Slashdot Mirror
A Remarkable Number of People Think 'The Martian' Is Based On a True Story (buzzfeed.com)
MarkWhittington writes: The Martian is a smash hit movie that made $100 million worldwide during its first weekend. The science and engineering depicted was, with certain notable exceptions, near perfect. The cinematography and special effects were so well done that one could almost imagine that Ridley Scott sent Matt Damon and a film crew to Mars to shoot the movie. In fact, perhaps the film was a little too good. Buzzfeed took a stroll through social media and discovered that many people think that The Martian is based on a true story.
Nothing new about it.
What next, funniest moments of astronauts brought to you by scoopwhoop?
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
If you think stories like this aren't important, just remember the fact that each of those people has the same number of votes in our glorious democracy as you do. There is no such thing as 'too much' when it comes to shaming stupidity in public.
A post on Slashdot related to the fact that many people lack basic education and/or skills to basic reasoning skills? /. now?
And over the top linking/citing a buzzfeed post? Are they now directly feeding their facebook wall on
I wonder what's worse: A few people believing a film is based on a true story when it obviously can't or the fact that this is posted here. I will ponder on that.
Corporations are inherently evil.
The government actually cares about them.
Communism/socialism are viable systems of government.
There is a diversity problem in tech.
Everyone needs a stem education.
Open source projects need to be nicer and have codes of conduct.
I am sure they will all have a good laugh at the stupid people who believe "The Martian" is real
Really what the poll was asking was "How many of you people are idiots". I'll give a pass to the elderly and mentally infirm who modern polling disproportionally represents but these numbers are too high to not represent a good number of complete idiots.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
The same thing happened when Independence Day came out. Some people have no concept of reality. Nothing to see here, move along.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ID4%20bas...
who think the moon landings were a hoax.
After Apollo 13 (based on a true story) and Interstellar (based on a true story) it's no surprise that people would think that The Martian is continuing the trend. Hell, it even stars Matt Damon, from the previous one. How are they supposed to keep it straight?! /satire
True in general, but there definitely IS such a thing as too much if shaming a specific individual. While that's not the case here, it can't be stressed enough. This public shaming crap has gone WAY WAY to far, to the point that you just have to hope your name never comes up among any significant number of Internet users because they'll either make you a king (e.g. clock boy) or essentially destroy your life and future for some relatively petty and insignificant perceived "wrong," the likes of which we've almost all said or done at some point in our lives.
(see also the book "So You've Been Publicly Shamed" Scary stuff.)
It's obviously fiction, just like Tom Hanks in Apollo 13 (everyone knows you can't put a square peg in a round hole), Neal Armstrong in Apollo XI Landing (dead giveaway, where did they "go"? There are no bathrooms no the moon!), and Steve Coogan in Around the World in 80 Days (the lizard people grab anyone who gets too close to the edge).
I stole this Sig
A remarkable number of people believe homeopathy works. A remarkable number of people believe in gods, devils, prophets and an afterlife. A remarkable number of people believe scrying, remote sensing, dousing or fortune telling is real. A remarkable number of people firmly believe various economic, political or social "truths" in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
A remarkable number of people are intelligent, well-adjusted and successful in their lives, and still manage to hold one or several of the beliefs above without ever experiencing any sense of disconnect. Those remarkable people almost certainly includes myself, and most likely you as well.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Quite a few people know that it was shot in Wadi Rum in Jordan and is based on a novel. Them poor souls . Ignorance is bliss especially when watching a movie.
This is nothing more than a disconnect between real science and the masses. much the same as the disconnect between the 1% and the 99%. Education is the key here.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I partially take that back, after going to the extra effort of clicking BOTH links, I see it does name some names. IMHO, it shouldn't. Everyone has their moments, including you and me. If you assert that you've never posted (let alone simply said or done in a relatively private setting) something incredibly stupid at least once or twice, you are LYING.
This is why I'm seriously advocating that the weight of one's vote should be proportional to his knowledge + intelligent. People should be asked to take a test and the weight of their individual votes should depend on how well they do on the test.
Don't fornicate. Seriously, just don't do it.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
> In fact, he presents evidence that we might actually be worse.
Oh, I think there's ample evidence that we might be much worse.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
This is why I'm seriously advocating that the weight of one's vote should be proportional to his knowledge + intelligent.
Does that mean that my vote will count more than yours, because I know the difference between "intelligent" and "intelligence?"
Be careful how you tell other people to measure things.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
There was a lot that was Apollo 13-ish, but what stood out about the story for me is that Watney does a lot more for himself, with his own wits, and with much less support from the brains at home. They even made a point of it about midway through the movie. (You'll know the spot.) The Martian was more Robinson Caruso-ish, if you can imagine Robinson Caruso's island as being extremely hostile towards life as we know it.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Some even think this kind of mental masturbation is actually the real slashdot.
Do you know any adblocker that hides "slashdot" hollywood blatant adverts posing as mental masturbation?
I mean, the Romulans were based on the West's view of the nations behind the Iron Curtain.
Klingons were originally that.
Romulans were based on some historical imperial culture with a senate, centurions, an emperor..The name of the culture eludes me somehow, it's on the tip of my tongue. Mother wolf ?, The Remus Empire ? Empire of the 7 hills ? The overly complicated empire ? Oh well you get the idea.
The Klingons were originally an expansionist fascist state and later became some sort of generic warlike vikings in space.
Maaaaahhhht Daayyhhhhmon, our new testiment scientologist come home!
This is why I'm seriously advocating that the weight of one's vote should be proportional to his knowledge + intelligent. People should be asked to take a test and the weight of their individual votes should depend on how well they do on the test.
The problem with proposals like this is that whoever is in power will design the "test" to disenfranchise other people. In case you're unaware, poll "tests" were common in the U.S. in the late 1800s and early 1900s: they were widely used to prevent black people from voting in many areas. The "tests" claimed to be about literacy or whatever, but they were made arbitrarily difficult so that blacks couldn't pass. In fact, whites couldn't pass either, but they were literally "grandfathered" in (i.e., if their grandfather who was eligible to vote, they didn't have to take the test... blacks mostly had slaves for grandfathers, so they wouldn't have been eligible to vote -- this is where the phrase comes from).
Anyhow, if we were to reinstate some sort of poll test, it may not be used to disenfranchise according to racial lines, but you can be sure that whoever is in power will find a way to stop others from voting or to make their vote count less. It's probably impossible to design a system that couldn't be manipulated once you start disenfranchising people. Who gets to define the relevant "knowledge"? How do we measure " intelligence"?
The book is a good read 3/4 of it. The end quickly degenerates badly. The book as it whole comes as pretentious, kinda of an IT book written by project managers. For nerds, summing it up, it is the equivalent in literature of the ITIL books.
I've often wondered how much our media actually sways public perception.
To take an example, consider the TV series "West Wing", which ran from from 2000 - 2007. This was during most of the Bush administration.
In the series, the president (played by Martin Sheen) was powerful, smart, compassionate, and likeable. The character was a Nobel Prize laureate in economics(*), and pretty-much the pinnacle of personal achievement.
For comparison, note that Dennis Kucinich brought 35 articles of impeachment against Bush at the end of his term, including taking the country into war for no just cause.
(I don't bring this up to cast aspersions on the man or party, only to show that there was widespread disapproval with some justification at the time.)
I can't help but wonder if peoples' perception of the president's actions were somehow biased because of the "West Wing" series. It was highly popular, and the character of the president (in the series) was one who garnered a lot of respect.
Would the public have been less tolerant of Bush without "West Wing" running concurrently with his term?
