), and it seems like years of Hollywood got you all believing in existence of “evil genius” and such, but you really should read about gifted people, high IQ, and moral reasoning. It’s the failure of moral reasoning, i.e. being dumb as fuck, that creates conservatism.
And about the argument of “selfish smart person” seeking political power, that’s why you need smart voters, these thrive on the stupid people. Duh.
Now keep repeating in front of the mirror: “It’s for society’s own benefit that its most inept people should guide it”, and check how you look saying it. Fight for your right to be governed by the stupid!
ps: So far, no one managed to point the advantage of having people with low cognitive capability deciding society’s direction. You just said you don’t like the idea of it being decided by people with higher cognition.
Do yourself a favor and read the book ‘Starship Troopers.’
The author has a ball playing with political ideas. His take is that after WW3 [a limited nuclear was, not an all out holocaust] angry veterans returned home and saw anarchy. They united and cleaned up the baddies, then enshrined the idea that only veterans would be allowed to vote. Centuries later, anyone, no matter how physically weak can join the military and do a term of service and get full citizenship. It’s explicitly stated that most of the army is ‘make work,’ an extended boot camp with no actual fighting involved. You just have to earn your vote.
Another fun author is Ross Thomas. Washington reporter turned crime novelist, his books always have a political slant. ‘The Fools In Town Are On Our Side’ is about a political fixer whose plan to clean up a small city is to make it ‘so corrupt even the pimps will vote for reform’
I’m going to address only the last part: what is the value of having stupid people vote.
The value in allowing stupid people to vote is that your opposition can’t change the definition of “stupid” to include only you and your friends.
The law is a blunt instrument. If we enshrine in law the power for Congress to deprive people of their vote, we have agreed that depriving people “for the right reasons” is justification for doing so, and now the question simply becomes “can you convince people this is a good reason to deprive people of their ability to vote”.
We already have this with Felons. They are a miniscule percent of the population though, so it cannot be abused to win an election. It’s bad enough the precedent kind of already exists. Expanding it would be self destructive
EDIT: Because it’s been brought up, felons who cannot vote make up 1.1% of the US population.
We already have this with Felons. They are a miniscule percent of the population though
Convicted felons make up almost 8% of the voting age population. That is not a “minuscule” percent. It’s enough to have changed 2/3 of all presidential elections.
so it cannot be abused to win an election
It is certainly actively being used to suppress Democrat power in general, and Black voting power specifically.
Or is it just racism? Who doesn’t know that Black people are wildly overrepresented in the prison population? Or that Black people overwhelmingly vote Democrat? Those are really basic facts.
The 1.1% you quote, specifically only refers to the non Black population. It’s 5%-10% of the Black population. Which ends up being 2% of the total population of the country. Though it varies wildly from state to state. In some states it is as high as 6% of the total population.
Democracy but you gotta pass an IQ test threshold to vote/run?
Setting aside the inherent authoritarianism in excluding double digit percentages of the population from voting, the fact that it wouldn’t work (the negative correlation between intelligence and conservatism is real but small) and the effects of socioeconomic status and race on IQ, historically this is a very good way to disenfranchise minorities (look up literacy tests).
I really wonder what’s the advantage of having stupid people voting/running besides virtue signaling you believe in equality (and having whole society pay for it).
Democracy? Again this is a inherently authoritarian idea, but even if it wasn’t it would quickly be used for authoritarian ends.
First off because “IQ tests” don’t test for brainworms. There’s plenty of people who possess the mental capacity to pass a test like that, but who use that brainpower to come up with creative ways to defend wrong ideas rather than thinking critically. This is a large part of why IQ tests are meaningless, because even if they were capable of accurately assessing raw brainpower, they’re certainly not capable of assessing how you choose to use that brainpower.
If you make a test that does test for brainworms then you have the question of who or what body decides what’s a brainworm, and at that point you might as well just give that body dictatorial control. There’s no possible way to do that in a remotely objective fashion, the body could easily just say, “Capitalism is obviously right so anyone who doesn’t agree with it should be barred from voting.” Or, if it were me, I might decide that anyone who thinks that people having low IQs is the problem with our political systems is, themself, obviously unqualified.
