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This is a blog on why we believe and do what we do, why we pretend otherwise, how we might do better, and what our descendants might do, if they don't all die.
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Many U.S. voters, I suspect, give significant weight to their estimate of candidates’ intelligences when deciding who to vote for. We currently guess the level of candidates’ intelligences by evaluating their past actions and judging debate performances. But surely a better way would be to have all the candidates take IQ tests or perhaps some standardized test such as the SATs. True, most candidates took the SATs when they were much younger, but their intellectual capacity might have deteriorated since then. We could induce candidates to take IQ tests by giving federal election funds only to candidates who take them in the year prior to the first presidential primary election.
Induce Presidential Candidates to Take IQ Tests
I definitely think, as a passing nod to our present prez, a "No President Left Behind" screening test, checking for possible learning differences as well.
Let's leave aside questions of whether IQ tests are fair and whether the intelligence they measure is true intelligence. Is intelligence the ONLY characteristic that is important? When we label a politician "dumb", are we really talking about intelligence at all? Somebody with a 90 IQ cannot squeak through Harvard.
Assuming (for the moment) that IQ is important, is there a straight linear relationship between IQ and capability for this job, or is it a matter of a threshold? If one candidate's IQ is 140 and the other's 150, can we really say that those 10 IQ points give candidate #2 "more" of something that is better in quantity?