Debate: Should High IQ Individuals Run the Nation?
Side: No, they should not.

(1) The intelligent quotients, and I deliberately use the plural, lack objective empirical value. There is no singular, absolute instrument for assessment but rather a plethora of different methods of assessment. Each of these methods not only employs different mechanisms for evaluating intelligence, but conceives of intelligence itself differently from the others. To classify any group by IQ prompts the question: which IQ? This is a question for which there is no objective answer, for the simple reason that intelligence itself is not an objective phenomenon but rather a subjective construct of value. There is nothing to suggest that any one understanding of intelligence is superior to another; defining it as the ability to perform complex maths is equally valid to defining it as the ability to be happiest. IQs are an attempt to quantitatively identify something which fundamentally does not exist in an objectively quantifiable way. They can be only as useful as the value assumptions they build upon, which presently renders them next to useless since they are so highly generalized as to be ineffectual at identifying specific intelligences suited to particular tasks.(2) Nations are essentially a representation of consolidated power. There is nothing else inherent to them but this, neither in form nor in ends. The popular sentiment seems to be that nations do or ought to serve some greater good, and in the context of this debate that higher IQ persons would best apply it to that end. I will focus upon this view, and address any others as they are raised in response rather than attempting to anticipate them in advance. The prevailing attitude seems naive, particularly given with what regularity nations fail to benefit the common person (or even the uncommon person, case depending). Nations did not emerge from and persist through natural selection because they were benevolent, but because they were and are minimally more capable of keeping more people alive than other alternatives. They are not ideal and they need not bend to idealistic sentiment; indeed, they may even be incapable of doing so completely. Nor is there any objective basis for arguing that they should do so. Why, then, should the higher IQ run the nations? For this abstract idea of a nation that lacks fundamental meaning or value? For themselves, when power also invites risk? I can see no sound rationale for saying that the high IQ should run the nations, though plenty for why they might do so.(3) High IQ does not necessarily make a person infallible, but it may very well delude them into thinking that they are nearly so. Case in point: Chris Langen's advocacy of an antidysgenics campaign. While natural selection is far from perfect it is also an extraordinarily complex process, the replication and then surpassing of which would be immensely difficult and almost certainly impossible under our current, limited understanding. He also seems somewhat fated to post hoc rationalizations of non-original and not particularly compelling philosophies (e.g. re God), although without reading his actual body of work I could not say so with reasonable certainty.I have more thoughts, but this is already quite lengthy so I will leave it at that.