If this sort of genetic testing existed, then politicians with very bad genes would never make it through the presidential primaries; they’d be filtered out before it got to partisans spinning or ignoring the evidence.
That is a good point. The essay was written about how DNA testing would change the mind-killing aspect of politics, but we probably should consider what effect it would have on just plain politics. Probably, if a lawyer came to the local political party and said that he was interested in running for some local regional office, and her DNA analysis said that she was likely to be a sociopath, the party would be less inclined to support him. Hopefully, DNA testing might make the quality of the candidates that reach higher levels of office a bit higher. There would probably be some benefits, but I doubt that it would help the mind-killer.
If you don’t think mindkilling sets in until the general election, then you didn’t actually follow the 2008 Democratic Primary (among other primaries, but it was on display in an extreme way in that particular case).
Also, in the specific case of sociopathy, I think that in response to a bad genetic test, the candidate would have an FMRI to measure the white matter in the amygdala, give an interview for the Hare Psychopathy test, and present any other confounding evidence that comes to hand, and then the debate would proceed much as MinibearRex suggests. Partisans would simply selectively weight the tests that supported their pre-existing intuitions.
If this sort of genetic testing existed, then politicians with very bad genes would never make it through the presidential primaries; they’d be filtered out before it got to partisans spinning or ignoring the evidence.
That is a good point. The essay was written about how DNA testing would change the mind-killing aspect of politics, but we probably should consider what effect it would have on just plain politics. Probably, if a lawyer came to the local political party and said that he was interested in running for some local regional office, and her DNA analysis said that she was likely to be a sociopath, the party would be less inclined to support him. Hopefully, DNA testing might make the quality of the candidates that reach higher levels of office a bit higher. There would probably be some benefits, but I doubt that it would help the mind-killer.
If you don’t think mindkilling sets in until the general election, then you didn’t actually follow the 2008 Democratic Primary (among other primaries, but it was on display in an extreme way in that particular case).
Also, in the specific case of sociopathy, I think that in response to a bad genetic test, the candidate would have an FMRI to measure the white matter in the amygdala, give an interview for the Hare Psychopathy test, and present any other confounding evidence that comes to hand, and then the debate would proceed much as MinibearRex suggests. Partisans would simply selectively weight the tests that supported their pre-existing intuitions.