Government... By Lottery?

web3 with a16z crypto

Andreessen Horowitz

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4.4 • 66 Ratings

🗓️ 2 November 2024

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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 is undergoing a revival today as tech companies (like Meta) and AI startups (like OpenAI and Anthropic) use the method to shape policies. We're joined by political scientists Bailey Flanigan (Harvard now, MIT next year) and Andrew Hall (Stanford).

Transcript

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0:00.0	I think asking scientists to make the final decision alone, it asks them to make a value judgment.
0:06.7	That is a really tricky position to put them in, right?
0:10.0	And I know that sortition is only one example of a way to create an explicit division of labor.
0:16.1	But to me, that is almost exactly the purpose, is to get a bunch of people together whose interests are
0:21.6	truly affected in different ways and have them learn from external information and then exclusively
0:27.7	make value judgments.
0:29.6	Welcome to Web 3 with A16Z. I'm Robert Hackett, and today we're dusting off an ancient practice
0:38.8	that has become trendy once again, the old but new idea of Sortition, or selecting representatives
0:45.3	by lottery. Sortician was used in ancient Athenian democracy to elect public officials.
0:51.6	It's also been lately revived by tech companies like meta and AI startups like
0:55.7	OpenAI and Anthropic to tackle some of their thornyest policymaking challenges.
1:01.2	Our guests today are experts on sortition, including Bailey Flanagan, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard,
1:08.0	who is joining MIT as an assistant professor next year,
1:11.8	and who has helped develop selection algorithms for sortition that are in use today.
1:17.1	Also joining is Andy Hall, Stanford University PolySci professor, advisor to meta,
1:23.3	and consultant to A16Z Crypto Research.
1:27.3	In this episode, we discuss why not to rely exclusively on expert authority,
1:33.1	how the process of deliberation changes people's minds,
1:36.8	and how sortition can apply everywhere from the governance of countries
1:40.7	to the governance of crypto projects, and more.
1:44.5	As a reminder, none of the following should be taken as tax, business, legal, or investment
1:49.6	advice.
	...

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