In 2003, a reporter asked candidates for the mayor of San Francisco questions from the Voight-Kampff test. Most of them failed.
Someone needs to administer this test to the Republican presidential candidates, and to Hillary Clinton*, as soon as possible. I fear we’ve been overrun by replicants, and most of them are crude, older models.
*Is there any other Democratic candidate? We seem to be drifting towards a mediocre non-choice.
(via Skippy)
I wish Elizabeth Warren was a candidate, but it looks like she isn’t, sadly…
Clearly we’ll also have running for Democratic nomination… er… that guy… his name… Al Gore? No, the current one. Joe Biden. Wait, really? His name’s Joe Biden? Man. I know the name of every vice president since Carter’s, but can’t remember our current one’s.
The Voight-Kampff test was very culturally biased – most of the questions were based on the fixation people in the setting’s Earth had about animals, since ecological collapse had rendered them all very rare or extinct. That’s why the company’s lie, “she’s a human, she just didn’t grow up on Earth” was believable. (It’s also one of the ways the book builds alienation in the reader, since in real life wasps aren’t rare and precious treasures and plenty of people kill them.) Also, the verbal responses in the Voight-Kampff test didn’t really matter, he was actually measuring instinctive physiological responses like pupil dilation.
Now, if politicians start failing the Bonelli Reflex-Arc test, then we’ll be in trouble.
I’m disappointed the one guy who picked up the Blade Runner references didn’t answer the last question with:
“Let me tell you about my mother.”
Other semi-declared Democratic candidates:
Martin O’Malley – meh (and I say that as someone who voted him governor twice)
James Webb – no
Bernie Sanders – I love this guy, but technically he’s not even a Democrat
Elizabeth Warren – has promised not to run
Another candidate better get into the ring soon, because the election is only 20 months away!
“Let me tell you about my mother…”
Damn! Legato beat me to the punch…
@Nemo:
James Webb = No?
Who wouldn’t want a computerized space telescope as president? Surely the decisions would be much more sensical than the median quality decisions of any human president!
…annnnnnd, scene.
Kagato, sorry.
No problem, Akira.
Had I been adopting an online nickname a few years later, I may well have lifted my name from that guy instead of this guy. (However, if I knew it would persist as long as it has, I hope I would have come up with something original instead!)
You’re at the Smithsonian, and it tries to show you its butterfly collection…
@ Akira MacKenzie
Considering the context and the meaning of ‘legato’ that was a brilliantly ironic slip :-)
O’Malley doesn’t seem that bad. He talks the talk and even fought for gay marriage and to get rid of the death penalty in MD. That takes some chutzpah as those were pretty seriously divided issues. I’m not sure if he’s done anything for or against money in politics, though.
I wish Elizabeth Warren was a candidate….
I would welcome the chance to vote for someone with her positions, but the whole “Draft Senator Warren” movement makes me profoundly uncomfortable. I mean, have any of these people really thought about why they’re not taking no for an answer from a woman?
Cite HTML fail, there. The first line was a quote from NH.Hwhswcgabm(nr) @1.
Will they pass the Turing test?
I’ve mentioned this elsewhere: my problem with Warren is I’m not convinced she can deliver. I want her advising the president, but I don’t think she’s a good enough politician to be president. Someone like O’Malley who can get things done is what we need. And Warren and Sanders telling him what to get done.
I like the character Vala’s answer in Stargate SG-1: (hesitatingly) “Because you are also a tortoise.”
eww, I was worried, but after finally taking that test, I got this result:
Yow, Nice to know.
Howevah, I am aghast it is even possible to “fail” this test. Really? Do Politicons fail this test en masse,as “NOT human” or “Congrats, you are an Android” ? To think politicos as not human brings whole new meaning to “representative” (of “ideas”, “not just bodies”). And all this paranoia of robopocalypse seems to be “late to the party”. They’ve been ruling us for years, and seem to be patiently biding their time; to make small incremental changes to xform us completely into their pets/companions.
Yeah, as a Baltimore resident, I’m really not much of a fan of O’Malley. As mayor, his biggest “successes” were lying about crime statistics to make him look good, lying about the economy to make him look good, etc. He did do some very good things as governor, but I bet many of them were just to get national attention his way. He’s been running for President since he was a city councilperson.
We could let you have Boris Johnson, he was born in the US and is over 35. He would pass as a Democrat, even though by sane standards he is a right winger. Please, pretty please take Boris, there is no charge.
richardelguru @ 13
Actually, it’s not so much a Fruedian slip rather than iOS autocorrect thinking it knows better than I do.
I voted for O’Malley myself, but he reminds me of when the Maryland State Quarter was minted. Most folks looked at it and wondered “What’s this beehive thing on the back?” Turned out that our Legislature thought that the most recognizable thing about Maryland was the dome just above their own heads.