I wonder what other effects that TV and entertainment might have on the population. Does everyone's view of police stem from CSI, Hawaii 5-0, and Hill Street Blues? We see all the time how police risk their lives to protect the innocent, for example... on TV. Do people use their TV viewing as the basis for their assessment of reality?
(*) And in one particular moment during the show, someone asked the president about NAFTA and whether opening up free trade would hurt America, and Martin Sheen (as the president) stated something like "every economist thinks it would be to our benefit".
Seriously, I feel bad for the guy, but there are seven stranded castaways with no light, no motor car, not a single luxury, RIGHT HERE ON EARTH! Can't somebody help those poor people? (dibs on Mary Ann).
I wonder how many people believe both that "The Martian" is based on a true story and that the Apollo moon landings were fake. I bet there are a few, some people seem to be serial conspiracy theory/hoax believers.
Robinson Caruso? The famous singing castaway?
He died of Random Pavarotting Syndrome, don't you know, you insensitive clod.
this is the one they faked, we haven't really been to mars yet.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I think most would agree as long as you don't try to get them to admit a specific example of being stupid.
I attended a screening of Birth of a Nation at school, which had a panel discussion after the film. One of the questions fielded from the audience was, "Were those actual Civil War battle scenes?". I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing for the rest of the panel.
That girl is looking just a bit smarter now. At least they had still photography during the Civil War, so the possibility of some early, expensive, motion picture system is at least plausible. Not knowing that we've never been anywhere near Mars with humans? I think that's a whole new level.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
If you're more intelligent than I am, then I wouldn't mind if your vote counts more than mine.
Don't fornicate. Seriously, just don't do it.
Am I the only one here who, whenever they encounter this pre-teen version of profanity as in the above post, read it literally, as if the person was talking about bundles of wood, literal hats for asses, and donkeys going crazy next to bull shit?
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
I will. I admit it was stupid to read this far down this chain of posts.
--
If the average IQ is 100 (and it is, by definition), that means for everyone with a 160 IQ, there has to be someone with a 40 IQ, or two people with 70 IQ, or four with 80...
There is an incredible number of stupid, uneducated idiots in this world, right around you. You just don't notice them because our social circles tend to be made up largely so others in it are similar to ourselves.
As the saying goes: Being stupid is a lot like being dead. It's more difficult for people around you than for yourself.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
IQ is certainly not a perfect metric but if we use it only in a simple way it could be used. Less than 100 IQ, can't vote.
Maybe add a simple quiz that tests for knowledge of the Constitution. If you support public officials voting based on religious beliefs you are out. If you don't believe civilians should be able to own any weapon our military is allowed to use, your out. If you believe congress can fund war without declaring it, you are out. If you believe congress or the president can disregard the constitution to fight terrorism, drugs, or "the general welfare" you are out. If you believe courts can't overturn congress your out. If you believe courts can grant themselves the authority to overturn a jury or limit juries to determination of fact without the ability to judge the merit of application of the law on a case by case basis, you are out. And last but not least if you don't understand that individuals is the only group that includes every citizen and therefore any systematic disregard of individual rights by definition cannot be in the interest of "the community", you are out. E.X. The automatic reduction in rights when accused of a wrongdoing by the state in traffic court vs other charges. Don't know that corporations are not people and that everyone with an interest in them is already a person and therefore already has the ability to represent their own rights and interests, you are out.
Note, that is not how things currently work in our process but it is how it's supposed to work and would work if swaying popular opinion couldn't break things.
Anyhow, if we were to reinstate some sort of poll test, it may not be used to disenfranchise according to racial lines, but you can be sure that whoever is in power will find a way to stop others from voting or to make their vote count less. It's probably impossible to design a system that couldn't be manipulated once you start disenfranchising people. Who gets to define the relevant "knowledge"? How do we measure " intelligence"?
And you must realize that political parties immediately get incentive to do this if the voters most likely to be excluded lean a particular way politically. Say party A is strong with the low income families and party B is more of a middle class party and that statistically if you make the test harder more low income families will drop out because they're already working their ass off making ends meet. Now one party has obvious incentive to set the bar higher, the other to set the bar lower. Here in Norway there's a campaign to lower the voting age from 18 to 16, you can compare the youth vote scores with the parties supporting it and it's obvious why. Voters who've mostly never had a real job, never paid taxes and never had to balance a budget because they live at home with mom and dad with an allowance tend to vote quite differently than people who've had to support themselves.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
ignorance and stupidity are alive and well
I think The Big Lebowski too.
If you don't believe civilians should be able to own any weapon our military is allowed to use, your out.
If you don't know the difference between "your" and "you're" - you're out.
Could there have been a slight chance that she really meant if the scenes where authentic but didn't phrase the question correctly? Just hoping that people are not that stupid...
"Anyone who knows anything about space exploration knows that no human has gone past the moon. If people actually think a movie was filmed on Mars, they're morons."
I bet lots of them are the same people that do not believe the moon-landing was real.
The Martian was more Robinson Caruso-ish, if you can imagine Robinson Caruso's island as being extremely hostile towards life as we know it.
FWIW. There is a 1960s movie "Robinson Crusoe on Mars"
"IQ is certainly not a perfect metric but if we use it only in a simple way it could be used. Less than 100 IQ, can't vote."
As you don't seem to realize that this would hit _half_ the voters, I'm glad you won't be able to vote with that system.
A remarkable number of people believe homeopathy works. A remarkable number of people believe in gods, devils, prophets and an afterlife. A remarkable number of people believe scrying, remote sensing, dousing or fortune telling is real. A remarkable number of people firmly believe various economic, political or social "truths" in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
A remarkable number of people are intelligent, well-adjusted and successful in their lives, and still manage to hold one or several of the beliefs above without ever experiencing any sense of disconnect. Those remarkable people almost certainly includes myself, and most likely you as well.
Why don't we turn the "NASA faked the moon landings" conspiracy theory on it's head and convince the tinfoil-hat community NASA has secretly sent astronauts to Mars? I'm challenging all Slashdot users to discreetly spread rumours and manifestly fake and/or weak evidence that NASA has secretly gone to Mars and that this film is a reenactment documentary based on revelations by a mysterious unidentified NASA whistle blower thus fanning the flames of this simple misconception among a few uninformed people into a full blown conspiracy theory. If people believe NASA faked the moon landings even though you can see the astronaut's footprints on the moon to this day they'll swallow this story hook line and sinker since the believability of a conspiracy theory seems to be inversely proportional to the amount of evidence proving that it is a big steaming pile of bullshit.
There's a Castle Frankenstein in Hesse, Germany. If you read the online reviews for it (e.g. TripAdvisor) , it's amazing how many people seem to think that it's the historical residence of a certain Dr. Frankenstein...
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
I'm just glad you're main link goes here rather than buzzfeed.
Or, rather it's based on a story that's based on a true story.
Robinson Crusoe.
Damn, but they knew how to do spoilers back then, the original was published as:
The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
What happens when the stupid majority decides to invert your weighting of votes?
Honestly, I don't think it need be that complex. To understand issues, a voter must be able to grasp main points--many simple tests exist for this--and have a lower-elementary school math mastery: .10, .20, .25, .33, .50, .75.
establish whether the potential voter grasps larger versus smaller, has the ability to read "big" numbers, can derive general truths/proportions from from a simple pie chart, and can demonstrate an understanding of at least decimal values such as
Wouldn't that cover the essentials?
If the average IQ is 100 (and it is, by definition), that means for everyone with a 160 IQ, there has to be someone with a 40 IQ, or two people with 70 IQ, or four with 80...
There is an incredible number of stupid, uneducated idiots in this world, right around you.
IQ curve is a normalized bell curve. Equal on both sides, reaching into infinity on both sides.
BUT... There is neither infinite IQ nor 0 intelligence. Neither of those would be a living human being.
