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If you can't trust judges you're in a lot of trouble. Why trust the randomizer? Or what happens if I accuse the randomizer of being untrustworthy? What happens

If you can't trust judges you're in a lot of trouble. Why trust the randomizer? Or what happens if I accuse the randomizer of being untrustworthy? What happens in smaller districts where there may be a small number of choices? You may want to check out how elections were done in Venice in centuries past. They thought they could randimize their way to fairness too, it looks pretty silly and ineffective in retrospect: https://www.venetoinside.com/hidden-treasures/post/the-election-of-the-doge-of-the-republic-of-venice/ https://www.venetoinside.com/hidden-treasures/post/the-elect... The legal system is for the exceptions, the places that automated systems break down, the places that need human judgment. That's the importance of a free press. We can't work without trust, we need it, even though it introduces certain risks.

searchableguy 6y ago
Wouldn't a randomizer help with changing incentives? The default assumption should be that people are corrupt given the right incentive which in this case shows. It's not perfect but it's better that someone is not certain that they are able to attract certain cases for future.
staticautomatic 6y ago
“ If you can't trust judges you're in a lot of trouble.” Alexander Hamilton wrote in the federalist papers that we need juries to protect us from corrupt judges.
- dbcurtis 6y ago
  Unfortunately that does not protect us from the 9th circus. For cases that I follow, just going by whether they were appointed by an R or a D president is 97% accurate at predicting how a judge will vote. If I can predict their vote without reading the briefs or listening to the arguments, I suspect they can (and do) as well.
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    Or, more likely, you need to follow more cases.
    - dbcurtis 6y ago
      I mainly follow civil rights cases.
jjoonathan 6y ago
> Why trust the randomizer? It's easy to do worse than random. Trying to do better than random often ends with doing worse than random, while aiming for randomness usually ends with randomness. > They thought they could randimize their way to fairness too, it looks pretty silly and ineffective in retrospect: I see information about the process but none about how and why it failed.
- jackfoxy 6y ago
  Yeah, wasn't Venice a republic for close to 1,000 years? What ultimately did in Venice was Napoleon conquering all of continental Europe.
  - edgyquant 6y ago
    Eh they were essentially a monarchy by that point and power fell to the hands of a few families by the time of Marco Polo
    - fakedang 6y ago
      What's different from then and today?
      - edgyquant 6y ago
        Is this an honest question?
        fakedang 6y ago
        Was being rhetorical.
- michaelmior 6y ago
  My interpretation of the comment about trusting the randomizer was how do we trust that selection was actually made randomly?
rectang 6y ago
> If you can't trust judges you're in a lot of trouble. Exactly. We can't trust judges. And we're in a lot of trouble.
ardy42 6y ago
> You may want to check out how elections were done in Venice in centuries past. They thought they could randimize their way to fairness too, it looks pretty silly and ineffective in retrospect: https://www.venetoinside.com/hidden-treasures/post/the-election-of-the-doge-of-the-republic-of-venice/ https://www.venetoinside.com/hidden-treasures/post/the-elect... What specific problem were the Venetians trying to solve with that design, and how did it turn out to be ineffective?
- pklo 6y ago
  They were trying to avoid oligarchy, where few powerful families would monopolize the power. It worked remarkaby well, actually: Venetian Republic lasted 1000 years, served as a bulwark against western expansion of the Ottoman empire by running an effective combination of trade engagement and military projection, and was arguably a shining light of western civilization for most of that time. They were done in by the rise of nation-states and loss of income from their Eastern trade, not by failure of their system.
matheusmoreira 6y ago
> If you can't trust judges you're in a lot of trouble. They're just humans. They are not to be trusted by default until they prove otherwise.
- BHSPitMonkey 6y ago
  In the real world, people can't be "proven trustworthy". They're given their positions of authority in the absence of proof of untrustworthiness, and they hold those positions until said proof comes along (i.e. disbarment, judicial impeachment) or until they retire.
kazinator 6y ago
> Why trust the randomizer? Moreover, what if the randomizer picks one out of 297 judges, 235 of whom are known to be biased? Then it doesn't help much.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Randomization changes the incentive structure. If you can't advertise that you'll adjudicate cases unfairly, the risk-reward ratio changes completely. Why advertise you're corrupt if there's only a 1 in 297 chance the belligerents will land in your jurisdiction?
  - kazinator 6y ago
    That still seems wrong-headed; you have disincentivized a dishonesty, not dishonesty as such, nor turned the crooked judges honest.
arcticbull 6y ago
Just saying "we should trust judges" doesn't mean that a system of randomized selection for which judge isn't intrinsically valuable or meaningfully increase both confidence in and reliability of the system. We should trust judges. We should also create a system that strives to reduce the chance that individual judges could get to a point where they're less than trustworthy. Judges are people too, and respond to incentives. And yeah some individual judges suck, and are bad at their jobs. Like some doctors, and some lawyers, and some engineers. A system that reduces their impact and influence, like randomization does, minimizes the harm of a bad apple, and also reduces their blast radius. They can't advertise that they'll adjudicate your case. After all, isn't this why we have appeals courts? If you could trust your individual judge implicitly, why allow an appeal? Trust, sure, but verify. > Or what happens if I accuse the randomizer of being untrustworthy? Open source the RNG. Let people see for themselves. Publish the stats that show it's a uniform random distribution.
leoc 6y ago
Apparently the Venetian system looks rather good in retrospect, though it did include more rounds and ceremony than was mathematically necessary. https://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2007/HPL-2007-28R1.pdf https://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2007/HPL-2007-28R1.pdf

searchableguy 6y ago

Wouldn't a randomizer help with changing incentives? The default assumption should be that people are corrupt given the right incentive which in this case shows. It's not perfect but it's better that someone is not certain that they are able to attract certain cases for future.

