Government... by lottery?
What can you do when experts can’t be trusted? Draw lots.
This episode examines the ancient practice of “sortition,” which delegates decision-making power to random members of the public. Sometimes called “government by lottery,” sortition was used in ancient Athenian democracy to elect public officials. Now it’s undergoing a revival as tech companies (like Meta) and AI startups (like OpenAI and Anthropic) use the method to shape their policies.
Our guests today are Bailey Flanigan, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard who is joining MIT as an assistant professor next year, and who has helped develop selection algorithms for sortition that are in use today; and Andrew Hall, Stanford University poli sci professor, advisor to Meta, and consultant to a16z crypto research. We discuss why not to rely exclusively on expert authority, how the process of deliberation changes people’s minds, and how sortition can apply everywhere from the governance of countries to the governance of crypto projects, and more.
Related resources:
- Algorithms for fair, manipulation-robust, and transparent sortition with Bailey Flanigan
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