So right there, the curve itself is a broken representation. If taken in such a simplistic "or two people with 70 IQ, or four with 80" way.
Back in reality, those numbers actually mean something.
Anything in the 71 - 84 range is considered "Borderline Intellectual Functioning".
These are people with difficulties learning to read, write, do math or solve complex problems.
People who don't get "When is a door not a door? When it's ajar." jokes.
70 and below is Mental Retardation.
At 50 - 70 range - reading, writing and basic math is an accomplishment, while communicating is a difficulty.
Do you REALLY see many people like that around you? Cause those are only about 2% of population.
And nobody is including their opinions in pols as they are incapable of understanding such complex questions or formulating meaningful answers.
Meanwhile, that curve represents ALL HUMANS. Including kids and babies. And senile old people.
So, a lot of those low IQ numbers are actually AGAIN people unable to understand or answer such questions.
At the same time, that right part of the curve are actual people too. 100+ IQ, and going up to 160 and more...
Major difference being that THOSE people really ARE intellectually functional.
Some of them MAY lack education or they may have prejudices and biases preventing them in reaching accurate or logical conclusions - but IQ is there.
Present and accountable.
And then there is a part where those IQ numbers actually have a +/- error built in due to the nature of the test.
And when the test favors those with higher IQ, who can breeze through the test faster, scoring more points, making less errors... guess which group gets penalized the most from pondering about the solution a bit longer?
Hint: It ain't the IQ 85 and below crowd. They hit their ceiling early on. Never get to the point where seconds mean additional IQ points.
Again, curve is a broken representation.
In reality, it is a lot flatter in the middle and steeper on the left side.
Cause while those standard deviations are rather arbitrary (representation of a measuring tool - not the measured value) - there IS a real cut off line below which it is obvious that people have problems with intellectual functioning.
Your view is distorted by the fact that you are probably standing a bit low (indicating higher IQ) on the right side of the curve, looking up-curve at all those people below you and going "OMG! There are SO MANY of them."
So you don't see that in actuality, most of those people are actually on your side of the curve. Closer to you, than to those below IQ 85.
Education on the other hand... that's a different matter.
And so are biases and prejudices and simply faulty information and reasoning.
No one is immune to that. Just remember Linus Pauling, his double Nobels and his ideas about vitamin C.
Or any person still believing in the dude in the sky, working in mysterious ways while murdering babies in Africa.
Those people can't be all below average. There are simply too many of them for that. And the curve is broken.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Stupidity isn't the same as ignorance.
"Remember, half the people you meet are dumber than the average."
While not strictly true, because of median/mean ambiguity, the word "dumber", and that you probably don't meet statistically random samples of people, it's still useful because it makes people think "waitaminute, that can't be right" - and then they have to realize that it's probably not, but IQ is also not some objective measure of dumb/smart. It's probably not really a good measure of anything but the ability to do well on IQ tests.
An IQ score only has meaning in relative terms of the population on which it is measured, as "IQ 100" is by definition just the median test score of a certain population. Each standard deviation up or down is +15/-15 points, so 85-115 should contain about 68.2% of the population, with only 2.1% or so being lower than 70 and another 2.1% being higher than 130.
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
So you're in favour of making it impossible to modify the constitution -- anyone who would modify it is unable to vote.
But of course the constitution itself includes the mechanisms for amendment, which you want to make impossible to use, so you would not have the right to vote under this system.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
No.
The Constitution doesn't give the Supreme Court the power to overrule Congress, Marbury v. Madison does. Will John Marshall be allowed to vote?
The problem then becomes the creation of the test itself, and how and by whom it is scored.
Remember the rich will demand special testing for themselves, in special rooms, so that if nessecary bribes can be passed around.
You have to remove the ability to bribe the graders. Then it becomes how has the answers. do you test intelligence or do you test knowledge. memorization is easy to cheat against intelligence is not but requires graders who now the subject.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
So under your plan, now all the evil geniuses get to rule the world.
It's hard to say whether this is better or worse than the current plan to allow evil idiots to run the world...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
An accident during a space mission, and only science, quick thinking and creative ad-hoc engineering saves the crew.
Except it's an asymmetrical distribution, not normal, i.e. Marilyn vos Savant (with an IQ of 186) does not have a counterpart with an IQ 14, because that doesn't result in a functional human (IQs bottom out somewhere around 48).
So they found a bunch of tweets where someone said they heard someone say that their third cousin's step-brother's ex-wife's kid from a former marriage asked the guy at the Quik-E-Mart if The Martian was a true story...
Yeah, that's a reliable polling method.
A remarkable number of people thought Obama would be a good president... twice...
Those same people are now swooning over Clinton..
I know... you can't fix stupid... but maybe it's time to let Darwinism work it's magic.
Anyone who knows anything about space exploration knows that no human has gone past the moon.
Not even Major Tom?
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Being intelligent doesn't mean you aren't an idiot. Look at the Hitchens brothers. Polar opposites, totally different ideas about how to improve the world, both pretty intelligent guys by all accounts.
This reminds me of that episode of the Simpsons where they put the smart people in charge.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
IQ is certainly not a perfect metric but if we use it only in a simple way it could be used. Less than 100 IQ, can't vote.
Testing for intelligence would be really stupid. You can be really smart and the worst kind of racist, intolerant bigot, or simply a total self-centered jerk who will not care that his decisions disfranchise everyone as long as he benefits. So if you want to introduce some sort of test it would be much better to test for empathy: someone who cannot put himself in other people's shoes should not be trusted to make decisions for others.
Oh, by the way, you failed the empathy test!
Hm, while you are right in some sense ;D thechnically humans where beyond the moon.
Because they orbited the moon relatively close to the euqator ^-^ hi hi hi!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Less than 100 IQ, can't vote.
50% of the population can't vote based on a test that you can easily improve at simply by practising.
If you support public officials voting based on religious beliefs you are out
Some people claim atheism is a religion. Also, not all religions are the same, e.g. Buddhists are not nearly as deluded as Christians, who are not nearly as deluded as Muslims, in general terms.
If you don't believe civilians should be able to own any weapon our military is allowed to use, your out.
If you believe any citizen should be able to own a nuclear ICBM or place land mines in the front yard, you're out.
And last but not least if you don't understand that individuals is the only group that includes every citizen and therefore any systematic disregard of individual rights by definition cannot be in the interest of "the community", you are out.
If you think rights are not a balance between opposing forces, and that include both freedom from interference and freedom to prosper and be happy, you are out.
I don't think this is going to work.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It does not help. Here in Brazil we have thousands of white people and from "good families" that would pass the test but still would be unable to make a good choice because they have been brainwashed since childhood (communists are the devil! Free market is the solution for all problems from the world! etc). And those who still have free will deliberately choose options that only favor them at the expense of all others, in a feudal model of society that has not changed since the Middle Ages (many here still act like if they are slave owners and others are obliged to obey them). Only a handful of people around here still have their own will and believes that its decisions should seek the good of everyone.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Honestly, I don't think it need be that complex. To understand issues, a voter must be able to grasp main points--many simple tests exist for this--and have a lower-elementary school math mastery: establish whether the potential voter grasps larger versus smaller, has the ability to read "big" numbers, can derive general truths/proportions from from a simple pie chart, and can demonstrate an understanding of at least decimal values such as .10, .20, .25, .33, .50, .75.
Why do you want to test for math when it is such a minor aspect of picking a candidate? Do you need math to know that you don't want to vote for a candidate who said people with your sexual orientations should be sent to reeducation camps? Does elementary math help you decide whether you agree with a candidate's stance on legalizing pot (answer: no, even if you were to read the scientific papers on the subject, elementary math would fall far short for verifying them). Where does math help you when candidates just cherry-pick the statistics that support their point? It does not.
