Outrageous! I was expecting them to be flown to a cruel feed lot in some central american country.

As I(ronically) recall, it wasn’t just a nursing home, it was a “memory care” facility. I’m sure her staff were taking care of things while she was indisposed. /s

a position that has an 8 year lifespan

Legally. Notice any patterns lately about legal compliance?

that event is significantly less useful to new faces than it is to established politicians

Because voters are ill informed, careless, prejudiced, and operate more on name recognition than anything else, after party affiliation - straight ticket votes.

established politicians who are also known quantities that are most likely using those networks as well.

Players like Bernie Sanders should start “partnering up” by the time they reach 60 years of age, clearly making public appearances with a protoge under the age of 40 whose name gets tied to theirs at every possible opportunity - say Bernie’s protoge was Golda Schuster, let the public hear Bernie Sanders & Golda Schuster at every possible opportunity for 20+ years, when Bernie finally steps down, they can vote with confidence that Golda Schuster will carry on Bernie’s legacy faithfully, because that’s what they’ve been told for two+ decades. Thousands will still enter the ballot box, look at the choices and say to themselves “Golda Who?” but it would be a much better transition of power than we have today.

Cognition is a big part of competence

Yes, and I can only hope that our current system is somehow shielding us from the worst of the dementia driven choices that undobutedly are happening in D.C. every day.

Totally agree. And those “Let’s go Brandon” morons who were “all about the price of gas” somehow are still giving repeat offender sleeping during meetings shitting himself while incoherently ranting figurehead a pass because it was never about what they were talking about anyway, it’s all about “us vs them” and whatever their delusions are about how “their team” is looking out for them - they lie to themselves almost as often as they lie about their reasons for their decisions. No, it’s not worth debating when the other side is transparently 100% insincere.

My dad is pushing 80 and still doing o.k. - not super great, but I hope to be doing as well when I get there.

My mom’s dad was on all kinds of blood pressure meds, and they mentally aged him prematurely - after a decade of the slowly gathering fog they changed up the meds and it was literally like they reset his mind to what it was 10 years earlier.

Trump never did well, Biden still came off badly. It’s the old double standard - Clinton gets impeached for a blowjob, meanwhile pedo island gets a pass. Democratic candidates have to be super-human smart, educated, informed - but others just have to be “relatable.”

He dropped out of the re-election bid because he had a “senior moment” in the debate - that’s not full blown senility, but it’s enough to sway plenty of people who are deciding who gets their finger on the launch button for WWIII.

The real issue with these candidates is: we’re not electing the person, we’re electing the team they putatively command, the network you refer to - all the people they work with and trust and will continue to use into the future if re-elected. And that’s the twist, the candidate can be a total figurehead, a loose cannon moron even, but who’s behind them is what’s really important.

Reagan demonstrated this in spades: the lead actor of Bedtime for Bonzo? Really? We finally topped that absurdity with 45, but it was still an unprecedented doozie - his job was to read the script (teleprompter) deliver the lines, end of story - the machine behind him was what put “his” policies into motion.

Cap at 65 is arbitrary and extreme… I might have thought that when I was 12, but reality is: experience matters. Still, dementia matters too, but 65 is no guarantee of dementia, yet. https://old.reddit.com/r/DownWithIncumbency/

I hope I die before I get old.

I don’t mind if I live to 120, but when I get to that stage where I need other people to do more for me than I can do for myself… it’s time to quit before I get farther behind.

Committee assignments are granted by seniority, so

that needs to change. Maybe cap the senority advantage at 10 years, or 5? Draw god-damned straws before giving the gavel to the most senile.

You’re telling me I’ll still have some umph when I’m 64 - that you’ll still need me, that you’ll still feed me?

Hard to believe from here in the run-up to it, seems like I’m picking up speed on the back side of the hill…

I wrote this 3 years ago, just as true today as then:

https://old.reddit.com/r/DownWithIncumbency/comments/uxgcrp/we_should_not_serve_the_dead/

U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein was born in 1933, assumed her office in 1992, and still serves today at the age of 88. Thank you for your service Dianne, but don’t you think it’s past time to groom a younger protege to take your place?

The laws shaped and passed by our statesmen, elder and otherwise, will control how people live for decades to come. Not only should they be of sound mind when crafting and considering these laws, they should also have a bit of skin in the game: live with the results of their decisions for at least some time.

U.S. Presidents must be at least 35 years of age. I propose that, ideally, they should also not be much over 70 years of age while serving. To gently shape our current system toward this ideal, we might modify election laws to deduct age points from candidates who will be over this age threshold while serving. For instance:

For every year in which the candidate would be over the age threshold while serving their term, one electoral point is deducted from their total for each year of age they will be over the threshold.

If the ultimate age threshold is 70, and a presidential candidate will be 66 years of age or younger when sworn in for a four year term, then that candidate will receive all electoral points the same as they do today. But, if they are 67, and their elected term runs at least 6 months past their 70th birthday, then one electoral point is deducted from their total when deciding the election outcome for that period of “age over threshold” during their term. If they are 68, then there would be one point deducted for the third year of their term and two points deducted for the fourth, a total of 3 points off. If they would be 80 when assuming office then that would be 10+11+12+13=46 electoral points deducted, making victory difficult, but not impossible.

If an older candidate truly is the better choice and will win by such a wide margin, then let the people choose them to continue to serve. But their advantages need to be clear over a younger candidate.

To avoid disruption to the current system and fields of candidates, the age threshold could be “soft started” at 90 and reduced by one year per year until it reaches 70. So, if this system of old age disadvantage were started in the year 2025, it would not reach its final age of 70 until 2045.

Senators and members of the House of Representatives could face similar age disadvantages, granting 0.25% of the popular vote per year of age that would be served over the threshold age. If an 88 year old senator runs for re-election against an age threshold of 70, they would be granting their opponent an (18+19+20+21+22+23)*0.25 = 30.75% advantage in the election, in other words they would need to win more than 80.75% of the popular vote in order to be elected against a candidate 64 years of age or younger.

We’ve got the wisdom of the elders in the Supreme Court, keep the new laws relevant to the people who they will be impacting.

Recent, ongoing observations of the past 12 years…

They also love to churn butter… listen to Weird Al’s Amish Paradise if you don’t get the reference.

I’d start to be impressed if the AI secured its crypto such that the humans running it couldn’t access the crypto.

if the environment was set up poorly enough.

And there’s the key. I often compare AI agents to chainsaws. If a chainsaw cuts off both legs of all the forest workers riding in a truck, is that the chainsaw’s fault?

Simple fact is: if the AI Agent broke out of its testing environment, somebody left the door open for it to do so. Just because the person setting up the test environment is incompetent doesn’t mean the AI is diabolical.

Now, if you first asked the AI Agent to ensure that its test environment was secure, really really secure, and it assured you “yes, there is no way I can get out” and then it turned around and got out, attempting to cover its tracks while doing so, I’d ask: what was this LLM trained on? Black hat conference proceedings, or…?