I'm sure you've heard people casually suggest that voting should require some sort of intelligence test.

There are some issues with that. But what if we did it just a little bit? What if the outcome of the test results only had a small effect? If you completely failed, your vote would count for 90% of a vote. If you aced it: 110%.

jesus, they have a hard time counting normal votes. how the fuck they gonna pull off that slight an adjustment?

But really, the problem with intelligence testing isn't that the factoring of intelligence is itself inherently evil, it's that intelligence is pretty hard to quantify and you couldn't trust the people who make the tests, so it would be to easy to politicize. Here in the states, incoming administration could so something like add the question "Global warming is a hoax y/n" with a "No" answer shooting down your score. Then bam, it becomes a test of political purity and we get into some weird territory.

A good example of how this has worked in real life comes from the South, where the literacy tests for voting used back in the Jim Crow days would involve asking the testee a vague question, with the answer's rightness or wrongness being determined by the tester. Made it easy as shit for the tester to make personally biased decisions on who can and cannot vote, which they used to turn away black voters.

There are plenty of questions with only one definite answer. And yeah, the logistics wouldn't work now, but they could sometime in the future.

There are plenty of questions with only one definite answer. And yeah, the logistics wouldn't work now, but they could sometime in the future.

Well, it's like Jesus said, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who is watching the watchmen... or test-givers. If you create a system where this test-giving is always in the right hands, you've found a system that makes democracy unnecessary in the first place.

I see what you're getting at, but if there were any problems with the system, people should be able to sort it out with several turns of voting. It could be self-calibrating. You can only be silenced up to 10%.

I was thinking about how we could have AI be the cornerstone of some or all future systems, but even then someone would have to make it, which makes it fallible. Everything we can touch is subject to corruption.

But then I figured it out! The solution to greed and manipulation is happiness. If everyone is happy and satisfied, then there's no reason for anyone to hurt anyone else.

We need to solve drugs and the human body.

But then I figured it out! The solution to greed and manipulation is happiness. If everyone is happy and satisfied, then there's no reason for anyone to hurt anyone else.

We need to solve drugs and the human body.

Don't tell Aldous Huxley.

But then I figured it out! The solution to greed and manipulation is happiness. If everyone is happy and satisfied, then there's no reason for anyone to hurt anyone else.

Been there, tried that, Stalin fucked it up and now no one trusts that line of thinking.

again, the tech isn't there yet. A controlled amount of drugs without side effects and a world on easy mode would work wonders.

I guess I should read Brave New World.

I can see the crash and burn already.

A controlled amount of drugs without side effects and a world on easy mode would work wonders.

We Happy Few comes to mind immediately. The whole synopsis is that all you have to do is take a pill and then everyone is happy, completely oblivious to anything negative that could be happening in the outside world. By doing that, does that really solve any problems? It turns into a large group of people who willingly turn a blind eye from what's going on outside of their comfort zones just so that they don't have to feel bad for once. It's a truly fascinating concept and, as far as I know, has yet to be tested to see if that really could apply successfully. However, I feel like taking uppers just to make sure I find a kind of drug-induced happiness kind of defeats the point in making something of myself, and striving to do better.

But back to the original topic: intelligence itself, in this political setting, would be difficult to define, due to there being "book smarts" and there being "street smarts". So one would be able to argue that if you aren't able to compute advanced algebraic equations or exhibit some kind of learned traits from formal education, then you aren't capable of having your vote considered at full 100% capacity. How is this fair to those individuals who have exhibited a greater understanding of common sense - people who are able to witness, evaluate, and make educated decisions on everyday life events, but who are lacking in their formal education?

Though to some extent I would agree that only intellectuals should have a say in large-scale decisions, this will only work in a setting where the general public is willing to realize that some of them are not worthy of being fully considered, and I doubt that would go over very well.

I'm very uncomfortable with the idea that stupid people's opinions should count for less, but I'm too stupid to fully articulate why.

Drugs and shit aside we could just decide to change how we as a society measure quality of life and national strength. Like with Nepal, instead of measuring national strength in part on Gross Domestic Product, we look at it from the angle of Gross Domestic Happiness. So then we start voting in leaders who make domestic happiness a priority. GDP could still be used, but what's the use of money when no one's happy about it?

This'd be a huge culture clash and a massive war against the individualistic life-style that the western world is built on vs the hollistic community-oriented life-style of Nepal, India, and East-Asia. We'd have to stop teaching ourselves to orient our lives according to self-made, individual success as the primary focus of a good life and shift it to being a part of and maintaining healthy relationships with everyone around us on a personal relationship and community level. An entire shift in our way of thinking.