What you really need is fact cross-checking skills and critical thinking. It would also be best if everyone kept the common good in mind when deciding whom to vote for, and had a modicum of empathy (so they ask themselves what a given proposal will do to the people it targets). But good luck testing for that.
IQ is certainly not a perfect metric but if we use it only in a simple way it could be used. Less than 100 IQ, can't vote.
You seem to be in the US, so that will disenfranchise 50% of whites, and 85% of blacks, according to current data.
Oh yes, I can see that one going down real well. Who could possibly object?
Rather than banning people from voting, how about issuing bonus votes to people who voluntarily sit a short test?
You could start at municipal level, and see how it goes.
That movie was made in 1915, about 50 years after the Civil War ended. Her question wasn't really that absurd - she was just off a few decades on when the first movies were made.
Anyhow, if we were to reinstate some sort of poll test, it may not be used to disenfranchise according to racial lines, but you can be sure that whoever is in power will find a way to stop others from voting or to make their vote count less. It's probably impossible to design a system that couldn't be manipulated once you start disenfranchising people. Who gets to define the relevant "knowledge"? How do we measure " intelligence"?
I've always thought that we should have a test to vote for national/federal elections (president, congress, etc), but for something different. A candidate should have to register specific points of their platform to the FEC. Then while they are campaigning they stress these points. When a person goes in to vote they have to identify a certain number of these platform points before they are allowed to vote for a candidate. This would go a long way to ensuring that we have a more informed voter base and will also reinforce what that politician campaigned on and hopefully allow the voters to remember why they voted for them and realize when campaign promises have been broken.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
False.
The power of the federal judiciary to review the constitutionality of a statute, or to review an administrative regulation for consistency with either a statute, a treaty, or the Constitution itself, is an implied power derived from Section 2:
The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;—to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;—to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;—to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;—to Controversies between two or more States;—between a State and Citizens of another State;—between Citizens of different States;—between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.
In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.
Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.
More intelligent by what measure? If you have a higher iq than me, it does not mean you'll come to a better conclusion or make a better decision. I am sure there are some areas you are more knowledgeable than I but other areas I will know more.
How is what you are proposing any different than slaves only being counted as 3/5ths of a person?
What would be nice is our representatives only being on committees where they could prove they were competant on the subject matter.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Maybe add a simple quiz that tests for knowledge of the Constitution... (snip)
Can you make this mandatory for the people running for office first?
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
This is like the reverse of what we had with Apollo 13. I watched it with a friend who was *astonished* to learn it was based on a true story. And yet, even I -- somewhat of a space nut myself -- had barely heard of the Apollo 13 mission when I was growing up. Nobody talked about it. There were no documentaries about it. I was vaguely aware that there was one Apollo mission that had some kind of malfunction and was aborted, but that was all. I had no idea there was any sort of *drama* associated with that.
When the Apollo 13 mission happened, I presume it was all over the news. I don't remember because I was four years old. Maybe all these people who think The Martian was real are just assuming it was before their time???
Sadly, you don't know the difference between a simple mistake and actual ignorance.
Be careful how you tell other people you are superior to them.
Wow, you sure know how to duck to make certain the point sails over your head, don't you?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
What would be nice is our representatives only being on committees where they could prove they were competant on the subject matter.
Prove to who, by what standards? Maybe a legislator should be good at understanding the constitution, the wheels of policy making, the nature of government finance, etc., and then do what committees do ... bring in experts to testify so they'll hear from experts who specialize in the subject matter. An elected representative is supposed to be an expert at being a legislator. Expecting them to be fully formed IT experts or doctorate level virologists or masters of manufacturing processes is completely missing the point.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Less than 100 IQ is supposed to be 1/2 the population, but it rarely works out that way.
My psychology professor administered a "demonstration" IQ test in class, possible scores ranged from 100 if you got everything wrong to 130 if you got everything right. Actual IQ tests aren't this bad, but they are skewed in this direction.
If you did disenfranchise 1/2 the population, it would likely be the 1/2 of the population that's easily manipulated and motivated to revolt... I like to avoid revolting political systems when I can.
I was recently having a casual conversation with a co-worker in my shop. I mentioned something in the news about Fidel Castro and he immediately responded with "who is he?" I thought at first that he was kidding but sadly he was not. A 28 year old who had never once heard that name before. He's never missed an episode of ESPN sportcenter but never watched the nightly news. Thankfully when I asked him if he votes he responded in the negative.
If you're more intelligent than I am, then I wouldn't mind if your vote counts more than mine.
Intelligence and Wisdom do not always occur together in the same person.
Intelligence and Wisdom do not always occur together in the same person.
I strongly agree with the above statement. An intelligent fool in public office will likely be more damaging then a wise person of average intelligence. Tim S.
Anyhow, if we were to reinstate some sort of poll test, it may not be used to disenfranchise according to racial lines, but you can be sure that whoever is in power will find a way to stop others from voting or to make their vote count less. It's probably impossible to design a system that couldn't be manipulated once you start disenfranchising people. Who gets to define the relevant "knowledge"? How do we measure " intelligence"?
And you must realize that political parties immediately get incentive to do this if the voters most likely to be excluded lean a particular way politically. Say party A is strong with the low income families and party B is more of a middle class party and that statistically if you make the test harder more low income families will drop out because they're already working their ass off making ends meet. Now one party has obvious incentive to set the bar higher, the other to set the bar lower. Here in Norway there's a campaign to lower the voting age from 18 to 16, you can compare the youth vote scores with the parties supporting it and it's obvious why. Voters who've mostly never had a real job, never paid taxes and never had to balance a budget because they live at home with mom and dad with an allowance tend to vote quite differently than people who've had to support themselves.
What we really need if for each Political Party to support knowledge tests on the candidates that are going to run in the primary and the results to be posted before the primarily is held. This would help to remove the really ignorant and some of the stupid politicians from getting into office. Tim S.
Scoring high in an IQ test doesn't guarantee real world intelligence. It mostly means you're good at detecting visual or numeric patterns quickly. Deciding on political issues doesn't fall into this category of problems.
A Remarkable Number of People is fucking stupid. anyways, probably all made up because buzzfeed is shit.
By "votes" I trust you are referring to the number of greenbacks in their wallets? Rest assured that they will soon, as the song goes, go separate ways. ;)
That is SO racist! You know what most peoples of colour (I can't believe this is the current PC term now) will score lower and their vote will be more often suppressed.
Why is this comment flagged as Troll? It's a perfectly cromulent point.
Also, to be clear, I did not post that comment.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
So, if I were by far the most intelligent man on the planet, you wouldn't mind me stealing the election and running the country just to benefit my friends and myself?
Don't mistake intelligence alone for an automatically benign and positive thing for everyone else involved - there are seriously smart people you might want in charge, but there are also seriously smart psychopaths you might not want to run the country or even have a bigger say in the decision on who does.
"IQ is certainly not a perfect metric but if we use it only in a simple way it could be used. Less than 100 IQ, can't vote."
As you don't seem to realize that this would hit _half_ the voters, I'm glad you won't be able to vote with that system.
Actually, slightly less than half will not be able to vote.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Less than 100 IQ, can't vote.
50% of the population can't vote based on a test that you can easily improve at simply by practising.
It would not be 50%. It would be less than 50%.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Less than 100 IQ is supposed to be 1/2 the population, but it rarely works out that way.
My psychology professor administered a "demonstration" IQ test in class, possible scores ranged from 100 if you got everything wrong to 130 if you got everything right. Actual IQ tests aren't this bad, but they are skewed in this direction.
If you did disenfranchise 1/2 the population, it would likely be the 1/2 of the population that's easily manipulated and motivated to revolt... I like to avoid revolting political systems when I can.
