Quality by lot

Posted on May 31, 2024 by Nicholas Gruen

Readers of Equality by lot might be interested in this use of sampling to improve not equality but quality.

The “Quality Control” Interview for Big Classes

I teach a lot of big classes – the undergraduate advanced data analysis class passed 100 students many years ago, and this fall is over 230 – which has some predictable consequences. I don’t get to talk much to many of the students. They’re mostly evaluated by how they do on weekly problem sets (a few of which, in some classes, I call “take-home exams”), and I don’t even grade most of their homework, my teaching assistants do. While I try to craft problem sets which make sure the students practice the skills and material I want them to learn, and lead them to understand the ideas I want them to grasp, just looking at their scores doesn’t give me a lot of information about how well the homework is actually working for those purposes. Even looking at a sample of what they turn in doesn’t get me very far. If I talk to students, though, I can get a much better sense of what they do and do not understand fairly quickly. But there really isn’t time to talk to 100 students, or 200.

About ten years ago, now, I decided to apply some of the tools of my discipline to get out of this dilemma, by means of random sampling. Every week, I would randomly select a fixed number of students for interviews. These interviews took no more than 30 minutes each, usually more like 20, and were one-on-one meetings, distinct from regular open office hours. They always opened by me asking them to explain what they did in such-and-such a problem on last week’s homework, and went on from there, either through the problem set, or on to other topics as those suggested themselves.
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Filed under: Academia, Applications, education | Leave a comment »

Lafont Proposes Institutionalized, Advisory Mini-publics

Posted on May 29, 2024 by Roger Knights

Yoram published some anti-lottocracy paragraphs from Christina Lafont recently. It spurred me to read her book and compose a rebuttal, which I’m in the midst of. In the meantime, here are paragraphs from the book in which she urges the integration of advisory mini-publics in current mass democracies, from pages 148-159.

5.2. Deliberative Activism: Some Participatory Uses of Minipublics

Contestatory Uses of Minipublics

[The] considered majority opinion [of a mini-public] differs from current [mass] majority opinion [and] could give minorities a powerful tool to challenge consolidated majorities […].

[A] distinctive and very valuable feature of minipublics is their superior ability to secure effective inclusion of marginalized voices. […] This could lead to more nuanced positions on polarizing issues or it could prompt a general reconsideration of popular but unjust views […].

[I]n order to maintain their legitimacy, all such uses of minipublics would need to ensure the independence of the institutions in charge of organizing them.
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Filed under: Academia, Sortition, Theory | Leave a comment »

International Network for Sortition Advocates presents

Posted on May 29, 2024 by richwbrown

The Jury Trust Model: Nationalised Industries Without the Corruption

Presented by Oliver Milne, PhD. – Independent scholar and game designer based in Galway, Ireland. PhD in Philosophy from the University of Galway in 2024.

The control of capital is among the most potent of powers: the power to make or break people’s livelihoods, landscapes, and governments. There are limitless ways this power can be abused, and vast amounts of it can be amassed by its abuser. In this talk, Oliver will propose a novel model of capital ownership, the jury trust, in which allotted juries are entrusted with the stewardship of large firms, and make the case that this model can address the problems inherent to state and private ownership.

Date: Thursday, 27 June · (Friday, 28 June in Asia & Australia)

Time: 20:00 – 21:00 Time zone: Europe/Copenhagen

Google Meet link: https://meet.google.com/kfs-vatf-jnu

Or dial: ‪(DK) +45 70 71 45 70 PIN: ‪247 732 930# More phone numbers: https://tel.meet/kfs-vatf-jnu?pin=6887037700703

INSA is a volunteer organisation aimed at connecting pro-sortition academics, advocates, and activists around the world, to share resources and tactics and advance the theoretical understanding of sortition. Join the conversation!

Discord invitation https://discord.gg/6sgnrphp6w

Filed under: meeting, Proposals, Sortition | Leave a comment »

Sortition and Socialism Online Conference: 2nd Call for Presenters

Posted on May 28, 2024 by richwbrown

Sortition and Socialism Online Conference

2nd Call for Presenters

The International Network of Sortition Advocates (INSA) is proud to announce our first conference, ‘Sortition and Socialism’, on Saturday the 31st of August. The aim of the conference is to help develop the theory of sortitional-democratic models of plebeian power and socialism, and build closer connections between theorists of sortition and deliberative democracy and leftwing theoreticians and activists. We invite speakers from both scholarly and activist backgrounds to explore the role of appointment by random selection within struggles for liberation and proposed alternatives to capitalism.

Invited speaker: Camila Vergara (University of Essex)

Presenter Information

Conference Date & Time: Saturday 31st August 2024, 15:00-19:00 UTC

The deadline for applications is the 7th of July. Talks should be no longer than 25 minutes; there will be a 20-minute Q&A after each talk, and a panel discussion at the end of the day in which all speakers are invited to participate. Applicants should email an abstract of their proposed presentation, along with a short bio, to <facilitator@insa.site>.

INSA is a volunteer organisation aimed at connecting pro-sortition academics, advocates, and activists around the world, to share resources and tactics and advance the theoretical understanding of sortition. As a functionally-defined network, we are multi-partisan, acting as a clearing house for sortition advocates of many different political stripes, conditionally brought together by our common interest in advancing sortition in theory and practice.

If you are a supporter of the use of sortition in politics or other realms, or interested in learning more about what sortition has to offer, you are invited to join our Discord server at <https://discord.gg/6sgnrphp6w>.

