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The big problem with Sortition is that the voters are necessarily uninformed. It means you need to teach your randomly selected group a huge amount of backgrou

by chton 12y ago

The big problem with Sortition is that the voters are necessarily uninformed. It means you need to teach your randomly selected group a huge amount of background information, even before explaining the specifics of the case. It falls into the same trap as a trial-by-jury: if you need to educate people to make a decision, you're putting the power in the hands of the teachers instead of the people.

notahacker 12y ago
And asking a random group of people to select a problem from an infinite set of issues that might be addressed and then draft a majority-approved solution (which is what representative democratic governments actually do) is asking a lot more from them than simply based only on what you have been provided in a controlled environment, are you completely certain that $RandomStranger is guilty? Whilst theoretically not having any inclination towards achieving a particular outcome is a distinct advantage in the latter situation, I can't see how that's the case when it comes to actually governing.
mercurial 12y ago
In France, there was a law passed recently, about fighting terrorism. As all "think of the terrorists" laws, it passed without a hitch ("after all, we have to be seen as doing something about these people going to Iraq and Syria, regardless of whether it is effective"). In particular, this law contained provisions letting the executive branch shut down websites without any input from the judicial branch. Reading an article about the debates among the lawmakers made abundantly clear that people who still call the Internet "the new technologies" have absolutely no inkling about how it works and what consequences their votes may have. It is also clear that many of them barely read (or don't read at all) the texts they are voting on. What makes you say that random members of the population, not beholden to particular interest groups or current political parties, would do worse?
- chton 12y ago
  The problem is not that they would do worse. The problem is that they would be entirely dependent on the information they were provided. Anybody who gives them that information has their own opinion, and whether they want to or not, that opinion informs the way they dispense information. This means the random members of the population aren't deciding based on objective evidence. They can't really form their own opinions if every bit of information is biased one way or another. That is why I said it was similar to a trial-by-jury. The jury isn't versed in law or in the details of the case, so they get all the information they need to make a decision from the lawyers presenting the case. That leads to situations like one we had in my home country: A woman was sentenced to life in prison for a murder without any evidence. None at all. She had motive and was 'an asshole', and that was enough for the jury to be sure she did it. If there was a way to objectively give them the facts of the case and the knowledge they need, the system would be perfect, but unfortunately that's not possible. And until it is, i would rather have people making decisions based on their own badly informed opinions than people making decisions based on others' opinions with a veneer of legitimacy.
  - mercurial 12y ago
    Sure, but in the current system, how many of these facts come to the lawmakers via deep-pocketed special interest groups? How many lawmakers know what war looks like, when they vote for military action? How many have any idea of how to regulate the banking sector? How many vote only based on what their party has decided? There is the question of writing laws in the appropriate legalese. In practice, at least in France, most laws come from the executive branch, and the Parliament examines them in a commission, "patches" them by adding amendments, and votes. I'm sure the legalese part could be taught or handled by specialists. Apart from that, I don't see why it would function in a worse fashion that what we currently have.
    - chton 12y ago
      Sure, many of the decisions in the current system are 'impure' in some way. Everybody has a price, everybody makes mistakes, everybody is uninformed about things. The big difference is the decisions still come from the elected lawmakers. They're often wrong, and even more often just guessing, but in the very least the system is transparent, we know where the power resides. In the case of a randomized group, that power isn't with the group, it's with the people who educate them on the matters and who frame the issue. There are a million ways to present any matter, and none of them are objective. You're putting the power to influence and even determine a nation's decisions in the hands of the experts that inform them, rather than the randomly selected people. It would become very efficient to buy those people instead of the voters. The problem of the matter isn't whether it would function worse. The problem is that it would function less transparently. It would ostensibly be a fair and completely unbiased system, but that could be manipulated behind the scenes in far more insidious ways. That's very dangerous. Personally, I would rather have a more unfair but more transparent system.
      - mercurial 12y ago
        How is the current system transparent in this regard? How do you know where your MP/Congressperson got their information from (since we apparently agree that representatives are often not expert in the subject matter)?

by chton 12y ago

notahacker 12y ago

And asking a random group of people to select a problem from an infinite set of issues that might be addressed and then draft a majority-approved solution (which is what representative democratic governments actually do) is asking a lot more from them than simply based only on what you have been provided in a controlled environment, are you completely certain that $RandomStranger is guilty? Whilst theoretically not having any inclination towards achieving a particular outcome is a distinct advantage in the latter situation, I can't see how that's the case when it comes to actually governing.

mercurial 12y ago

In France, there was a law passed recently, about fighting terrorism. As all "think of the terrorists" laws, it passed without a hitch ("after all, we have to be seen as doing something about these people going to Iraq and Syria, regardless of whether it is effective"). In particular, this law contained provisions letting the executive branch shut down websites without any input from the judicial branch. Reading an article about the debates among the lawmakers made abundantly clear that people who still call the Internet "the new technologies" have absolutely no inkling about how it works and what consequences their votes may have. It is also clear that many of them barely read (or don't read at all) the texts they are voting on. What makes you say that random members of the population, not beholden to particular interest groups or current political parties, would do worse?

chton 12y ago
The problem is not that they would do worse. The problem is that they would be entirely dependent on the information they were provided. Anybody who gives them that information has their own opinion, and whether they want to or not, that opinion informs the way they dispense information. This means the random members of the population aren't deciding based on objective evidence. They can't really form their own opinions if every bit of information is biased one way or another. That is why I said it was similar to a trial-by-jury. The jury isn't versed in law or in the details of the case, so they get all the information they need to make a decision from the lawyers presenting the case. That leads to situations like one we had in my home country: A woman was sentenced to life in prison for a murder without any evidence. None at all. She had motive and was 'an asshole', and that was enough for the jury to be sure she did it. If there was a way to objectively give them the facts of the case and the knowledge they need, the system would be perfect, but unfortunately that's not possible. And until it is, i would rather have people making decisions based on their own badly informed opinions than people making decisions based on others' opinions with a veneer of legitimacy.
- mercurial 12y ago
  Sure, but in the current system, how many of these facts come to the lawmakers via deep-pocketed special interest groups? How many lawmakers know what war looks like, when they vote for military action? How many have any idea of how to regulate the banking sector? How many vote only based on what their party has decided? There is the question of writing laws in the appropriate legalese. In practice, at least in France, most laws come from the executive branch, and the Parliament examines them in a commission, "patches" them by adding amendments, and votes. I'm sure the legalese part could be taught or handled by specialists. Apart from that, I don't see why it would function in a worse fashion that what we currently have.
  - chton 12y ago
    Sure, many of the decisions in the current system are 'impure' in some way. Everybody has a price, everybody makes mistakes, everybody is uninformed about things. The big difference is the decisions still come from the elected lawmakers. They're often wrong, and even more often just guessing, but in the very least the system is transparent, we know where the power resides. In the case of a randomized group, that power isn't with the group, it's with the people who educate them on the matters and who frame the issue. There are a million ways to present any matter, and none of them are objective. You're putting the power to influence and even determine a nation's decisions in the hands of the experts that inform them, rather than the randomly selected people. It would become very efficient to buy those people instead of the voters. The problem of the matter isn't whether it would function worse. The problem is that it would function less transparently. It would ostensibly be a fair and completely unbiased system, but that could be manipulated behind the scenes in far more insidious ways. That's very dangerous. Personally, I would rather have a more unfair but more transparent system.
    - mercurial 12y ago
      How is the current system transparent in this regard? How do you know where your MP/Congressperson got their information from (since we apparently agree that representatives are often not expert in the subject matter)?