manifesto

[Clay S]

https://www.electionbyjury.org/manifesto

[Rajiv Prabhakar]

Deep! Let's put it on the "Learn More" section of the website.

Regards,
Rajiv

On Tue, Apr 15, 2025 at 4:35 PM Clay S <cshe...@gmail.com> wrote:

https://www.electionbyjury.org/manifesto

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[Clay S]

On Thursday, April 17, 2025 at 7:19:46 AM UTC-7 rajivprab wrote:

Deep! Let's put it on the "Learn More" section of the website.

OK but i'd like to keep the URL top-level because this is a URL i want to cite often and keep short and memorable.

[Clay S]

oh that's right, it won't let you. if it's ok with you i'd like to let this one be an exception and keep it top-level.

[Rajiv Prabhakar]

No problem. We can also duplicate it, so that you'll have both a top-level page (hidden from nav), as well as a copy that shows up under "Learn More". Up to you.

Regards,
Rajiv

On Thu, Apr 17, 2025 at 3:54 PM Clay S <cshe...@gmail.com> wrote:

oh that's right, it won't let you. if it's ok with you i'd like to let this one be an exception and keep it top-level.

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[Vinamr Sachdeva]

Great work! I have some notes on how it could be improved though:

1. How it increases the marginal cost of ignorance and irrationality and thus reduces the problems induced by rational ignorance and rational irrationality (I think there's a reason why economists tend to such explanations of the problems with democracy and we should show how this proposal reduces such problems)
2. Compensating jurors as much as their expected earnings + a buffer to account for their preferences against service itself can be another way to improve representation without mandating service. It surely increases costs, and maybe more than the benefits it brings, but my suggestion is to add it as one of many alternatives which could be chosen depending on our beliefs of the magnitude of its benefits.
3. I think elections currently see a "jury compatible number of candidates" (i.e. few) because any decent election campaign is prohibitively expensive. This will change with juries, so we need some filter (like a security deposit, polling numbers, signatures, etc.). I didn't see any mention of this in the article.
4. Lastly, the framing felt quite US-centric and made repeated reference to AI. That may be intentional, especially if it’s tailored to a particular audience. If so, no worries, but just flagging in case broader applicability is a goal.

Best,

Vin

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[Clay S]

On Monday, April 21, 2025 at 4:45:23 PM UTC-7 vinamrs...@gmail.com wrote:

Great work!

thanks.

1. How it increases the marginal cost of ignorance and irrationality and thus reduces the problems induced by rational ignorance and rational irrationality (I think there's a reason why economists tend to such explanations of the problems with democracy and we should show how this proposal reduces such problems)

i didn't follow that.

1. Compensating jurors as much as their expected earnings + a buffer to account for their preferences against service itself can be another way to improve representation without mandating service.

why on earth wouldn't we want to mandate service? paying them more than absolutely necessary would be bad, because that money could create more utility if given to the poorest people rather than the people who happen to be on a jury. (better yet just add that extra money to the UBI fund and increase taxes to make it net-progressive.)

1. It surely increases costs, and maybe more than the benefits it brings, but my suggestion is to add it as one of many alternatives which could be chosen depending on our beliefs of the magnitude of its benefits.

??

1. I think elections currently see a "jury compatible number of candidates" (i.e. few) because any decent election campaign is prohibitively expensive. This will change with juries, so we need some filter (like a security deposit, polling numbers, signatures, etc.). I didn't see any mention of this in the article.

oh of course, but we already have filing fees and signature gathering requirements so i didn't make a huge issue with this. i guess i could mention that those would have to increase.

1. Lastly, the framing felt quite US-centric and made repeated reference to AI. That may be intentional, especially if it’s tailored to a particular audience. If so, no worries, but just flagging in case broader applicability is a goal.

i didn't think it was that US centric. i even cited other countries using sortition. but the one place that does EBJ is georgia, so yeah, that's in the US.

95% of the discussion is general purpose, but i absolutely feel it's timely to discuss how particularly important this is now that we're in an era of mass-misinformation due to:

- FOX news, social media, and other assorted algorithmically driven confirmation bias echo chambers.

- the rise of LLM/AI/AGI that makes customized persuasion existentially problematic.

- state sponsored information warfare.

[Vinamr Sachdeva]

> i didn't follow [the rational ignorance / rational irrationality argument]

Doesn't EBJ make it such that increase the likelihood that your vote will actually tip the election relative to regular elections? This should increase the benefits of holding right beliefs and voting based on them (reducing rational ignorance) and the costs of holding wrong beliefs (reducing rational irrationality). Let me know if I'm not thinking correctly here.

> why on earth wouldn't we want to mandate service? paying them more than absolutely necessary would be bad, because that money could create more utility if given to the poorest people rather than the people who happen to be on a jury. (better yet just add that extra money to the UBI fund and increase taxes to make it net-progressive.)

It's not clear, at least to me, if paying them (1) expected earnings + a "service dislike buffer" would actually be worse than paying (2) a minimal amount + mandating service and spending the remainder elsewhere because you don't want to have uninterested people in the service. (2) is what currently happens with courtroom jury duty and it seems to me that getting out of it is extremely popular. I'm just saying that I think there's a case to be made that it could be better to just do (1).  We'll know more about its effects when we experiment with it, so we can include it as one of the alternatives in the parts of the essay that talk about voluntary service.

Best,

Vin

[Clay S]

On Tuesday, April 22, 2025 at 12:27:04 PM UTC-7 vinamrs...@gmail.com wrote:

Doesn't EBJ make it such that increase the likelihood that your vote will actually tip the election relative to regular elections?

oh, absolutely.

It's not clear, at least to me, if paying them (1) expected earnings + a "service dislike buffer" would actually be worse than paying (2) a minimal amount + mandating service and spending the remainder elsewhere because you don't want to have uninterested people in the service. (2) is what currently happens with courtroom jury duty and it seems to me that getting out of it is extremely popular.

well it's extremely hard to get out of service, especially when there's no voir dire. i'm not sure how much more attentive they'd be if they were less disgruntled about not being sufficiently compensated.