Speaker 1: Pushkin. One day, not long ago, I went to visit
Speaker 1: the Lawrenceville School just outside Princeton, New Jersey, a very old,
Speaker 1: prestigious private school, leafy campus, Gothic, this and that. I
Speaker 1: asked one of their deans could I come and meet
Speaker 1: with some students? She said yes, Does everyone have a
Speaker 1: piece of paper and pen? The dean put together a
Speaker 1: group of twenty kids. We met in a conference room
Speaker 1: looking out on the campus lawn. On a scale of
Speaker 1: one to ten, don't put your name on it. I
Speaker 1: would like you to rank your happiness with the Lawrenceville
Speaker 1: School's current electoral process. Ten is you think it's perfect.
Speaker 1: One is you think it's maybe time to bring in
Speaker 1: Adam Adam Adam Cronkwright. He was the reason I was there. Okay,
Speaker 1: hi everyone, thanks for coming. My name is Malcolm Babbo,
Speaker 1: so you as you know, I am a writer and
Speaker 1: I have a podcast called Revisionist History. That's how the
Speaker 1: afternoon began. I said, I wanted to run an idea
Speaker 1: by them, an idea field tested by this person. I
Speaker 1: just met Adam CRONKWRIGHTE about talent and chance and how
Speaker 1: we choose others to lead us. And I would encourage
Speaker 1: you all to be If you think I'm crazy, you
Speaker 1: should say, Malcolm, you're crazy. Maybe this idea could change
Speaker 1: a lot about what's wrong with the world right now,
Speaker 1: or maybe not. Revisionist history is about the overlooked and misunderstood.
Speaker 1: Usually I decide what belongs in either of those categories.
Speaker 1: This time, I thought I'd just run Adam's idea by
Speaker 1: the students of Lawrenceville and that them decide. All this
Speaker 1: had to do with the way they elected their student council.
Speaker 1: I thought they should call a constitutional convention and start over.
Speaker 1: There is no right answer or wrong answer, but I
Speaker 1: want to make a case for something and see how
Speaker 1: that possibly relates to the way you guys do things
Speaker 1: here at Lawrenceville. They listened to Adam's idea argued about
Speaker 1: it for close to two hours. I'll be honest, I
Speaker 1: didn't think I'd get anywhere. The whole student council was
Speaker 1: there as well, all people who had profited from the
Speaker 1: Lawrenceville electoral status quo. And what was wrong with the
Speaker 1: status quo in theory, not much. Lawrenceville elected its leaders
Speaker 1: through the perfect democratic system, campaign speeches, open elections. Their
Speaker 1: constitution might as well have been drawn up by the
Speaker 1: founding fathers. For all I know, one of the founding
Speaker 1: fathers went to Lawrenceville. But then at the end of
Speaker 1: the afternoon, I said, okay, now that I've given you
Speaker 1: an alternative, how happy are you with what you have?
Speaker 1: Scale of one to ten. One is totally miserable with
Speaker 1: the status quo, and ten is delighted. Everything's perfect. I
Speaker 1: want to see your number, rip it off and hand
Speaker 1: it to me. Don't put you name on them all.
Speaker 1: As the students handed in their little slips of paper,
Speaker 1: I glanced at a few. I was taken aback. Lawrenceville
Speaker 1: had the perfect democratic system, and upon reflection, upon exposure
Speaker 1: to a little of Adam Cronkwrighte's subversion, there were a
Speaker 1: lot of students in that room who decided they didn't
Speaker 1: like it anymore. I told them I'd do an official
Speaker 1: tally later after I got home. But there's some happiness
Speaker 1: in this room, and if they seem discontented with democracy
Speaker 1: in the gilded corridors of the Lawrenceville School, I can
Speaker 1: only imagine what it's like elsewhere. I first ran across
Speaker 1: Adam Cronkwright online. I was just rummaging around Google one
Speaker 1: day and what he was doing struck me is so
Speaker 1: interesting that I tracked him down cold called him. Are
Speaker 1: you ever in New York City? This was November. He
Speaker 1: said yes, he'd be there in February. So he settled
Speaker 1: on a date and he came to my apartment. Young guy, beard,
Speaker 1: big backpack, hiking boots. So tell me, actually, before we
Speaker 1: get into the question, where are you from, I'm from
Speaker 1: just outside of Syracuse, New York. Yeah, so central New York.
