Re: Should Presidents Be able To Spot Three Move Forced Checkmates?
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All other things being equal, yes. But in the real world, all other things are rarely eqaul. Von Neumann wanted to nuke the Russians because he said it was inevitable they would do it to us. He was wrong. Dangerously wrong. If I were to find out that Truman and Eisenhower were unable to pass your chess test, I would still have preferred either of them to Von Neumann. And it isn't close.
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You and Lestat keep getting my point confused. I don't claim that mega intelligence would significantly increase someone's competance to be president. It is in fact probably correlated with less competance. But so is being unable to do only moderately difficult thinking problems. Maybe the most difficult three move problems are harder than I thought, but that is off the subject. The point is that the ability to look ahead and visualize the possible consequences of various actions is an important attrribute for a president to have. He can't just turn to an expert for something so basic.
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