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Do you have any links on this? I hadn't heard of it before and am quite interested in it now, but could not come up with anything after a quick Google search fo

Do you have any links on this? I hadn't heard of it before and am quite interested in it now, but could not come up with anything after a quick Google search for "sortation". Thanks for sharing this!

wisty 15y ago
I've edited in a link now. The main disadvantage with sortation seems to be that it killed Socrates. Randomly selected jurors did quite a few nasty and arbitrary things. But an elected tyrant (especially one who was willing to do anything to stay popular) might be worse. It's hard to say that sortation is bad because it allowed mistakes - every political system allows mistakes. Also, systematic slavery, misogyny, the occasional genocide and other discrimination against non-male-citizens (non-voters) was a problem, but that's not really related to sortation. Any democracy can have those problems. Fortunately, we seem to have progressed a little in the last 2000 years (despite the occasional step back).
- paganel 15y ago
  > The main disadvantage with sortation seems to be that it killed Socrates. I was just reading this morning on the way to work a note made by Voltaire to Montesquieu's "De l'esprit des lois" that the decision in Socrate's trial was in fact a pretty close one, so things were not that bad (he still died, I know). I don't want to turn this into /r/politics, but look what's happening to Bradley Manning. I'm pretty sure that even if he were to be put to trial in front of a civilian court the call won't be as close as in the case of Socrates, for a lot of different reasons which I'm not going into details now. For those interested, here's the count of the votes in Socrates' trial: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/socrates/greekcrimpro.html http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/socrates/greek... > In the case of Socrates, the jury found Socrates guilty on a relatively close vote of 280 to 220. (Interestingly, if less than 100 jurors voted for guilt, the accusers had to pay a fine to cover trial costs.)
  - gwern 15y ago
    It's been argued in the past that Socrates quite deliberately provoked the jury into killing him - it's hard not to read it, see that far from being humble or defending himself he instead told them they should vote him a pension for his services to Athens, and think that this was just a case of suicide by cop.
  - philwelch 15y ago
    I don't want to turn this into /r/politics, but look what's happening to Bradley Manning. I'm pretty sure that even if he were to be put to trial in front of a civilian court the call won't be as close as in the case of Socrates, for a lot of different reasons which I'm not going into details now. Despite being a cause celebre, the fact remains that Manning's alleged actions were, in fact, illegal. Not that jury nullification doesn't happen, but it's actively discouraged.
- ArbitraryLimits 15y ago
  > Randomly selected jurors did quite a few nasty and arbitrary things. But an elected tyrant (especially one who was willing to do anything to stay popular) might be worse. It's hard to say that sortation is bad because it allowed mistakes - every political system allows mistakes. Exactly. The point of voting is not, repeat not to execute the will of "the people" as faithfully as possible. "The people" can be just as powerful and arbitrary as a single ruler, when it comes to that. The point of voting is to randomize so that no single entity stays in power indefinitely. (No executive, legislature, or even set of ideals can win elections indefinitely, no matter how popular they are when they start out.) In exchange for mediocre performance in the average case, you get to eliminate the almost unboundedly terrible performance of the worst case.
sendos 15y ago
Apparently, the expression is 'sortition' not 'sortation'. wisty has a link to the relevant Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition, and a Google search for 'sortition' yields quite a few results.

Do you have any links on this? I hadn't heard of it before and am quite interested in it now, but could not come up with anything after a quick Google search for "sortation". Thanks for sharing this!

wisty 15y ago

I've edited in a link now. The main disadvantage with sortation seems to be that it killed Socrates. Randomly selected jurors did quite a few nasty and arbitrary things. But an elected tyrant (especially one who was willing to do anything to stay popular) might be worse. It's hard to say that sortation is bad because it allowed mistakes - every political system allows mistakes. Also, systematic slavery, misogyny, the occasional genocide and other discrimination against non-male-citizens (non-voters) was a problem, but that's not really related to sortation. Any democracy can have those problems. Fortunately, we seem to have progressed a little in the last 2000 years (despite the occasional step back).

paganel 15y ago
> The main disadvantage with sortation seems to be that it killed Socrates. I was just reading this morning on the way to work a note made by Voltaire to Montesquieu's "De l'esprit des lois" that the decision in Socrate's trial was in fact a pretty close one, so things were not that bad (he still died, I know). I don't want to turn this into /r/politics, but look what's happening to Bradley Manning. I'm pretty sure that even if he were to be put to trial in front of a civilian court the call won't be as close as in the case of Socrates, for a lot of different reasons which I'm not going into details now. For those interested, here's the count of the votes in Socrates' trial: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/socrates/greekcrimpro.html http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/socrates/greek... > In the case of Socrates, the jury found Socrates guilty on a relatively close vote of 280 to 220. (Interestingly, if less than 100 jurors voted for guilt, the accusers had to pay a fine to cover trial costs.)
- gwern 15y ago
  It's been argued in the past that Socrates quite deliberately provoked the jury into killing him - it's hard not to read it, see that far from being humble or defending himself he instead told them they should vote him a pension for his services to Athens, and think that this was just a case of suicide by cop.
- philwelch 15y ago
  I don't want to turn this into /r/politics, but look what's happening to Bradley Manning. I'm pretty sure that even if he were to be put to trial in front of a civilian court the call won't be as close as in the case of Socrates, for a lot of different reasons which I'm not going into details now. Despite being a cause celebre, the fact remains that Manning's alleged actions were, in fact, illegal. Not that jury nullification doesn't happen, but it's actively discouraged.
ArbitraryLimits 15y ago
> Randomly selected jurors did quite a few nasty and arbitrary things. But an elected tyrant (especially one who was willing to do anything to stay popular) might be worse. It's hard to say that sortation is bad because it allowed mistakes - every political system allows mistakes. Exactly. The point of voting is not, repeat not to execute the will of "the people" as faithfully as possible. "The people" can be just as powerful and arbitrary as a single ruler, when it comes to that. The point of voting is to randomize so that no single entity stays in power indefinitely. (No executive, legislature, or even set of ideals can win elections indefinitely, no matter how popular they are when they start out.) In exchange for mediocre performance in the average case, you get to eliminate the almost unboundedly terrible performance of the worst case.

sendos 15y ago

Apparently, the expression is 'sortition' not 'sortation'. wisty has a link to the relevant Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition, and a Google search for 'sortition' yields quite a few results.