[extropy-chat] morons in office

[Brian Lee]

Were they using a standard deviation of 10 or 15? For a standard deviation 
of 10, Gore is near genius with a 135.

I also think that IQ does not directly correlate to leadership ability. I've 
some super geniuses who were useless and some average (110) who could run an 
organization quite well.

The POTUS isn't omnipotent but is the most powerful elected official in the 
US.

BAL

>From: Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com>
>To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
>Subject: [extropy-chat] morons in office
>Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 12:58:39 -0500
>
>At 07:32 PM 10/27/2004 +0200, Patrick.Wilken wrote:
>
>>Perhaps Samantha has already sat down and carefully weighed up all the 
>>evidence and decided that Bush is a moron.
>
>Or perhaps that he holds very silly and dangerous ideas, and is under the 
>sway of smarter people with very silly and dangerous ideas who are 
>ideologically constrained from modifying those ideas under empirical test.
>
>I was surprised by the recent NYT report on the comparative IQs of Bush and 
>Kerry (and startled that the NYT used as its source the racist site 
>Vdare.com, but that's another story). Using SATs and the like, it was 
>decided that Bush's IQ is c. 125 (SAT 1206), and Kerry's c. 120. Gore's 
>allegedly is around 135. This is a bit disturbing; I wouldn't imagine many 
>of the frequent posters on this list would clock in under 135, and many 
>would be one or two sigma higher, with several higher still. But as the old 
>British saw had it, pollies (and a fortiori the general population, I 
>should think) want clever people `on tap, not on top'.
>
>As a visitor to the States, I still don't really understand how much raw 
>power an elected POTUS has. Finger on the nuke button, right? Power to 
>declare war or go to war without declaring it or something? Unless he's 
>genuinely a compliant puppet under the control of a clever cabal, or truly 
>smart himself, this seems a recipe for doom.
>
>Damien Broderick
>
>
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