Filed under: Academia, Action, meeting, Sortition | 2 Comments »

Malkin and Blok: Drawing Lots

Posted on May 24, 2024 by Yoram Gat

Drawing Lots: From Egalitarianism to Democracy in Ancient Greece, a new book by Irad Malkin and Josine Blok, has just been published by Oxford University Press. The book is a major landmark in the study of sortition and its association with democracy. The book aims to show, via a review of the history of the application of allotment in the ancient Greek world, that Greek democracy grew out of an egalitarian mindset, a mindset that was expressed, as well as presumably reinforced, by the widespread application of allotment in different contexts over a centuries-long period.1

Before the lot became political, drawing lots and establishing a mindset of equal chances and portions were already ubiquitous during the centuries before Cleisthenes laid the foundations for democracy in 508. They touched upon a whole spectrum of life and death, both private and public. They expressed values of individuality, fairness, and equality.

Malkin considers his new book as the first comprehensive treatment of classical allotment. He points out a rather astounding fact – allotment, “a significant institution that permeated the lives of Greeks during the archaic period and impacted how they saw human society and structured their expectations and behaviors”, has received very little attention by classicists.
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Filed under: Academia, Athens, Books, Elections, History, Sortition | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

Rorty on democratic government

Posted on May 18, 2024 by Yoram Gat

Richard Rorty, 1931–2007, was a fairly prominent Left-Liberal American philosopher. He saw himself as a pragmatist and a disciple of John Dewey and is known for promoting wide-ranging relativist views. In particular, Rorty rejected the existence of transcendent truths that can serve as the goals of scientific inquiry, philosophy or politics.

Such radical philosophical notions somehow seem to co-exist with an old-fashioned electoralist political theory, which harks back to the post WWII era – a period which embodied Rorty’s political ideal.

I think democratic governments are run by experts. The only question is which experts are going to be in power at any given moment. Dewey’s dreams of participatory democracy will never come true. I think American universities and Western universities generally have served democratic societies very well indeed. They have supplied experts who could then be associated with politicians who were voted in or were voted out by the masses. That’s the best we can expect.

Filed under: Academia, Elections | 6 Comments »

Foley and Yoon: Sortition for the Student Assembly at the College of William and Mary

Posted on May 11, 2024 by Yoram Gat

Just two months ago, Evan Tao proposed applying sortition to selecting the student body of a Brown University. A similar proposal is now made by Michael Foley and Grant Yoon from the College of William and Mary.

Student Assembly officials shouldn’t be elected, they should be randomly selected. This somewhat radical idea has roots in ancient Athens where, for centuries, public officials were chosen via sortition. Sortition is the selection of public officials by lottery rather than election. We know, it sounds like an insane idea, but bear with us. Our goal with this article is not to convince you that sortition is a perfect system that should be implemented everywhere, we haven’t even convinced ourselves of that, but rather that it is a system with enough merit to be worth trying, and that the College of William and Mary’s Student Assembly offers the perfect laboratory within which we can test out the concept.

Our argument for sortition at the College boils down to this: randomly selected legislators would govern more effectively and promote a more inclusive culture surrounding student government on this campus.

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Filed under: Academia, Elections, Sortition | Tagged: | 2 Comments »

Sortition and Socialism Online Conference: Call for presenters

Posted on May 11, 2024 by richwbrown

Sortition and Socialism Online Conference

Call for Presenters

The International Network of Sortition Advocates (INSA) is proud to announce our first conference, ‘Sortition and Socialism’, on Saturday the 31st of August. The aim of the conference is to help develop the theory of sortitional-democratic models of plebeian power and socialism, and build closer connections between theorists of sortition and deliberative democracy and leftwing theoreticians and activists. We invite speakers from both scholarly and activist backgrounds to explore the role of appointment by random selection within struggles for liberation and proposed alternatives to capitalism.

Invited speaker: Camila Vergara (University of Essex)

Presenter Information

Conference Date & Time: Saturday 31st August 2024, 15:00-19:00 UTC

The deadline for applications is the 7th of July. Talks should be no longer than 25 minutes; there will be a 20-minute Q&A after each talk, and a panel discussion at the end of the day in which all speakers are invited to participate. Applicants should email an abstract of their proposed presentation, along with a short bio, to <facilitator@insa.site>.

INSA is a volunteer organisation aimed at connecting pro-sortition academics, advocates, and activists around the world, to share resources and tactics and advance the theoretical understanding of sortition. As a functionally-defined network, we are multi-partisan, acting as a clearing house for sortition advocates of many different political stripes, conditionally brought together by our common interest in advancing sortition in theory and practice.

If you are a supporter of the use of sortition in politics or other realms, or interested in learning more about what sortition has to offer, you are invited to join our Discord server at <https://discord.gg/6sgnrphp6w>.

Filed under: Academia, Action, meeting, Sortition | 6 Comments »

Lafont argues that normal people cannot be trusted with power

Posted on May 4, 2024 by Yoram Gat

Cristina Lafont, Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University, presents her anti-sortition position as being based on participationist ideology. In a debate with Brett Hennig and Samuel Bagg, which took place in August 2022, Lafont initially makes the standard participationist arguments:

[T]he very idea of having something like a lottocracy, where we change the political system, my main concern is it is not democratic. It is a way of empowering the few, the very few the tiny, tiny few randomly selected people to do the thinking and the deciding for the rest of the citizenry. Whereas the citizens really are just supposed to blindly defer to whatever decisions they make. They have no formal tools of holding them accountable or of collectively shaping which political agenda we are going to have. They just can only blindly refer to whatever those very few people decide, and to me, that is really not democratic. Blind deference is quintessentially a non-democratic relationship of political inequality where you have just decision makers who are not accountable, they can decide anyway they like as they see fit, and then you have people who just follow and obey and have no other way of shaping their decisions. That’s my main concern.

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Filed under: Academia, Elections, Participation, Sortition | 140 Comments »