Good luck - IME all political systems are revolting ;-)
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Had NASA been given the funding and direction, it is virtually certain that humans could have walked on Mars by the mid-1980s.
Whoever wrote that has not a fucking clue in the world.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
It's not remarkable at all. People believe professional wrestling is real, homeopathy is real, ghosts, devils and gods are real. So what makes belief in a well made movie depicting mostly good science less believable than all that other hogwash. People are programmed to believe. Being skeptical is hard and a vastly smaller number of people ever question anything they are told or shown even if it not presented as the truth.
An IQ of 100 is supposed to be the average, so the test scores would have to be adjusted to make that the case.
I'm sure there would be complaints about the test being harder one year than the next, endless re-takes and the like. One day of Adderall does not make you a genius.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Why are people assuming this is a true story from the past? Maybe it happens in the future and we are just now hearing about it.
It's probably impossible to design a system that couldn't be manipulated once you start disenfranchising people. Who gets to define the relevant "knowledge"? How do we measure " intelligence"?
I propose the MacDonalds test. If someone is too stupid to be able to quickly order something in a drive thru, they're too stupid to be allowed to vote. Seriously, every system can be abused but encouraging stupid, uninformed people to vote promotes the worst in democracy.
Which of course is the whole point concerning things such as mandatory voting, automatic voter registration, not showing an ID at the polls, etc. If someone is too lazy to make even a small effort to vote, they shouldn't.
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
The problem here is that you're equating "intelligence" with their mastery of the English language. Someone whose first language is not English wouldn't do so well. Of course, based on his full post, he does appear to be a native English speaker, but I could be wrong, but it looks like a simple brain-fart to me.
But this does bring up a good point: the problem with the intelligence test idea is that: who do we trust to design the test? And how exactly will they measure knowledge and intelligence? Which factors would be favored? Pick some random people in the US and you're likely to get a test which tests your knowledge of religious dogma and weights that above all else.
The latent egotism here is really troubling. You are not better than anyone else.
I really don't believe that any person is that much smarter or dumber than anyone else when they are born. I think that factors like opportunity, childhood environment, access to quality education and personal drive / motivation have way more impact on "intelligence" than genetic pre-disposition does.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
The comments here are boring. I was hoping for a conspiracy theorist that would point out that it's unfathomable for us to have been to Mars, since even our moon landing took place in a studio on Earth. On a side note, this is my favorite argument against the faked-moon-landing theory: https://xkcd.com/1074/
Politics, geography, etc. as well as science. School is just a grabbag of facts temproarily learned and forgotten. TV man-on-the-street humor has exploited this lack of knowledge.
Because the world as depicted in The Martian is a world that still gives a shit about space and the space program. And that's the kind of world I, for one, want to live in.
Be who you are...and be it in style!
OK. I see your point.
People are IGNORANT idiots.
He's never missed an episode of ESPN sportcenter but never watched the nightly news.
For all their other failings, at least ESPN covers the fact that Cuban athletes defect to countries that are not Communist hellholes. The actual news is actually less trustworthy on the issue of "Who is Fidel Castro?"
"If they've realized communism is evil and the free market is good, that is adequate proof of intelligence for me. Let them vote! Let the fools who believe the reverse be banished from the polls."
Here, guys. We have a prime example of what I described earlier. A poor brain-washed guy programmed to scour the internet in search of divergent thinking of their masters to eliminate at any cost.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
A lot of those who might actually have said it would only have done so in jest. It's a common enough type of joke many of us have made. "This is based on a true story, right guys? (hehe)". But that won't stop people using the opportunity to take the intellectual high ground for the sense of superiority it affords. Kinda like the thinks-Africa-is-a-country one that seems to come up every now and again with celebrities and politicians (Sarah Palin (ugh, but still), Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Rick Ross et al). Almost certainly more a case of their having been a little sloppy in their wording rather than being based on an actual belief system. But not nearly so juicy to report.
I know this is off topic, but now I'm curious. Do people who are incapable of taking the test still impact the scores? Does a 100 IQ indicate the median score of the set of "successful" test takers, or of the set of "functional humans", or of the entire population of all humans?
I believe you're saying that IQ 48 is approximately the minimum required level of functionality required to successfully take the test, but there is obviously a set of people who can't achieve that. And while 48 may be the lowest point on the curve that can be measured, the continuation of the curve is still implied below that point. People below 48 will still fall along some spectrum of abilities, but they're not measurable using the current test. So there may very well be someone with an "equivalent IQ" of 14; it's just the current IQ test lacks the resolution needed to identify that person.
And I'm not saying we should expend any effort to alter the test to measure lower IQs. I doubt that would add any value to society, nor would it be likely to benefit the people who can't take the test today. Such people are already identifiable as requiring a certain level of care, and most of the disabilities at that point are so profound you probably couldn't even use the scores to predict the costs of caring for them.
John
Alexander Selkirk.
But we have gone past the moon. Not very far past it but beyond it indeed. We orbited the moon. To orbit it we went around the back side (we didn't orbit it in a perfectly plane facing the planet). So, we've gone past the moon - just not very far past it.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I think you're all idiots for confusing wisdom and knowledge. But, that's just me. Wisdom is the application of knowledge (how one applies their intelligence would be a good way to put it) and there are lots of smart people who are not wise.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Teachers and parents instill 'facts' into children.
Literal facts are often greatly simplified for the convenience of the teacher and the level of a child's supposed understanding. Why does the light go on when you flip the switch? -- Because there is electricity. That answer will tide the child over for a while, after which a similar pablum will be offered. Questions about sex and thoughtless answers can be crippling to future adults.
Teachers and parents rarely have real facts, but they feel the need to impress the child nevertheless so they pretend to know. They don't understand electricity, or automobile mechanics or current nutritional discoveries or ANYTHING. They fake it. They lie. The child who is slow to realize that faces a lifetime of ignorance.
Perhaps worse is the oppression of beliefs paraded as facts
From Aesop's fables to legends about Hercules, Moses, Jesus, Tesla and Batman the minds of children are filled with a strange brew. Facts are hard to separate from beliefs. As children grow older, many develop a more sophisticated view of at least some of these 'facts'. But even (especially?) into old age many people believe what they hear from conservative hate mongers, persuasive preachers, advertising fantasies and other questionable sources.
The final problem along these lines is the binary solution to any issue.
A thing is either: true or false; up or down; on or off; left or right... Shades of grey, as one of our regulars likes to say, are not tolerated. Sadly, many polarized opinions on Slashdot indicate the insidious penetration of this concept into the highest realms of intellectual intercourse.(?)
It is supremely difficult for a parent or teacher to say:
"I don't know. Let's see if we can find the best answer to that question."
Every child suffers as a result.
...omphaloskepsis often...
This is wrong headed for a very simple reason.
Democracy is not about making the correct choices. It is about making choices where everyone has participation. It is a vehicle for legitimacy.
One of the problems with democracy is that half of the people are of below average intelligence and wisdom. Democracy is still valuable because it allows the government to function more effectively because you don't get to simply enact things that hurt the greater mass of people without some form of consent from them.
However, turning democracy into a means of generating truth is fatally flawed. That's why the founding fathers were interested so much in making sure we were a republic, and not a full on democracy. They certainly knew how to construct an actual democracy or at least a much closer one than we have today.
I was once in a class where there was an answer that depended on a very simple math question. The class was a history class but dealt with some statistic or something. I answered the question in one way, the rest of the class answered it in another way. The teacher got the same answer as the rest of the class. I refused to concede I was wrong because I knew I was right. It was simple math, not rocket science. When they got exasperated with me, they called in a math teacher to shut me down. He actually shut them all down.
