3 ms·

I've thought a bit about sortition. My favourite way of explaining it: Suppose a billionaire is looking for someone to marry. They want a partner who is interes

I've thought a bit about sortition. My favourite way of explaining it: Suppose a billionaire is looking for someone to marry. They want a partner who is interested in them for more than just a paycheque. Say gold-diggers represent just a very small fraction of the population but are extremely good at feigning fascination in pursuit of their goals and finding themselves in the company of billionaires. In fact they are so good at ingratiating themselves with billionaires that any potential partner this billionaire picks from the people he or she knows is likely to be a gold digger. What is a good but non-optimal solution? The billionaire should pick 1000 random people of the gender he/she prefers and make their selection from this pack. This cuts out the influence of the adverse selection effects the billionaire experiences just from being a billionaire. If all they’re looking for in a partner is someone in at most in the ~99th percentile of people this approach will work with little cost, as candidates can then be selected from this pool using conventional means. This would not work if gold-digging is a reaction to circumstance rather than an in-built characteristic - the same is true of corruption. For politics, one approach would be sortition applied to those in the 99th percentile on a widely used standardized test like the SATs -it's important that this test be used outside politics, too. Sortition would then be applied to narrow down the pool from ~160000 (about the number of people with sufficient scores over a 10 year time-span) to say a few hundred, a few dozen, or less and then a conventional election from there. Though, you may need very attractive salaries to ensure those elected choose to serve as most don't have an interest in politics - perhaps a ridiculous pension for life after a few years of service.

jacquesm 11y ago
It would be nice to give the 1000 random people and the person picked a say in the process too.
maus42 11y ago
I'd replace the SAT score with some small, fixed amount of people vouching for you so that you could enter the lottery. (After all, there might be someone capable who because of some good reasons didn't manage to take SAT, and the system should be just and fair for them, too.) The amount should not be so large that you'd need the gigantic ad campaigns you need today to be elected, but large enough that you need support outside your immediate family. Maybe ~20. Gathering their 'votes' demonstrates that you're at least interested in the job, and the element of trust is still there (someone trusts you would do a good job, and not doing that would be a betrayal).
- Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
  I think standardized tests are vastly underrated. One of the nice properties of sortition is it combines well with many other forms of selection. However, this seems to ruin the point: >Gathering their 'votes' demonstrates that you're at least interested in the job, and the element of trust is still there (someone trusts you would do a good job, and not doing that would be a betrayal). A big plus of sortition is it does not maximally select for the people most interested in political power. Having to be elected or self-selected in such a fashion would mar this.
  - randcraw 11y ago
    I agree, tests have their uses. Like any kind of constraint, they can be used to diminish the search space to increase the desired yield. When devised and administered fairly, they can go a long way toward leveling a playing field (or excluding the crazies). For example, if we want to exclude congress(wo)men who are powermad egomaniacs, we start by asking knowledgable sources to rank candidates by lust, greed, and vanity, then exclude from random selection all those who fall below a certain threshold. Voila, no more psychos (golddiggers) joining the the Washington Elite. The lovely part of Sortition is that with a large number of fair & knowledgable 'rankers' (or 'standardized tests') it's basically impossible to game the system. So I vote 'yea' for Sortition.
darkmighty 11y ago
The critical parameters here are the probability of a malicious/non-malicious actor (or competent/non-competent, etc) accepting the job (let's call it Pma, Pna), and the probability of selecting a malicious/non-malicious actor (let's call em Pm, Pn). What you want is that the probability of selecting times the probability of acceptance be greater for non-malicious: Pn Pan >> Pm Pam If we assume we can't do better than random screening for malicious, we have a fixed Pn, Pm. So the crucial thing is to find incentives so that non-malicious actors are the least likely to take the job. A good pre-screening (if possible) would have to raise the RHS or lower the RHS. For example, if the major incentive for malice is monetary, sampling from wealthy citizens could lower Pm, but it might also sightly lower Pan, so you may have to spend more resources to guarantee Pan=Pam=1.

jacquesm 11y ago

It would be nice to give the 1000 random people and the person picked a say in the process too.

maus42 11y ago

I'd replace the SAT score with some small, fixed amount of people vouching for you so that you could enter the lottery. (After all, there might be someone capable who because of some good reasons didn't manage to take SAT, and the system should be just and fair for them, too.) The amount should not be so large that you'd need the gigantic ad campaigns you need today to be elected, but large enough that you need support outside your immediate family. Maybe ~20. Gathering their 'votes' demonstrates that you're at least interested in the job, and the element of trust is still there (someone trusts you would do a good job, and not doing that would be a betrayal).

Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
I think standardized tests are vastly underrated. One of the nice properties of sortition is it combines well with many other forms of selection. However, this seems to ruin the point: >Gathering their 'votes' demonstrates that you're at least interested in the job, and the element of trust is still there (someone trusts you would do a good job, and not doing that would be a betrayal). A big plus of sortition is it does not maximally select for the people most interested in political power. Having to be elected or self-selected in such a fashion would mar this.
- randcraw 11y ago
  I agree, tests have their uses. Like any kind of constraint, they can be used to diminish the search space to increase the desired yield. When devised and administered fairly, they can go a long way toward leveling a playing field (or excluding the crazies). For example, if we want to exclude congress(wo)men who are powermad egomaniacs, we start by asking knowledgable sources to rank candidates by lust, greed, and vanity, then exclude from random selection all those who fall below a certain threshold. Voila, no more psychos (golddiggers) joining the the Washington Elite. The lovely part of Sortition is that with a large number of fair & knowledgable 'rankers' (or 'standardized tests') it's basically impossible to game the system. So I vote 'yea' for Sortition.

darkmighty 11y ago

The critical parameters here are the probability of a malicious/non-malicious actor (or competent/non-competent, etc) accepting the job (let's call it Pma, Pna), and the probability of selecting a malicious/non-malicious actor (let's call em Pm, Pn). What you want is that the probability of selecting times the probability of acceptance be greater for non-malicious: Pn Pan >> Pm Pam If we assume we can't do better than random screening for malicious, we have a fixed Pn, Pm. So the crucial thing is to find incentives so that non-malicious actors are the least likely to take the job. A good pre-screening (if possible) would have to raise the RHS or lower the RHS. For example, if the major incentive for malice is monetary, sampling from wealthy citizens could lower Pm, but it might also sightly lower Pan, so you may have to spend more resources to guarantee Pan=Pam=1.