Really, it’s not that different from the Catholic Church gathering together a bunch of highly educated scholars behind closed doors to debate what they thought made sense and then trying to enforce that on everyone. At least way back then, they had the justification that most of the population was fully illiterate.
I think the better way to do it is to have a test which doesn’t test for intelligence (although I agree that it basically does test for intelligence but not explicitly) but for understanding of the topic at hand.
It’s a simple test, it’s just one question, “what, if elected, would this person do?” You must be able to identify at least one actual policy of the politician you’re voting for. Trump told everyone who he was, and what he would do, and they still voted for him and then acted all surprised. Because they’re total exposure to his policies was whatever they read on Facebook which was actually not what he said.
The problem with intelligence requirements is two-fold.
First, intelligence is difficult to quantify. I often hear that IQ tests are unreliable or only test for certain areas of what could be called intelligence.
Second, such requirements would instantly become politicized and designed to prevent certain groups from being politically active. This exact thing happened after the US civil war when literacy tests were required and designed specifically to keep black people from being able to vote.
Additionally, I just don’t know that intelligence is the quality that matters most. A selfish smart person is just going to be good at benefitting themself politically at the expense of others. The focus should be on getting more people politically active who will use their political power to benefit others beyond themselves. Of course, that’s probably even more difficult to test for than intelligence.
If you’ve got a better way of doing things, we’re all ears.
I mean, a really good start would be to pump as much money as possible into education and anti-poverty initiatives. Of course, the people who would oppose that are the dumbest people on the planet, so we’re kind of back to square 1.
Democracy but you gotta pass an IQ test threshold to vote/run?
I really wonder what’s the advantage of having stupid people voting/running besides virtue signaling you believe in equality (and having whole society pay for it, because your ego being massaged is more important than the common good).
edit: Not gonna individually reply. ALL of you seem to not know the difference between literacy, knowledge, wealth and spatial, abstract, cognitive, matrix reasoning, etc (not even having a PhD or being able to score high in traditional education has anything to do with it), and it seems like years of Hollywood got you all believing in existence of “evil genius” and such, but you really should read about gifted people, high IQ, and moral reasoning. It’s the failure of moral reasoning, i.e. being dumb as fuck, that creates conservatism.
And about the argument of “selfish smart person” seeking political power, that’s why you need smart voters, these thrive on the stupid people. Duh.
Now keep repeating in front of the mirror: “It’s for society’s own benefit that its most inept people should guide it”, and check how you look saying it. Fight for your right to be governed by the stupid!
ps: So far, no one managed to point the advantage of having people with low cognitive capability deciding society’s direction. You just said you don’t like the idea of it being decided by people with higher cognition.
Do yourself a favor and read the book ‘Starship Troopers.’
The author has a ball playing with political ideas. His take is that after WW3 [a limited nuclear was, not an all out holocaust] angry veterans returned home and saw anarchy. They united and cleaned up the baddies, then enshrined the idea that only veterans would be allowed to vote. Centuries later, anyone, no matter how physically weak can join the military and do a term of service and get full citizenship. It’s explicitly stated that most of the army is ‘make work,’ an extended boot camp with no actual fighting involved. You just have to earn your vote.
Another fun author is Ross Thomas. Washington reporter turned crime novelist, his books always have a political slant. ‘The Fools In Town Are On Our Side’ is about a political fixer whose plan to clean up a small city is to make it ‘so corrupt even the pimps will vote for reform’
https://bookshop.org/beta-search?bkshp-astro=t&keywords=ross+thomas
IQ tests are too problematic. Let’s go old school and you need to be a 18+ male land owner to vote. /s
Fortunately, one can’t buy intelligence.
I’m going to address only the last part: what is the value of having stupid people vote.
The value in allowing stupid people to vote is that your opposition can’t change the definition of “stupid” to include only you and your friends.
The law is a blunt instrument. If we enshrine in law the power for Congress to deprive people of their vote, we have agreed that depriving people “for the right reasons” is justification for doing so, and now the question simply becomes “can you convince people this is a good reason to deprive people of their ability to vote”.
