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In my opinion even charisma implies higher than average intellect which is already something.

We should put more pressure on elected politicians around competence and integrity, sure, but it doesn’t mean random person is going to be better.

In the original comparison second category of people have much higher intellect than average.

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> In the original comparison second category of people have much higher intellect than average.

I think that intellect may sometimes be weakly and unreliably associated with some kinds of competence, but not with integrity, which is as important. I think power seekers are self-selecting to be more self-serving.

Issue with your original statement is that it implies negative correlation between intellect and being good politician. All the issues you describe (both being self serving and power seeking) apply to anyone regardless to their intellect (and I still think they apply less to people of high intellect just because they see bigger picture, but I might be wrong).

We need to optimize for less self serving and more integrity but we should strive for smarter people up there too.

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