Speaker 1: How did you end up in Bolivia? Coach of Bomba,
Speaker 1: to be more precise, a midsize city in the mountains
Speaker 1: of central Bolivia. It turned out to be a long
Speaker 1: story that starts in Canada, across Lake Ontario from his
Speaker 1: home town. I remember where I was when I thought
Speaker 1: of the idea, Like, you know, where were you I was.
Speaker 1: I was outside Victoria Hall, walking on on Queen's campus
Speaker 1: and it was spring. It was two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1: Adam was finishing college at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.
Speaker 1: He wanted to be a politician. He had, as he
Speaker 1: puts it, a pretty big hero complex and it's kinda
Speaker 1: gonna save the world. And coming to terms with this
Speaker 1: idea that like, you know, be difficult to get to
Speaker 1: the heights of power without tafting to make some serious
Speaker 1: compromises externally internally, and you know, so then I was
Speaker 1: kind of like, Okay, what am I going to do?
Speaker 1: What are we going to do? He began to read history,
Speaker 1: political science, turned it over in his mind, looking for
Speaker 1: a big idea, and this is gonna, you know, right,
Speaker 1: all the wrongs. But I wasn't that involved in anything.
Speaker 1: He was more of a dreamer than a doer. Adam graduated.
Speaker 1: The world was in a financial crisis. Occupy Wall Street
Speaker 1: was one of the protest movements that grew up in response.
Speaker 1: There was a tense city of activists in Succotti Park
Speaker 1: in Lower Manhattan. Adam decided to go down to New
Speaker 1: York and join them. There were working panels and panel discussions,
Speaker 1: and one speaker in particular stuck with him, an activist
Speaker 1: from Bolivia who talked about an epic struggle there over water.
Speaker 1: Adam lived in Succotty Park for five weeks until everyone
Speaker 1: was evicted by the NYPD. His experience with Occupy left
Speaker 1: him frustrated. He understood what they were fighting for, but
Speaker 1: not how. There was no how inoccupy. They didn't have
Speaker 1: a plan that seemed like it could actually reform the
Speaker 1: systems that had failed during the financial crisis. Adam moved
Speaker 1: to Brooklyn, slept on some one's couch, and all the
Speaker 1: while kept skyping with his new friend Bolivia, the water
Speaker 1: activist Marcella Olivella. I kind of shared with her that
Speaker 1: I was feeling a bit burnt out disillusion from what
Speaker 1: I was seeing, and she said, well, yeah, I'll come
Speaker 1: down to Bolivia and check out social moments there. So
Speaker 1: he did Syracuse to Kingston, to Zaccotti Park, to Bolivia.
Speaker 1: He made his way to coach A Bomba and there
Speaker 1: he met Marcella's brother, Oscar, who runs a foundation. So
Speaker 1: I was working with them for a while, and then
Speaker 1: Oscar one day he was in the car and he's
Speaker 1: asking me, what are you into? You know? So I
Speaker 1: started telling him about democratic lotteries and he had never
Speaker 1: heard of concept democratic lotteries. That's Adam's idea, replace elections
Speaker 1: with lotteries. Adam tells Oscar about it. Oscar says, we
Speaker 1: could test it in the schools. They signed up a
Speaker 1: rural elementary school and two high schools, a night school,
Speaker 1: and a regular high school and Adam sells them on
Speaker 1: this new way of picking their student council. Anyone who
Speaker 1: wanted to be in the lottery put their name forward,
Speaker 1: and then the whole school gathered in the gym to
Speaker 1: hear the results. We wanted something that was very visual
Speaker 1: that could generate buzz, and so they had some clay
Speaker 1: pots and we used fava beans as a crop that
Speaker 1: they grow there. They're kind of the biggest beans you
Speaker 1: can find, and so we had two colors, screen and purple.
