Being new to the half-bakery, I am not certain if this idea has already made the rounds, although I did check the existing listings and did not find it. So forgive me if it has already been baked here.

No more presidential debates.

Instead, a team of journalists, historians, political analysts, scholars, etc. devise a decision-making simulatiuon that each candidate must face blind, in public. Each candidate performs the simulation in isolation. With current AI technology, it would be possile to create an analysis engine, similar to what I believe are called decision matrixes like chess-playing systems use (forgive me, I am not an AI expert -- perhaps someone who is can be more specific about this), that would not so much grade the candidate's decision, but put it to more significant scrutiny: it would present the most likely resulting situation based on historical analysis. This would be very telling on many levels: it would not only provide perspective on the candidate's ability to make decisions, but also on his or her sense of history. The candidate, of course, in the event that he or she got a bad result, is welcome to dispute the findings of the engine. But in so doing, he or she would be coming against the entire academic community that devised the system, which would also be telling.

I really think this is an idea whose time has come.

(By the way, it's an extension in my little brain of an idea I posted under 'Movie President of the U.S.' -- go read that and you'll see how I came up with this)
-- globaltourniquet, Apr 15 2001

i love this idea but it would be vulnerable to the political leanings or possibile bribery of the situation authors who could inform the candidate of what would happen

also because the situation wold occur before the candidate is in office they would be on 'best behaviour' to impress the voters .

one way to make this slightly less fallible in this way would be to have the candidate spend the end of their campaign in the simulation and then tell them that they won before the election really happens and see what they act like when they think they are in office. of course this would require perfect-real-to-life simulation
-- chud, Apr 15 2001


Funny -- when you wrote "AI technology," I read it as "Al technology."
-- beauxeault, Apr 15 2001


UnaBubba --

Regardless of who really makes the decisions during the president's term in office, this idea would show us what any candidate in question is really made of. In fact, given the facts you point out, this idea would do so more than anything that happened during any prospective term in office would. And that's why it's a good idea. Because after all, the bottom line is, the president is the Chief Executive.
-- globaltourniquet, Apr 17 2001


I don't disagree with you at all about who really makes decisions. But I maintain that for every reason you have listed, this is a terrific idea. It would be our only chance to see what they are made of on their own. Seeing that, we can have some measure of confidence that they will perform well with support as the Chief Executive.

Maybe.
-- globaltourniquet, Apr 18 2001


Adding a slightly british element to this, why not do a one off election special of BBC's Time Commanders, where the opposing parties' cabinets' would attempt the same historical reconstruction. It'd certinaly be more interesting than the Party Political Broardcasts.

Oh BTW, sorry this post is so late, just found the idea while hitrting Random a few times
-- cFish, Dec 12 2003


Economics as 'debated' is a dreamworld with many strange ideas. There is always freely available land to use. Patents are only given for truly novel inventions. Banks create real wealth when they create money through loans. Democratic government is highly competitive because anyone can get elected. The government can spend more on services than it collects in taxes thanks to deficit spending.

These falsehoods persist because they benefit the elite, not because they stand up to scrutiny.

I fear any such system would be corrupted in this manner and reflect the pseudo economics dreamworld. Plenty of decent economists would point out the flaws, but they point out the flawed arguments and ideas anyway.

Government completely ignores economists if they don't support at least one big party. How many Nobel Prizewinners have recommended Land Value Tax over income/sales tax?
-- Bad Jim, May 14 2008



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