staticautomatic 6y ago

“ If you can't trust judges you're in a lot of trouble.” Alexander Hamilton wrote in the federalist papers that we need juries to protect us from corrupt judges.

dbcurtis 6y ago
Unfortunately that does not protect us from the 9th circus. For cases that I follow, just going by whether they were appointed by an R or a D president is 97% accurate at predicting how a judge will vote. If I can predict their vote without reading the briefs or listening to the arguments, I suspect they can (and do) as well.
- gamblor956 6y ago
  Or, more likely, you need to follow more cases.
  - dbcurtis 6y ago
    I mainly follow civil rights cases.

jjoonathan 6y ago

> Why trust the randomizer? It's easy to do worse than random. Trying to do better than random often ends with doing worse than random, while aiming for randomness usually ends with randomness. > They thought they could randimize their way to fairness too, it looks pretty silly and ineffective in retrospect: I see information about the process but none about how and why it failed.

jackfoxy 6y ago
Yeah, wasn't Venice a republic for close to 1,000 years? What ultimately did in Venice was Napoleon conquering all of continental Europe.
- edgyquant 6y ago
  Eh they were essentially a monarchy by that point and power fell to the hands of a few families by the time of Marco Polo
  - fakedang 6y ago
    What's different from then and today?
    - edgyquant 6y ago
      Is this an honest question?
      - fakedang 6y ago
        Was being rhetorical.
michaelmior 6y ago
My interpretation of the comment about trusting the randomizer was how do we trust that selection was actually made randomly?

rectang 6y ago

> If you can't trust judges you're in a lot of trouble. Exactly. We can't trust judges. And we're in a lot of trouble.

ardy42 6y ago

> You may want to check out how elections were done in Venice in centuries past. They thought they could randimize their way to fairness too, it looks pretty silly and ineffective in retrospect: https://www.venetoinside.com/hidden-treasures/post/the-election-of-the-doge-of-the-republic-of-venice/ https://www.venetoinside.com/hidden-treasures/post/the-elect... What specific problem were the Venetians trying to solve with that design, and how did it turn out to be ineffective?

pklo 6y ago
They were trying to avoid oligarchy, where few powerful families would monopolize the power. It worked remarkaby well, actually: Venetian Republic lasted 1000 years, served as a bulwark against western expansion of the Ottoman empire by running an effective combination of trade engagement and military projection, and was arguably a shining light of western civilization for most of that time. They were done in by the rise of nation-states and loss of income from their Eastern trade, not by failure of their system.

matheusmoreira 6y ago

> If you can't trust judges you're in a lot of trouble. They're just humans. They are not to be trusted by default until they prove otherwise.

BHSPitMonkey 6y ago
In the real world, people can't be "proven trustworthy". They're given their positions of authority in the absence of proof of untrustworthiness, and they hold those positions until said proof comes along (i.e. disbarment, judicial impeachment) or until they retire.

kazinator 6y ago

> Why trust the randomizer? Moreover, what if the randomizer picks one out of 297 judges, 235 of whom are known to be biased? Then it doesn't help much.

arcticbull 6y ago
Randomization changes the incentive structure. If you can't advertise that you'll adjudicate cases unfairly, the risk-reward ratio changes completely. Why advertise you're corrupt if there's only a 1 in 297 chance the belligerents will land in your jurisdiction?
- kazinator 6y ago
  That still seems wrong-headed; you have disincentivized a dishonesty, not dishonesty as such, nor turned the crooked judges honest.

arcticbull 6y ago

Just saying "we should trust judges" doesn't mean that a system of randomized selection for which judge isn't intrinsically valuable or meaningfully increase both confidence in and reliability of the system. We should trust judges. We should also create a system that strives to reduce the chance that individual judges could get to a point where they're less than trustworthy. Judges are people too, and respond to incentives. And yeah some individual judges suck, and are bad at their jobs. Like some doctors, and some lawyers, and some engineers. A system that reduces their impact and influence, like randomization does, minimizes the harm of a bad apple, and also reduces their blast radius. They can't advertise that they'll adjudicate your case. After all, isn't this why we have appeals courts? If you could trust your individual judge implicitly, why allow an appeal? Trust, sure, but verify. > Or what happens if I accuse the randomizer of being untrustworthy? Open source the RNG. Let people see for themselves. Publish the stats that show it's a uniform random distribution.

leoc 6y ago

Apparently the Venetian system looks rather good in retrospect, though it did include more rounds and ceremony than was mathematically necessary. https://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2007/HPL-2007-28R1.pdf https://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2007/HPL-2007-28R1.pdf