Even a Marylander like me has the same sense of bafflement at seeing O’Malley run for President.
All but candidate 6 know nothing about wasps. You do not brush a wasp off your arm. You do not kill it.This is the best way to get stung.
Based on second-hand personal experience – I witnessed a friend get stung by a wasp – if a wasp lands on your arm, you’re getting stung. There’s no way around it.
For the record, no one did anything. My friend froze completely. I’m not even sure he was breathing… he just stared at the wasp on his arm… maybe hoping hoping to kill it by death stare. The rest of us froze because we had no idea what to do. It took about 30 seconds for my friend to scream and the wasp to fly away. Happily, we did find out that he wasn’t allergic to wasp and bee stings after all (he thought he was before this, though I don’t recall why), but it clearly still sucked.
I mean… personally… I accept that she said no. I just don’t like it. I want her to be the candidate because I love her domestic policies. She’s the kind of candidate who would force an about face in the political spectrum, and we could start seeing a return to a more normalized spectrum with an actual left-wing instead of our current fully-right-wing spectrum.
If she doesn’t want to run, I’m not gonna sign petitions and stuff. That’s her decision and that’s fine. I’m just not happy about it because it means we’re left with Hillary Clinton, and while I have no intention of voting Republican… ever… I really don’t like Hillary.
I had forgotten about this — and, of course, Ammiano turned out to be a really good guy.
About Joe Biden — he is the only person currently running for President who is obviously not a replicant. Probably that makes him unelectable in our culture.
I like Hillary Clinton as a president. She did lots of good things for human rights during her tenure as SoS. I know her pro-choice bonafides. I know her actual health care reform stance. And I know she is a politician that will do her job as a politician- ie it, press on her agenda and spin things to make her look the best she can look, not try to play nice with a group that says they want to destroy her. She’s shown she can hold her own when it comes to political controversy.
Is she as liberal as I would want in an ideal candidate? No. She’s too hawkish, too corporate, and too invested in the political status quo. She also plays too nice when it comes to “faith based organizations” for my tastes. She supports, in theory, a lot of liberal things but is tepid in her application (though she was one of the first big politicians to be in support of gay marriage in public). But I would rather have a candidate that I know will get some of the things I want to get done because she’s competent enough to do so than have someone who holds all my ideals but can’t play the game. To call her a Republican is insulting- you may not like “safe, legal, and rare” as a perfect catchphrase, but it’s sure as fuck better than “Babies from rape are the blessing in the dark place” nonsense that the right is spewing. And she’s one of the few politicians I’ve ever heard of that actually push back on the lies that the right says- like when supporting abortion rights or health care.
IF she is the candidate, I’ll vote for her. I’m probably going to primary for the Republicans this year because it’s their turn and they’ll probably win, so best to get the “best of the worst” (and I don’t even know who that is this year) but I’ll vote for the Democrat. I have no other choice but a protest vote.
I had a wasp blow in behind my glasses one morning on the way to work. It stung me in the cheek in the split-second that my body’s not-unnatural reaction was to blink it away. Stupid wasp! Despite that — and I don’t think it’s the SSRIs talking — if I found a wasp on my arm at home, I’d be inclined to trap it in a glass with a bit of paper slid underneath and take it outside. Outside, I’d probably swat it away, hoping it would take the hint and fuck off to bother someone else.
Not in America. :-)
Why don’t you help the tortoise?
I’m a Republican?
Great answer.
…
Hang on. How many arms do you have?
One possible effect of Hillary Clinton ending up as President is that she’s utterly unacceptable to the Republicans (for a different subset, but the same essential reason as President Obama is). That will have the knock-on effect of forcing them to come out completely opposed to anything she is for. As far as I can tell, she’s a centrist, a pragmatist, and certainly not stupid. It seems to me that all she’d have to do to get the Republican leadership to condemn fresh air, sunshine, and wet puppy kisses is to publicly announce that she’s for them.
A clever politician could use that as a powerful tool for fulfilling Voltaire’s prayer.
I know it’s depressingly cynical to use the office of the Presidency as a blunt political instrument, but if you’re not going to be able to get any useful legislature done anyway, you might as well force your enemies to drown in their own rage froth while blocking you.
He’s announced (last month) his intention of repudiating his American citizenship – so the “draft Boris” campaign had better get a move on! His ambition to be the Prime Minister of the UK is scarcely concealed; he’s standing for Parliament in May’s general election, and if the Tories do badly enough for Cameron to have to stand down (which is quite likely), has a good chance of succeeding him as party leader.
Kagato, #33
Haha, that was great!
Give them the Apgar test!