From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon Aug 05 2002 - 14:21:39 MDT
On Mon, Aug 05, 2002 at 03:56:10PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
> Lee Corbin wrote about democracy:
>
> I claim that you'll never find a better system (until
> human beings are replaced by something else, or conditions
> change drastically in some other way from what we're used to).
>
> ### What do you think about my favorite replacement for a (universal
> franchise) democracy - a demarchy with selection for IQ? I bet 10$ it would
> handily outperform any democracy, if I could only find at least two more
> supporters to fill both chambers of my government's parliament and still
> have a private citizen left.
While I like demarchy (it is a great example of how a democracy doesn't
have to look like the current system) I really wonder if that IQ
selection would be advantageous. The core strength of a demarchy is that
it provides a less biased sample of citizens to represent than the
current crop of highly self-selected people. Some biasing measures are
likely necessary to make the system workable, like only using citizens
that want to participate, but what does high IQ correlate with? It
mainly correlates with academic achievement, and while I would love to
have more well educated politicians it is worth remembering that
academic achievement is no evidence for sanity or competence. I would
rather believe that it is better to have a spread of ways of thinking
and good decision support (IMHO the biggest unsolved problem of
demarchy).
The performance of political systems should be measured in how well they
can promote human happiness. It would be great if there were any clear
way of doing a priori comparisions, but in the end they have to be
tested in real life and subjected to eternal scrutiny.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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