95% polled in that class would have believed in an incorrect answer to a very easily verifiable math question. 95% of them would have been wrong.
Admittedly, this doesn't happen often when things like simple math are involved, but it illustrated the point to me early on that voting on something doesn't make it right. In my opinion, experts should provide the solutions, and the people should vote on if they can accept the consequences of those solutions, laws, or whatever. When presented with a number of properly designed solutions, the people should have the right to accept the one that they feel right about. What they should not be doing is trying to legislate truth.
It helps to have an educated population, because then it becomes more clear that the experts know of which they speak. However, I'd rather have a way to ensure honest experts who present facts and conclusions and options, and people who know enough to take responsibly for the options they pick. What I am tired of are facts generated by polling, and experts who believe they know what is best for everyone else.
You should not have a quiz to be a voter, but perhaps we should have a quiz to be a legislator. Or better, expert bodies where you have to take a whole battery of tests to be admitted for candidacy.
Frankly, either is an unproven assertion.
You want people to not be allowed to monopolize the vote because they disagree with you.
The other person thinks you're wrong and that such a monopolization is not a bad idea.
Neither of you has proven that communism is, or is not, evil.
And either way it is irrelevant. The idea is that the more intelligent people get into office and the polls. If the more intelligent people disagree with you, what does that say?
You should really read more carefully what I wrote. Communism is not the question here, period. The real issue here is the fact that even very intelligent people can make (really) stupid decisions by knowing only a distorted version of reality. I can make a IQ160 passionately support genocide if I control from a very young age everything he knows about genocide, think about that.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Um... Do you mean Mc or Mac?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
If you don't believe civilians should be able to own any weapon our military is allowed to use, your out.
If you don't know the difference between "your" and "you're" - you're out.
Such thing haven't really mattered since the days of yore.
It is the wrong assumption but when I was 6 or 7 and I learnt that no human has reached beyond moon, I thought wow, we really sucked.
It's not as if the current system is selecting Republican candidates the typical Republican wants. (The same is likely to happen with Democrats when their selection process gets into gear.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I agree that a distorted sense of reality might be a problem. I just have an issue with what you're suggesting is "a distorted sense of reality".
The biggest problem with the idea of having more "intelligent" people be the voters, or the idea of even the most "wise" people be the voters is not necessarily that they are wrong, but that no one believes that they are right.
You gave a political position which represents anti-communists, or at least free marketeers, as perhaps having a distorted sense of reality. That was your example.
However, what if they are right, despite your most earnest beliefs? I am not saying they are. If you had derided leftists in the same manner, I'd ask you the same question. What if the more intelligent people disagree with you, but you can't see it?
Ultimately, I agree that it is a bad policy to make only intelligent people able to vote, but for a different reason. If you rely on voters to tell you if you're "right" you're going to fail. What you want all of the people in the crowd to tell you is what they are comfortable with. You want the legislators to be right, or at least, willing to listen to people who have a higher chance of being right, like experts. You want the voters to select the option that they can live with.
People are going to believe what they believe. They still should get a vote, because otherwise they revolt and chaos happens. The government needs public support to avoid a revolution. That is why majorities are required, but also why sometimes majorities made up of feeble people fail. You want to have enough support for whatever position you pick to win a fight, should one break out. If a minority is well organized, it might win because the majority is weak.
Democracy cannot work if you use it as a truth-engine. It is a legitimacy engine, nothing more.
The test could be as low a bar as having to remember and write the candidate's name on the ballot.
If you can't get that far, do you really care if they get elected?
http://xkcd.com/1576/
"As you don't seem to realize that this would hit _half_ the voters, I'm glad you won't be able to vote with that system."
Given I never indicated either of those things I believe you'll be left behind.
"It's probably not really a good measure of anything but the ability to do well on IQ tests."
Low IQ (75 and below) has been shown to highly correlate with low achievement and poor academic performance. The lower the score the stronger the correlation. 100 seems like a reasonably low bar for voting and one that is just as but no more likely to exclude the wealthy.
A reasonably intelligent person needs no more than a middle school education to score over 100. The test favors native American English speakers (anyone born here) and education but not to a degree that excludes a clever foreigner or individual with less education. Seems like a reasonable minimum bar to qualify to make important decisions that impact others to me. With an average of 5 out of 10 people making the grade there should be statistically significant representation of every group but the low IQ group.
What did I say that indicated I didn't know about half the people would be excluded? Average and high IQ hasn't been successfully correlated with high function but low IQ has been shown to strongly correlate with low achievement and performance. The lower the IQ the stronger the correlation. Since about half the voting pool remains you'd still have a statistically significant sample of essentially every group and interest but the low IQ group.
I'd also favor all individuals who want to vote taking a critical thinking and logic course. Perhaps at the middle school, high school, and college levels. I don't care if children making logical arguments and critically assessing what teachers and parents say makes things more challenging.
"if you don't support certain current political lines of thought, you can't vote"
On the contrary, it has little to do with current political thought and a lot to do with requiring things be restored to the constitutional government with its careful separation of powers. For far too long morons have supported government violating the constitution and overreaching their constitutional authority simply because they supported the end used as an excuse. Just because you want Y doesn't mean you shouldn't demand congress, the president, or a court follow the law rather than take a short cut to get Y. Amendments are hard to get for a reason, not the least of which is to offset the disproportional representation of the electoral college.
What did I say that indicated I didn't know about half the people would be excluded?
I responded to nospam007, not to you. nospam007 said:
As you don't seem to realize that this would hit _half_ the voters,
and I said:
Actually, slightly less than half will not be able to vote.
Nospam007 did not realise that "IQ less than 100" means "less than half the population" and does not mean "half the population".
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
"SHOULD BE ABLE? Isn't that an opinion?"
No, it's the law. At present it is the highest law of the land and therefore you shouldn't be allowed to vote if you support any branch of federal, state, or local government trying to infringe on it in even the slightest way.
You might think it's a bad law but the idea was that military power would be distributed among volunteer militias, who should be well trained, and assembled into an army only in time of war. The few in power should fear the anger of the many who are not and armed government hands that have no increased chance of being safe, sane, or trustworthy have never been the source of freedom or democracy. Those things have only come to exist where the people were armed. But that part is opinion.
If you disagree you should be pushing for an amendment. But while it is the law we should all be quick to raise a pistol to the head of any government official or judge who declares otherwise. Whatever changes you'd like to see, they aren't worth the damage done when government is allowed to take power it is denied to make them happen. Those limits, checks, and balances are there for a reason.
"His test was on the constitution as it is constructed now. The answers are matter of fact. That doesn't mean that you can't vote to change it. It just means that you have to pass a test on what it says now. The ability to do that would seem to be a solid prerequisite for a reasonable person to then work to change it anyway. If you don't understand it now, how can you propose effective change?"
Bingo. You might not think civilians should have missiles. But the law says they can and neither the president nor congress is empowered to change that. The courts are not empowered to support their illegal actions. Regardless of whether you think that is a good idea or not that is what should happen if you try to walk in a gun store and buy a missile.
That doesn't mean you can't be in favor of an amendment. It means that you should understand this is the law and should be followed until changed. The Constitution provides mechanisms by which it can be changed. You should support those as well as the rest. There is also popular amendment. The Constitution outranks government but the people outrank the Constitution.
True. Note, it does not grant the authority to rule according to personal opinion or political leaning rather than in accordance with the law. There are quite a few examples where the Constitution is clear and the court has blatantly misinterpreted it. The Constitution leaves us no recourse but popular amendment does.
"You can be really smart and the worst kind of racist, intolerant bigot, or simply a total self-centered jerk who will not care that his decisions disfranchise everyone as long as he benefits."
