New Tennessee Monkey Law!

No, Taz. I don't assume that. I don't even believe it to be true. I seem to recall having this discussion with you at a previous time.What is supposed to happen is that the people elect representatives who are smarter than average bear and that have the leisure time to do the research that the typical citizen will never be able to understand. I expect politicians to sell those solutions to the public, when the need arises. I've also acknowledged that the system is broken and does not work as it should.The alternative you propose to give the people no say and to dictate solutions to them. I don't want to live in a place where we do things that way.

Yes. That too.

But that's just it. Did you read the article? It's a real phenomenon. We've all have encountered this before. People who are not educated or are not intelligent enough can't tell who's more educated or who's more intelligent. This is the reason why we have people who are climate change deniers and creationists being elected into the highest offices of the land. No, I didn't. I never proposed this. What I said was we still elect officials to certain positions based on their qualitifications. And by law, we limit their say to what they are qualitifed in. So, for example, if we elect a lawyer then he can't tell scientists what to do. If we elect a physicist, then he can't tell lawyers what to do. It's a pretty straight foward system.Try not to think of our current system where we have a one all powerful government body (congress) deciding everything. Instead, think of several governing bodies working together. We would have a group of scientists, a group of doctors, a group of lawyers, etc. When a conflict of interests comes up, they talk with each other to decide what's best. So, say the group of physicists finds out the sun is about to explode and wants us all to build space ships to leave the planet, the economists can't say we can't do that because it's too expensive. Instead, the economists would tell the physicists what's the viable options. And then Engineers would then give the best solutions they can come up with.I'm not saying I have all the answers. But looking at all these dumbasses electing dumbasses into office, I'm genuinely worried for our collective future.

Thanks for the reminder. Yeah, the phenomenon has been perceived by various intellectuals from time to time. I'm surprised it took this long for someone to officially point it out and give it a name.If you think about it, we can also perceive the phenomenon through common sense. If you are not competent in, say, math, then how are you to know you are not competent in it?What we need is more people who are willing to admit their own ignorance of certain things. When a child asks you something that you don't know the answer to, you don't have to make up some shit to tell him. Just say I don't know.When I was a cop, I was confronted by a woman who told me while driving her small daughter asked her why cops drive a lot faster than everyone else. She admitted that she didn't know the answer and that to answer her daughter she had to tell her speed limit for cops were higher than speed limit for everyone else. Classic case of just making up shit to tell your child. Most people are like that. Most people don't even realize they don't know. And what's scary is they vote by the masses based on what they don't know.

I don't recall you saying anything about electing any scientists and engineers. Instead you simply said that politicians would not make scientific decisions.At any rate, I don't even think that proposal is workable. Exactly how many people do you think we ought to elect. It should be a perfectly viable solution for economists, scientists, engineeers, etc. to be staff positions or agency positions as long as the advice they give is heeded.

This gets a little more complicated. I also believe that voters ought to be tested on a regular basis on their level of competency. I'm an engineer. My past experiences include but not limited to working as an LEO, micro-biology researcher, computer programmer, and teaching. If I want to be able to vote in certain elections of certain fields, I'd have to pass certain tests pertaining to those fields. Since I know jack shit about geology or economics, I'm pretty sure I'd fail those general knowledge tests pretty badly so I couldn't vote when it comes time to elect officials who will decide the future of geology research or economics decisions. And rightly so, too.Again, I recognize that there are certain things that are way over my head. I can't possibly begin to tell who's more competent in those areas. Any decision I make regarding who's more competent between 2 candidates is more like a guess, not a decision.At this point, you're going to cry fascism. This is usually what people do when they hear my proposal.What I don't understand is we test people for certain levels of competency before we license them to drive but we don't do this when it comes time for owning a gun, having babies, vote, etc. This is why dumbasses continue to live in their dumbass ways and breed at a rate several times more than those of us who actually plan things out. This is already the case. And we still get people like Romney and Santorum. Again, they scare the hell out of me.Edit.Take religious people, for example. I think it's kind of universal law I'm not aware of that if you know jesus then you're suppose to be an expert in everything. Don't believe me? Check out buzsaw's posts. Check out the various religionists on this forum. Hell, check out desdamona's posts. At some point, she claimed to be a home school teacher.So, it's some kind of universal law that if you found jesus then you know everything about every field of academia out there.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

If utilised correctly this might work, the thing is the tests should be on a high school level so that everybody could study on the topic and pass, and they should include common knowledge or what i like to call how the fuck is it possible that you dont know that.

Using the state powers to shield public school teachers who want to teach religion in public school classrooms is Big Government. It is a major violation of our rights. It is government intruding where they should never intrude.

Do you live in Tennessee?I don't, this affects my rights not in the slightest. Clearly that is not the case here.Edited by Artemis Entreri, : No reason given.

I live in the United States. Give it time.

AE has this queer notion that we shouldn't worry about Constitutional violations unless they occur in the state where we live.

I completely agree. The tests should be high school level. It should contain the most basic things that everyone ought to know. I just want some incentive for people to get off their asses and at least read the news for once in their lives.Again, I am simply tired of seeing people like the tea baggers who are ignorant as hell but because they know jesus they think they know everything about everything.

Hi Taz and frako, What about tests for the politicians to pass before they can be a candidate?Publish the results for the candidates that pass, with the correct answers.The test should include constitutional law and general knowledge as well as questions on how science works, and questions specific to their chosen position they are running for.Enjoy.

Absolutely!Thank you for not purposefully misunderstanding what I mean. Whenever I bring up this proposal of mine, people always call it fascism and all that BS. It seems like it's almost impossible to have an intelligent conversation these days without people entrenching themselves in some kind of extreme position or paint a strawman picture of the other side.But yes, the point I've been trying to make is we should make people like tea baggers realize how stupid they are. And we ought to expose crank candidates like Sarah Palin or Christine Odonnell by making them them take these tests and answer questions directly.For example, take a look at the following video.There ought to be a law penalizing politicians for dancing around like that instead of answer the question.

I read carefully, Jar, but apparently you didn'tThese are some quotes from them posted in my message.Jar. By law is implied, that all disobaying would be subject to arrest. Edited by Buzsaw, : No reason given.