Will DNA Analysis Make Politics Less of a Mind-Killer?

This idea really represents a huge misunderstanding of what kinds of things actually drive political disagreement.

• Do you know anyone who would vote for a very smart candidate they strongly disagreed with instead of a fairly smart candidate they completely agreed with?
• Do you typically change your own mind whenever you meet a much smarter person who disagrees with you?
• Have you ever seen anti-intellectualism drive voters away from the obviously smarter of two candidates?

The whole point of PitMK is that political disagreement puts us in a situation where our biases are even less under control than usual. DNA testing that shows one candidate to be likely (but not certain) to be smarter than the other one isn't going to do a damn thing about that.

When WikiLeaks released all of their data, almost nobody in the American voting population read it. Nearly everyone who did so was in the media, an intellectual, or a member of a political organization (governments, activists, terrorists, etc). Gene sequencing would likely be similar. The amount of data pulled out of a candidate's gene sequence would be so large that the only information about it the voting public got would be what the different political parties' ad campaigns wanted to get out there. Fox News would report every unfavorable feature they could find about democrats, MSNBC would do the same for republicans. The Mind Killer would be as strong as ever.

No.

I doubt the barrier is actually identifying genes. Most genes that affect intelligence are probably not a clear-cut win for any of the alleles, but are trade-offs for different modes of thinking. Plus of course it's questionable how much of an effect genetic intelligence has on a President's success.

Furthermore, even if we could determine a numerical intelligence from DNA that worked like IQ, but combined all factors into an unambiguous ranking, and these were published on the Internet about every politician ever, I doubt it would affect votes all that much.

Remember that time Steve Sailer dug up records that showed Bush's IQ was probably higher than Kerry's? Do you really think that would change any opinions?

There's an important quote very applicable to this:

If you attend only to favorable evidence, picking and choosing from your gathered data, then the more data you gather, the less you know.

• The Fourth Virtue: Evenness; Eliezer Yudkowsky, The Twelve Virtues of Rationality

I predict that the astonishing amount of objective evidence, both good and bad, that gene sequencing could provide will allow both sides, using the same data set, to build extremely formidable arguments for and against any candidate. The nature of the exposure of the information - by the candidate's enemies - makes this even scarier, as they will comfortably get away with exposing only the worst of any given data set. I don't suppose h+ would consider running a piece in opposition?

I disagree with this on several different levels, both for claims regarding low intelligence and for claims regarding sociopathy.

Low intelligence is a trait that tends to produce a lot of easily discernible evidence, and a DNA test, like an IQ test, would be swamped by that other evidence. Let us accept arguendo the claim that George W. Bush has a higher IQ than John Kerry. In the absence of any other evidence to update on, this would be substantial evidence that Bush is more intelligent. In the context of ample other evidence (they have both said, written, and done many things of which there is public record), however, it is weak evidence for the claim that Bush in more intelligent than Kerry, and strong evidence for the claim that IQ is of limited utility as a proxy for practical intelligence (I think this holds even if one corrects for the fact that Bush intentionally dumbed down his public persona to achieve more populist appeal). The same would be true of a DNA test.

Lest I be accused of simply filtering intelligence through an ideological lens, let me note that between Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann, two Republican politicians who have suffered similar media treatment, I perceive Bachmann to be both substantially further to the right and far more intelligent than Palin.

Beyond the evidentiary point, there is simply the fact that left to choose between a candidate likely to be not very effective at implementing policies one agrees with, and a candidate likely to be very effective at implementing policies one disagrees with, many people would choose the former.

Sociopathy is a different case from low intelligence, in that high-functioning sociopathy is very difficult to discern. That being said, not only do I not think think it clear that a DNA test suggesting a predisposition to sociopathy should negatively influence my view of a political candidate, I do not think it clear that Omega informing me that a candidate is, in fact, a sociopath should negatively influence my view of a candidate....

Nihilists don't give a damn what happens to anyone. I wouldn't want to vote for a nihilist, because I don't want to give the power to declare nuclear war to someone who doesn't really care if it happens etc.

Sadists enjoy inflicting suffering on others. I wouldn't want to vote for a sadist, because I know that they would inevitably try to choose policies meant to reduce aggregate utility.

Sociopaths lack empathy, but are very good at manipulating people to think otherwise, for their own advancement and aggrandizement. In politics, their own advancement and aggrandizement would mean striving for re-election, and then the perks and prestige that come with being a former leader judged to have been successful. This means aiming for policies that actually enjoy public support and that are likely to be judged successful. In other words, while a virtue ethicist might object to a sociopath in principle, a consequentialist has little reason to expect a sociopath to act differently in office than any other politician. Why should one care if a leader lacks the ability to actually empathize with his citizens, if he has to act in ways that will lead people to believe that he does regardless?