One advantage of lotteries is that they remove competition and 'arms races', since there's no way to affect the outcome (ideally; modulo hacking, etc.). Once yo

One advantage of lotteries is that they remove competition and 'arms races', since there's no way to affect the outcome (ideally; modulo hacking, etc.). Once you're over the threshold, you might as well focus your remaining time and effort on other things; rather than spending more money on 'interview technique coaching', or hiring more proof-readers, or rephrasing the same sentence over and over for months in an attempt to get it 'perfect'. Not only do lotteries mitigate Goodhart's Law (which rewards 'bad' candidates who appear good, whilst punishing 'good' candidates who don't appear that way); but even a perfect, un-gameable measure can waste resources chasing diminishing returns. Even something as trivial as spelling mistakes can be decisive; and whilst those judging might only care a little about spelling, candidates care a lot about winning, so it's in their interest to obsess over even such minor things. This imposes a massive opportunity cost, whether it's spending whole childhoods in 'cram schools'; or university salaries going to 'grant proposal writing services' rather than educators and researchers; etc.