IQ and voting

“I interviewed 100 people who plan on voting for Trump”

uhhh so where are those interviews? His twitter account has like 5 tweets and his bio says hes an artist and data scientist. i don’t get it.

This is a “standard” folk theory, but it probably misrepresents both “logic” and “emotion”.

To the extent “logic” has a clear meaning, it’s not the way the term is most commonly used (as a fancier synonym for “rational”) and the idea that emotion can be cleaved off from “rational” thought likely only applies in a few select cases (mathematical reasoning vs social cognition and, more generally, interpreting the effect of actions).

In fact, that definition would probably be favored by some as a description of autism (in some forms).

Not sure I get what you’re driving at here, could you give an example?

One thing I’m saying is that every time Mister Spock uses the term “logical” he’s either lying or speaking incoherently.

With regard to emotion, msot reasoning processes are likely tied in with “emotion”. Maybe not in pure math, but certainly in everyday reasoning or reasoning about law or public policy. Also, there is no consensus on what an “emotion” is in psychology or neuroscience. See https://www.amazon.com/What-Emotions-Really-Are-Psychological/dp/0226308715

In terms of emotions affecting reasoning, think "Can I do X with Y?: Can I make this jump, can I kill/outrun this predator? Assessments will differ depending on your “emotional” state. Which assessment is true? Once can tell which is correct at the extremes, but most situations are more probabilistic and the outcome doesn’t strongly support or refute the accuracy of the assessment.

The only ones who get the right to vote are those smart enough to submit a blank paper or tell the creator of this idea to go fuck themselves

You do realise it wasn’t a serious suggestion and was sort of lampooning my own position, right?

Well, sure, there might be a grey area, but I think we can agree that at the edges (e.g. extreme paranoia or pure maths, as in your examples), the lines are pretty clear.

My response wasn’t serious either.

Gotta work on my delivery.

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I was thinking about what a fair test would be, and spelling the candidate name that you wanted to vote for came to mind. Then I imagined some advertising that would try to teach Americans a mnemonic device for spelling the names and realized that Donald Trump can be spelled out similar to MIC-KEY-MOUSE; DON-ALD-TRUMP. He would be a lock to win and if your candidate had a hard to spell name they would be toast. There would be some big controversy over people getting name changes to make their name easier to spell. Yeah… it’s not been a very productive work day for me.

There are maybe cases where people who suffer from high functioning emotional dysregulation develop the ability to separate the two as a coping mechanism. But that would fall under some type of diagnosable condition like you mentioned, such as autism.

Emotion is tied to a great deal of cognitive processes, especially how we form memories.

Any metric like this will be immediately used to deny minorities or immigrants their rights.

Yeah this whole unemotional rational unbiased hero that academia likes to pretend to be made up of is a bad myth.

Haven’t read any posts itt but assume it about how you should be X smart to be allowed to vote, scored by IQ.

IQ is the wrong measure to vet voters. Voting should only be allowed by people with a minimum threshold EQ. Empathy matters in voting, not intellect.

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This more or less summarizes my posts so you can rest assured that you are right.

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Mensa types should be marked on a curve. Always thought that.

Never challenged Ken Jennings. Challenged people who thought my father went to hell because he thought Jesus was just a man. Jennings wasn’t in that category.

The logic error was very obviously a typo.

Never claimed to excel at graduate school math. I’m good at taking a situation that has some underlying math aspects to it and explaining why that is. Sometimes with out of the box thinking that has earned me compliments from award winning smart people. My actual math aptitude (not knowledge obviously) is above 99% but not competitive with top notch mathematicians.

As far as tests to qualify to vote, the only reason I keep bringing it up is because you people keep on bringing up how dumb those who don’t vote your way usually are. So I tweak you about it. Of course I realize that it is an impractical idea. But theoretically it would be nice to at least ferret out people who are voting x rather than y because they think x is taller when he is actually shorter. That could be done with something similar to a simple voter’s manual similar to a driver’s manual. And yes, I would go a bit further and require some smarts and a bit of knowledge. But I would stop way short of requiring high intelligence. So this idea that if only super smart people voted they would only worry about themselves, which may or may not be true, isn’t relevant. I just don’t think that the wish to avoid kings requires that we should bend over backwards to be proud that we make no effort to require that a voter is mildly competent. I realize that such an argument was once used against black people but this is a different time. In fact if a test was designed to mirror what was easily learned from a written or audio manual it is likely that a higher percentage of blacks than whites would pass as they would feel more incentive to do so. And exceptions could be made in special circumstances. Heck if you were still worried about discrimination make all people of color exempt from the test.

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I forgot to include the point that nowadays uninformed voters can not be expected to vote approximately 50-50 as they were in the past because the unscrupulous professional decision influencers that these voters are most likely to be influenced by are probably working for the lessor candidate.

As for the idea that empathy is really the only quality needed to be a good voter, the problem is that without some knowledge behind it, empathy can sometimes lead to a choice that in the long run the empathetic person would eventually admit is worse.

is it really, though? Voter disenfranchisement is running rampant in states with high percentages of minorities, and the techniques used disproportionately affect those of color. I don’t think this is a coincidence, and I believe any competency test could and would be weaponized against groups that are deemed “others.”

I don’t really see how the conclusion here follows from the premise. Perhaps you could elaborate more?

Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose of your policy? E.g., removing incompetent people from the voting process. Surely there is a subset of minorities that are incompetent and you’d be excluding those from being tested.

Swearing allegiance to the Crown should be enough to be allowed to vote if you ask me.

Modern liberalism is influenced by the Enlightenment concept of the mind as tabula rasa. Those on the left will put more stock in the idea of providing greater education and regulating the media to provide purer inputs into the minds of the masses over having some sort of screen for voter competence.

There is also a desire on the left to maximize fairness and equality instead of trying to maximize a utilitarian outcome. The idea of less-than-universal suffrage is morally repugnant to people with this instinct. (Some may accept permanently disenfranchising felons convicted of election-related crimes, such as the pseudo-intellectual Dinesh D’Souza.)

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What if I told you we already tried requiring intelligence tests for voters in America and it turned out horribly?

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