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Are You Smarter Than A Politician?
By Michael White | November 22nd 2008 11:28 PM | 5 comments | Print | E-mail | Track Comments
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Welcome to Adaptive Complexity, where I write about genomics, systems biology, evolution, and the connection between science and literature,

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OK, this isn't strictly science, but take this U.S. civics quiz and then see if you do better than your average US government official.

Is it really surprising that government officials did worse than the average in this survey?

I got 31 out of 33 - how did you all do?

Comments

I got 30/33.

Anonymous (not verified) | 11/23/08 | 08:24 AM
adaptivecomplexity
Congratulations, you're too smart to be a politician!  Nice score.

A lot of the quiz dealt with stuff that many of us probably forgot after high school.  I couldn't remember whether the Lincoln-Douglas debates were over expanding slavery into new states or over the legitimacy of secession, for example.

Michael White | 11/23/08 | 11:22 AM
Hank
I got 30 as well.   I didn't know that FDR threatened to add more Justices (it would be easier to change the Constitution for what he wanted rather than something large and permanent like adding more justices) and on 30 their knowledge of actual economics is wrong.  #7 I just plain missed.

Hank Campbell | 11/23/08 | 15:12 PM
adaptivecomplexity
Yeah, some of the econ questions were convoluted. On 30 I thought they were just referring to classic Keynsian monetary policy, but whether a government would "most likely follow" that in reality is a different matter - the question was not very well put.

Edit: I'm a moron - I meant to say "fiscal policy", not monetary policy. I do know the difference, really!

Michael White | 11/24/08 | 12:38 PM
Steve Davis
But did you pick up on the propaganda contained in the free market question?

Steve Davis | 11/24/08 | 17:40 PM

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