We already have this with Felons. They are a miniscule percent of the population though, so it cannot be abused to win an election. It’s bad enough the precedent kind of already exists. Expanding it would be self destructive
EDIT: Because it’s been brought up, felons who cannot vote make up 1.1% of the US population.
Convicted felons make up almost 8% of the voting age population. That is not a “minuscule” percent. It’s enough to have changed 2/3 of all presidential elections.
It is certainly actively being used to suppress Democrat power in general, and Black voting power specifically.
You are wildly wrong.
1.1% of the population cannot vote due to felony conviction.
And those people are distributed across the political spectrum just like any other demographic.
If you’re going to quote bullshit stats, at least post a link to some fringe blog to back it up sort of
You are too ignorant to be that smug.
Or is it just racism? Who doesn’t know that Black people are wildly overrepresented in the prison population? Or that Black people overwhelmingly vote Democrat? Those are really basic facts.
The 1.1% you quote, specifically only refers to the non Black population. It’s 5%-10% of the Black population. Which ends up being 2% of the total population of the country. Though it varies wildly from state to state. In some states it is as high as 6% of the total population.
That is by no means insignificant.
https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/locked-out-2024-four-million-denied-voting-rights-due-to-a-felony-conviction//
I got my numbers from the exact same source. Your own link contradicts you. 4 million is not 2% of the US pop. 4 million is 1.1% of the population.
I never said they were split 50/50. I said they were distributed.
Meaning it’s not “four million votes for Democrats”
And fuck you for assuming my ethics. I think the fact that felons can’t vote is absolutely immoral. Nobody should be deprived of their vote.
But I don’t lie about statistics.
Setting aside the inherent authoritarianism in excluding double digit percentages of the population from voting, the fact that it wouldn’t work (the negative correlation between intelligence and conservatism is real but small) and the effects of socioeconomic status and race on IQ, historically this is a very good way to disenfranchise minorities (look up literacy tests).
Democracy? Again this is a inherently authoritarian idea, but even if it wasn’t it would quickly be used for authoritarian ends.
First off because “IQ tests” don’t test for brainworms. There’s plenty of people who possess the mental capacity to pass a test like that, but who use that brainpower to come up with creative ways to defend wrong ideas rather than thinking critically. This is a large part of why IQ tests are meaningless, because even if they were capable of accurately assessing raw brainpower, they’re certainly not capable of assessing how you choose to use that brainpower.
If you make a test that does test for brainworms then you have the question of who or what body decides what’s a brainworm, and at that point you might as well just give that body dictatorial control. There’s no possible way to do that in a remotely objective fashion, the body could easily just say, “Capitalism is obviously right so anyone who doesn’t agree with it should be barred from voting.” Or, if it were me, I might decide that anyone who thinks that people having low IQs is the problem with our political systems is, themself, obviously unqualified.
Really, it’s not that different from the Catholic Church gathering together a bunch of highly educated scholars behind closed doors to debate what they thought made sense and then trying to enforce that on everyone. At least way back then, they had the justification that most of the population was fully illiterate.
I think the better way to do it is to have a test which doesn’t test for intelligence (although I agree that it basically does test for intelligence but not explicitly) but for understanding of the topic at hand.
It’s a simple test, it’s just one question, “what, if elected, would this person do?” You must be able to identify at least one actual policy of the politician you’re voting for. Trump told everyone who he was, and what he would do, and they still voted for him and then acted all surprised. Because they’re total exposure to his policies was whatever they read on Facebook which was actually not what he said.
The problem with intelligence requirements is two-fold.
First, intelligence is difficult to quantify. I often hear that IQ tests are unreliable or only test for certain areas of what could be called intelligence.
Second, such requirements would instantly become politicized and designed to prevent certain groups from being politically active. This exact thing happened after the US civil war when literacy tests were required and designed specifically to keep black people from being able to vote.
Additionally, I just don’t know that intelligence is the quality that matters most. A selfish smart person is just going to be good at benefitting themself politically at the expense of others. The focus should be on getting more people politically active who will use their political power to benefit others beyond themselves. Of course, that’s probably even more difficult to test for than intelligence.