1. IQ test has been shown not to represent actual "intelligence"
2. Intelligence does not mean justice, fairness or anything else.
3. Conflict of interest. What if the so called "most intelligent" people have some interest in the voting?
4. Trainning. I'm pretty sure anyone could end up in resulting a genius by trainning on problem sets for IQ tests.
5. Being smart doesn't automatically make you a good people. Smart and asshole are not mutually exclusive.
2. My system isn't an alternative to perfection, it's an alternative to democracy which is decidedly imperfect. Intelligence is likely a better proxy for pro-social attitudes than the ability to navigate political institutions and then trick a bunch of people into voting for you.
3. Again, compare this not to perfection but to what we currently have.
4. Training for IQ tests has very limited returns. But as I specified, the test will be used outside of politics, too. In fact its most common use would be by academic institutions and employers. Because of this, most people will have incentives to train to whatever extent possible. Thus the test becomes slightly less G-loaded and slightly more a test of conscientiousness, but any plan to train up a bunch of corrupt lackeys would have very poor expected value.
5. Again, compare not to perfection but to what we actually have now.
As if democracy didn't have enough struggles, telecommunications (and especially television) have forever changed the way that the people choose their representatives. Superficialities are much more important now than they were pre-1960, and everything we get is filtered through the media outlets that control the television broadcasts; if they dislike someone, all they have to do is repeatedly re-broadcast a single unflattering yelp and that person's prospects are done. [0]
We need to learn to deal with that.
You'll start to see gaming of the test, where those with resources either get involved in the administration or devote their time to perfecting their offspring's change of getting in that top 0.1 percent. Eventually, those without resources will be wholly unable from achieving scores necessary to be in the top 0.1 percent. You'll have an entire class of people who will either be part of government or feasibly able to join as members die, retire, or finish their terms. They will self-seclude as they have little to gain from interacting with the 99.9%.
As for your second point, random selection is a vital to mitigate that possibility. A publicly verifiable source of randomness would be ideal.
This test sounds incredibly dystopian.
>How does this test help against those that are disenfranchised and without privilege?
In the best possible way. By providing them with a competent government.
>How do we challenge those with privilege and power and their positions and goals?
Could you expand on that without using the term "privilege."
At least from my perspective, the government is fair game for everyone. Already our best and brightest are working for us, however power is incredibly corrupting. The issue isn't the voter, it's the system that seeks to suppress and deny the will of the voter. The voter should have full responsibility, just like someone who decides to take unsanctioned drugs
Also, even granting that IQ tests are as reliable as you assume, you still need to justify a few things:
- Why do you assume the comparative advantage of these extraordinarily IQ people is to spend time as a representative, rather than in academia, science, business, non-elected positions in government, etc? I'm not convinced that the 0.1% most intelligent people make a particularly better voting body than the top 1%, or for that matter the top 15% percent, which certainly includes the majority of our elected representatives today.
- It's been argued that rationality and intelligence in the sense measured by IQ tests are not particularly closely correlated, so I'm not sure why extreme quickness of thought should be privileged in particular for representative positions. Related to that, there seem to be a large number of high-IQ cranks that I wouldn't want to trust the fate of an entire nation to -- for example, Mencius Moldbug.
- Do you have any particular reason to believe that the high IQ members of this body would vote for the good of the entire nation, rather than in their own interests (granted, you've already privileged them with your proposal to use IQ tests pervasively in society)? 0.1% of the US is 320,000, and though your mechanism might prevent the small number of representatives at a given time from enriching themselves to Third World-dictator standards, I don't see any reason they wouldn't grant all 0.1% highest IQ people a $1m per-annum -- it would only cost $320b/year, less than 10% of the 2016 federal revenue.
This mostly sounds like a technocratic wet dream to me -- you could have Robin Hanson rule the U.S with no opposition at all.
Put simply, systems like this deny the population the right of self-determination.
Every citizen takes a standardized test when they reach the age of majority, preferably Raven's matrices. This test would be used for scholastic and career purposes, aside from government.
A representative body of 150 people is randomly selected from those in the top 0.1 percent every N years. The IQ test filters for intelligence, obviously. Random sampling serves as an anticorruption mechanism, increasing the cost of influencing leaders before they are elected. It also strongly reduces the incentive to game the test. And unlike most other election procedures does not maximally select for those most interested in fame and power.
These representatives are given very, very high salaries so there is significant incentive to take the position.