That seems more reasonable that letting the existing government decide who should be permitted to oppose them.
Since we (loosely speaking) already pick candidates and representatives, persuading them to provide a copy of a psych evaluation could be an interesting twist on the process. The next problem would be the Orange One style refusal to participate, or provision of an alt-cert from a non-reputable source. That doesn't even begin to touch on the merits of the actual certification (homosexuality is a mental illness. Or the Russian "failure to support {leader} is a mental illness"), and the difficulty of establishing a baseline - you'd really need to get every current democratic leader to submit to the evaluation, and ideally every elected member. Then repeat every year so we get an idea of how those change over time.
Given that we struggle to even obtain "are they going to survive for four more years" medical certificates, I'm not sure how we go about something like this.
]]>Probably not something that can be done overnight, but in maybe 10-15 years. Tech including social media is probably here to stay and it's already being used across age groups which means that, unlike previous generations, we could better predict how any candidate is likely to react under different scenarios as well as identify their core (most consistent) values. More importantly - we'll have lots and lots of history on each individual.
How to do this:
AI mediated media and feedback: send out the same messages/stimuli to randomly selected folk to start. Stimuli would be selected for their range of 'affect'. Could also combine with smartphone lens that can measure iris size plus via other apps other physical reactions (e.g., thermal and electrical change of user's hands). Key objective is to establish a baseline of 'humanity' which means the full range of humanity - quirks, tics, warts across cultures, age groups, etc. Next, see how much the baseline changes (per human and overall humanity) over time. This is primarily to map 'normal' developmental and response-to-environment changes. (Cross-validate using online advertising, which would only need a few tweaks.)
Longitudinal behavioral studies like the one in NZ have already shown pretty good results in identifying which traits in early childhood correlate most highly with which adult problems.
As this approach is already in current use, it makes sense to publicly and scientifically evaluate it for its different potential applications (including selecting a leader) before such manipulation becomes too attractive commercially thereby quashing any public study -- like tobacco, lead paint, oil, etc.
]]>More Canadian anecdata: Heard exactly the same thing, with variant wording (motorcycle = organ donormobile) from an older doctor and a med student from my age cohort. The problem isn't that motorcycles are inherently dangerous*, but rather that motorists tend to not see them and bulldoze them. Ditto for bicycles.
As for bicycle helmets: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11235796 https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/doi/10.1093/ije/dyw153/2617198/Bicycle-injuries-and-helmet-use-a-systematic If I'm going to have my head whacked on something, I'll take the helmet please. As in the case of the (in)famous BMJ article on double-blinded testing of parachutes (http://www.bmj.com/content/327/7429/1459), some conclusions are pretty obvious.
]]>Blood flow to brain rapidly switchable. Thinking about how to operationalize this through diet and conscious control. (If we don't already do this automatically.) :-) Would be less crude than control of heart rate. Electrical 'switch' in brain's capillary network monitors activity and controls blood flow (access (which I don't have) needed for paper: Capillary K+-sensing initiates retrograde hyperpolarization to increase local cerebral blood flow) To achieve this feat, the capillary sensory network relies on a protein (an ion channel) that detects increases in potassium during neuronal activity. Increased activity of this channel facilitates the flow of ions across the capillary membrane, thereby creating a small electrical current that generates a negative charge—a rapidly transmitted signal—that communicates the need for additional blood flow to the upstream arterioles, which then results in increased blood flow to the capillaries. The team's study also determined that if the potassium level is too high, this mechanism can be disabled, which may contribute to blood flow disturbances in a broad range of brain disorders.
Some environmental science news, I think future-good if it empowers regulatory changes. Worth clicking just for the picture: Fingerprint' technique spots frog populations at risk from pollution Paper: Subtle effects of environmental stress observed in the early life stages of the Common frog, Rana temporaria Herein we investigated the biochemical tissue ‘fingerprint’ in spawn and early-stage tadpoles of the Common frog, Rana temporaria, using attenuated total reflection-Fourier-transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy with the objective of observing differences in the biochemical constituents of the respective amphibian tissues due to varying water quality in urban and agricultural ponds. ... In addition, the use of hand-held IR devices could potentially allow the non-destructive monitoring of amphibians throughout their development. Field-based FTIR devices for this type of analysis could provide rapid insight into the biochemical status of different tissue types with minimal sample preparation or processing, providing insight into the health status of a given population which could be of great benefit to the many species of amphibian vulnerable to extinction.
]]>Sometime in the dim & distant past I read a story which had a passing reference to a President of Earth who was given the (unwanted) job by a random lottery of qualified citizens. I've a nagging feeling it may have been somewhere in the Niven 'Known Space' books, alongside the rather entertaining reproduction lottery breeding selectively for a luck gene thing.
There were some pretty good ship names in that series too
]]>The counterpont is that I'd rather not have my head whacked at all.
Forcing everyone to wear helmets roughly halves the number of cyclists which more than doubles my chances of getting whacked.
]]>Although no US state has a population as large as Germany (California is ~40 million), There are quite a few US states that have populations much smaller than the countries you've cited: five states1 with populations under a million (the smallest of which, Wyoming, only has 585k, or 0.18% of the US population), and eight more states with populations between one and two million.
So, I'm not sure that the US is actually more balanced.
[1] Ignoring the existence of territories like American Samoa (55k) or Guam (160k).
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