Of course you can. But a 101+ IQ doesn't make you really smart more than 5 out of 10 people are smart enough to score over 100 so racists, jerks, and caring people would all be well represented. The only people excluded would be those with essentially no chance of understanding the decisions they are making and the impact of those decisions.
A high IQ doesn't even mean you are smart, only low IQ's have been shown to indicate performance or success (low performance and lack of success). Having a 150 vs 115 hasn't been poven to matter at all.
An empathy test might be useful to give politicians but not voters. There is no benefit in electing the guy whose wife just died because you feel bad for them. And those voters would be more likely to be duped by politicians trying to sway them with plea to emotion rhetoric. Like making people afraid of terrorists so they will agree to give up freedoms or spreading fear of the dangers of making moonshine so they can keep it illegal, raise tax revenue that lowers the taxes of the wealthy and put lots of red tape in place that makes it difficult for new startups to compete with large established companies.
"50% of the population can't vote based on a test that you can easily improve at simply by practising."
I fail to see a problem with that.
"Some people claim atheism is a religion."
The dictionary says otherwise. We can make up a new word for those who don't follow a religion and keep doing that if you like.
"Also, not all religions are the same, e.g. Buddhists are not nearly as deluded as Christians, who are not nearly as deluded as Muslims, in general terms."
Irrelevant. The Constitution is the highest law in the land, it outranks all public officials at all levels of goverment and mandates a separation of church and state. You check your religion at the door, by law. For the same reason congress lacks the authority to tax churches. Whether a person agrees with the law or not should not be prerequisite to vote, demanding government have absolute obedience to the limits imposed on it by the Constitution should be prerequisite to voting.
If you think representatives should be able to vote in accord with their religion you can both support an amendment to that effect and a firing squad for those who do so before that amendment is made.
Government officials deliberately violating the Constitution and assuming authority not granted to them for any cause is treason.
"If you believe any citizen should be able to own a nuclear ICBM or place land mines in the front yard, you're out."
It's the law. Period. See the above.
Random civilians with widely distributed military power are less likely to be able to affect widespread tyranny than random people in a chain of command that answers to those who might try to seize power from the people. The bigger the weapon the more expensive and the more people it takes to afford them. Nobody should have biological weapons, chemical weapons, or nuclear weapons. But so long as the government has been granted our permission to have nuclear subs we've retained our right as the people to have such weapons to point back at them.
"If you think rights are not a balance between opposing forces, and that include both freedom from interference and freedom to prosper and be happy, you are out."
What I said is not inconsistent with that.
A person in a toll violation case being denied a "beyond reasonable doubt" burden, the right to a court appointed attorney, the right to trial by jury, and being automatically assumed as the driver because the state wrote that it could do so in the statute is a good example. This violates a number of provisions in the Constitution and a body empowered by the Constitution (states and therefore their governments are a constitutional construct) lacks the authority to do so. These provisions exist to bar the government from infringing on the rights of the people, when ANY individual objects to this it is not their personal right vs the state it is the right on 100% of the individuals in the nation vs the small subset who support and benefit from cheaper toll enforcement.
The court is also ultimately empowered by the Constitution and therefore lacks the authority to issue a ruling which violates its provisions.
Again, Constitutional enforcement should be absolute. Believing as much is prerequisite to successful participation in our constitutional democracy. That issues pre-empts anything you disagree with in the specifics. But there is always changing it, either via the mechanisms in the document or popular amendment since the people are not limited by the terms of the Constitution and ca overrule it as jurors or change it by popular vote.
Who said anything about retakes? Although once every 10 years to maintain doesn't sound terrible. Ever fail and you are done maybe a retake within 30 days or something but not new chances every 10 years.
The bar at 100 is low on purpose. It eliminates only people with little or no chance of understanding the decisions they are making leaves a large enough pool to fairly represent everyone interests. If the primary thing supporters of an agenda have in common is their very low IQ I can't imagine it being a bad thing for it to go away.
I'm not saying the IQ minimum would solve everything. I'm just saying that there is no benefit in people of such low intelligence being able to vote.
I also think you should get up to 20 votes, never more than 20 never less than one. One per year you've both been a citizen and physically residing in the US. Maybe drop the minimum voting age to 15. Do the same at the state and city level. Maybe that will encourage young people to get involved and they'll stay that way.
Move away and you begun losing one per year after the first year. Allows people to vote for third parties. Plus it reduces the ability of a large flux of immigrants to change the political landscape over night. You get a voice but you need to give it time to understand what life is like in a place before you go changing it to what was familiar back home, you get the loudest voice when you've been somewhere long enough that it is home. Move around a lot? Maybe you shouldn't pick the mayor for a place you just moved to and are leaving in 3 months anyway.
That is why the target is average and not high. Combine at least average IQ with understanding the Constitution (who you are voting for and what powers you are giving them) and critical thinking/logic skills and you've got someone who has a CHANCE of understanding the choices they are making.
Whether making good or bad choices people of low IQ lack the ability to understand those choices. But the bar is low enough that every political group will still be represented.
"The biggest problem with the idea of having more "intelligent" people be the voters, or the idea of even the most "wise" people be the voters is not necessarily that they are wrong, but that no one believes that they are right."
The idea wasn't to have only the intelligent vote but rather to remove those with such a low IQ they have no chance of really understanding the choices they are making. These individuals are already being told what is right by people more intelligent than them and it is in many cases the persuasiveness of those people rather than reasoned consensus that gets the votes.
By setting the bar near 50% we assure every group and view will remain well represented. So as part of the disqualified group you will still find qualified voters rallying with you.
"You seem to be in the US, so that will disenfranchise 50% of whites, and 85% of blacks, according to current data."
100 is the median of the scale but more than 50% OVERALL score at or above 100. Getting a 100 is perfectly achievable with a middle school level education since the tests are designed to avoid an education requirement. Elementary, middle, and high school are free in the United States. If your "current data" is correct they'll have disenfranchised themselves.
Do you honestly think the reason the trample it is because they don't know what it says?
They trample on it because it's in their interests to do so the same as every king and every government. That is why the people can nullify their laws in the form of juries and the domestic military power was granted to and distributed among the people in the right to bear arms. They also made ir really hard for the government to give itself power by making amendments difficult.
How are they supposed to make mischief when they can't imprison us, have no federal police force, and there is no standing army for greater than two years in peace time? All they get is the Navy to protect our shores.
Oh wait, you mean people of low IQ have given up every item that gives the people the power to check government in a more meaningful way than asking them to pretty please not screw us?
"That's why the founding fathers were interested so much in making sure we were a republic, and not a full on democracy. They certainly knew how to construct an actual democracy or at least a much closer one than we have today."
They DID construct something much closer to an actual democracy than what we have today. The founding fathers were wealthy merchants and so cared about government having the power to protect their economic interests. Power beyond that didn't matter.
The founding fathers gave the federal government no standing army, only the navy which could be used to repel foreign invaders and more importantly for them protect merchant vessels from pirates. All military power on land was spread among the people. There has never in history been a nation that closely resembled a democracy where the few did not need to fear the collective might of the angry many. It cannot exist.
Similarly, everyone had a right to trial by jury and any jury could nullify the law on a case-by-case basis for any reason. The federal government could create treaties to protect trade, regulate interstate commerce, and provide means for copyrights and patents.
Congress was configured in such a way that only the illusion of participation by everyone was maintained; it was and is a body by the wealthy, for the wealthy, and of the wealthy.
The problem is that in the information age there are too many people who realize we aren't a democracy or a representative republic and the notion that wealth follows merit has been soundly debunked. Today third party candidates get arrested attempting to attend presidential debates, the NSA gets busted in a horrific conspiracy and the president openly supports them without getting impeached. Congress the passes a bill "legalizing" the unconstitutional actions claiming it fixes the problem. Which is a blatant slap in our collective faces... a pointless one because congress does not have the authority to bypass the constitutional requirement of warrants nor does the supreme court let alone the FISA court. Peaceful protestors in the occupy wallstreet movement are beaten, gassed, arrested by order of the officials they elected and the police who are supposed to be arresting anyone interfering in their protest.
"It is a vehicle for legitimacy."
It is a vehicle for the ILLUSION of legitimacy. The problem is the illusion is dispelled. We no longer believe we have representatives. We live in a world where direct democracy is possible and if we are to have representatives we want representatives we believe will do better than ourselves. So we drop the electoral college and we actually have more intelligent people do the voting.
Our society is built on science and we now want what is correct. In the information age of reason and science aristocratic rule by the wealthy at gunpoint is no longer acceptable.
"If you believe congress can't fund war without declaring it, you've already failed constitutional law 101 so you're out."
You seem to be confusing the currently practiced bastardization of Constitutional law which has almost nothing to do what the document says with reading and understanding the Constitution. A couple words have changed in common usage ("well regulated" for example) but for the most part the document is written in clear and plain English. Technicalities and loopholes are invalid interpretation.
If your first order of business isn't dismantling the government of today and restoring our Constitutional democracy with all limitations on goverment power put back in place you shouldn't be voting. The shortcuts and power grabs are illegal if they contradict the Costitution, the supreme court is not empowered to deliberately misinterpret the document. For instance, the NSA warrantless surveillance cannot be legalized by an act of congress nor blessing by the supreme court. It would require Constitutional amendment. No doubt you'd point out that they are doing it regardless. I'd point out the victim's inability to stop the rapist doesn't make rape legal.
'And if you don't see the basic contradiction between 'any systematic disregard of individual rights by definition cannot be in the interest of "the community"''
There are 100 people in town X. All have a right that says none can be convicted of a crime without positive identification. 51% voted for rep Bob. A rule is passed by bob which 15% of people support saying there is a $10 fee for turning right on red and that everyone accused will automatically be assumed identified because it would cost too much to prove identity.
Joe is arrested, asserts the prosecution must prove it was him who turned right. In most cases Joe is treated as one guy vs the interests of the entire community. The entire community is 100 people, every one of them is an individual like Joe but only 15% support this law and 49% didn't vote for the guy who made it. The decision made here would apply equally to 100% of them in Joe's spot therefore honoring Joe's rights strengthens and benefits 100% of the community whereas failing to honor it weakens that right for 100%. Even Rep Bob and the 15% who supported the law have their right weakened if it is denied to Joe.
Two people asserting conflicting rights is another story. A community is nothing more than a collection of individuals and is distinct from government not synonymous with it.
Short of a story about supermodels thinking Linux gurus are the best lovers, I can't think of something better designed to appeal to slashdot readers.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I think you're all idiots for confusing wisdom and knowledge. But, that's just me. Wisdom is the application of knowledge (how one applies their intelligence would be a good way to put it) and there are lots of smart people who are not wise.
Slashdot is living proof of this. There are clearly a fair number of intelligent people who post here, but there's still an awful lot of stupidity, or however you choose to describe un-wisdom.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The problem here is that you're equating "intelligence" with their mastery of the English language.
Obviously in reality you would have your voting/intelligent test in the official language of whichever country you were talking about.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
IQ is certainly not a perfect metric but if we use it only in a simple way it could be used. Less than 100 IQ, can't vote. Maybe add a simple quiz that tests for knowledge of the Constitution. If you support public officials voting based on religious beliefs you are out. If you don't believe civilians should be able to own any weapon our military is allowed to use, your out. If you believe congress can fund war without declaring it, you are out. If you believe congress or the president can disregard the constitution to fight terrorism, drugs, or "the general welfare" you are out. If you believe courts can't overturn congress your out. If you believe courts can grant themselves the authority to overturn a jury or limit juries to determination of fact without the ability to judge the merit of application of the law on a case by case basis, you are out. And last but not least if you don't understand that individuals is the only group that includes every citizen and therefore any systematic disregard of individual rights by definition cannot be in the interest of "the community", you are out. E.X. The automatic reduction in rights when accused of a wrongdoing by the state in traffic court vs other charges. Don't know that corporations are not people and that everyone with an interest in them is already a person and therefore already has the ability to represent their own rights and interests, you are out. Note, that is not how things currently work in our process but it is how it's supposed to work and would work if swaying popular opinion couldn't break things.
In other words, anyone who disagrees with what you believe is an idiot and ineligible to vote.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
"IQ is certainly not a perfect metric but if we use it only in a simple way it could be used. Less than 100 IQ, can't vote."
As you don't seem to realize that this would hit _half_ the voters, I'm glad you won't be able to vote with that system.
Actually, slightly less than half will not be able to vote.
To equal it up you could also exclude the people with really high IQs.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You sound remarkably like hardline Christian or Islamic fundamentalists, who allow no deviation from their strict and quite possibly inaccurate understanding of their sacred texts.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The US doesn't have an official language.
Plus, there's lots of people who are pretty good at language skills, but have no math skills and think that dinosaur fossils were planted here by Satan.
Having a 150 vs 115 hasn't been poven to matter at all.
That's NOT what she said.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You should really read more carefully what I wrote. Communism is not the question here, period. The real issue here is the fact that even very intelligent people can make (really) stupid decisions by knowing only a distorted version of reality. I can make a IQ160 passionately support genocide if I control from a very young age everything he knows about genocide, think about that.
Exactly. Not all Nazis (or Khmer Rouge, or whoever) were stupid. There is no connection between intelligence and morality.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You gave a political position which represents anti-communists, or at least free marketeers, as perhaps having a distorted sense of reality. That was your example.
No, his example was to show that people have been conditioned into unthinkingly accepting that anything labelled "communist" is bad and anything "free market" good. Life is not that simple, regardless of the merits or demerits of communism or the free market.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
There is no benefit in electing the guy whose wife just died because you feel bad for them. And those voters would be more likely to be duped by politicians trying to sway them with plea to emotion rhetoric.
You're confusing being emotional with being capable of empathy. The two are quite independent.
emotional: 2. dominated by or prone to emotion <an emotional person>
empathy: 2. the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also : the capacity for this
Like making people afraid of terrorists so they will agree to give up freedoms
Being capable of empathy would lead one to realize that committing a terrorist act comes at a great cost, most of the time the terrorist's life, and thus requires a strong motivation. Then one would wonder what could have given them such strong motivation and/or destroyed their will to live, and try to figure out what can be changed so it does not happen.
But if the person is emotional, their fear could totally prevent them from trying to understand the source of their fear. So far from being the same thing, empathy and being emotional can be in conflict.
And conversely, a huge number of people thought Apollo 13 was implausible. Wonder if there are any crossover idiots?
The illusion of legitimacy is legitimacy. There is no measuring stick of legitimacy like there is a mathematically derived unit of measurement. If your people believe that you represent them, then they will support you.
What has happened is that the engine only works under certain circumstances and then it breaks down. I am of the belief that this occurs around the size where voters become voting blocs and people realize that they have zero say in anything anymore because the representatives don't even have to pretend to notice them as individuals any more.
Our society does not appear to be built on science, if it was, we wouldn't have half the debates we have now. Our society is built on what people are comfortable with and their moral viewpoints. And of course, it is owned by people who have a ton of money because they control the media and the discourse. We give lip service to the idea that the rich are not in control, but look at reality. The rich are in control. That's because they have real power and they are smart enough to know how to use it.
Think of the alternative: That by 2015, we haven't ever gone to mars? That's would be absurd.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All