Speaker 1: The students would put faba beans in the pot and
Speaker 1: they'd cover it with an aguay yuan, a traditional cloth,
Speaker 1: so that it's from there, and it was also kind
Speaker 1: of visually beautiful. If there were two hundred students running
Speaker 1: for eight student council positions, they would put one hundred
Speaker 1: and ninety two green fava beans in the pot and
Speaker 1: eight purple ones. Then all the candidates would line up.
Speaker 1: The kid reaches in under the cloth, Yeah, grabs a bean. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do they hold it up? If it's purple, they hold
Speaker 1: it up. If it's purple or green, they hold They're
Speaker 1: supposed to hold it up so the school can see.
Speaker 1: No campaigning, no speeches, or posters, no glad handing, no ballance,
Speaker 1: no recounts. The whole selection was over in twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: Those who picked out the purple fava beans were on
Speaker 1: student council. Done. Now, I know that sounds like a
Speaker 1: crazy idea. You would never go for that, would you?
Speaker 1: Or would you? Adam Cronk write learned three important things
Speaker 1: from his work on school lot of he's in Bolivia.
Speaker 1: I'm going to call them Cronk Rights laws. None of
Speaker 1: them I think are obvious beforehand, at least they were
Speaker 1: not obvious to him. First, numbers, as in number of candidates,
Speaker 1: typically what percentage of the kids want to be part
Speaker 1: of the lottery. It varies by the school. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: varies by the school. And so at the Night High School,
Speaker 1: you know, these kids often work even on Saturdays, like
Speaker 1: they got a full schedule. So we would usually get
Speaker 1: between twenty and thirty students who are volunteering for like
Speaker 1: twelve spots, right, So it wasn't a huge, huge turnout.
Speaker 1: And then at the rural K through eight school, it
Speaker 1: was literally like every student that could participate participated in
Speaker 1: every lottery. And then you know at another school we
Speaker 1: worked at later on, it was an urban high school.
Speaker 1: But in the morning, you know, there you had at
Speaker 1: least half of the school. After the student council members
Speaker 1: finished their time in office, Adam always asks a simple question,
Speaker 1: would you have run if we had done things the
Speaker 1: old way with campaigns and speeches? It's about three quarters
Speaker 1: who's saying no right away? Why do they say no? Well,
Speaker 1: let's say that nobody would have voted for me. I
Speaker 1: was new in the school, didn't have a lot of friends.
Speaker 1: You know, I would not want to run a campaign,
Speaker 1: you know, and ask people to vote for me. You know.
Speaker 1: It's the things that you can kind of guess are impediments.
Speaker 1: They liked serving in office. They just didn't want to
Speaker 1: run for office. The demands of the campaign were filtering
Speaker 1: out all kinds of people who would otherwise have been
Speaker 1: very interested in student council politics. Overwhelmingly those who win
Speaker 1: the lottery one year in fact run again the next.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they tend to line back up. But when
Speaker 1: we asked them, you know, it would be normal elections,
Speaker 1: would you have done it? The majority saying Now. What's
Speaker 1: interesting is the extent to which running for an office
Speaker 1: and running an office are two very very different things.
Speaker 1: And someone may be both capable and interested in running
Speaker 1: an office, but have no interest in running for That's
Speaker 1: the first law. In a democracy. Elections are supposed to
Speaker 1: encourage participation, but they don't. They discourage it. Lotteries encourage participation, Okay,
Speaker 1: cronk rights. Second law. When you choose your student government
Speaker 1: by lottery, you see a change in the kinds of
Speaker 1: things the government actually does. In my high school, the
Speaker 1: student council basically organized dances, not at Adams schools. In
Speaker 1: coach of Bamba. At the Night School, for example, the
Speaker 1: student government tackled all kinds of issues. Human trafficking is
Speaker 1: a big problem there, and so they organized a workshop
Speaker 1: on human trafficking that had like theatrical production and breakout
Speaker 1: groups and stuff. They've gotten First aid kits for their schools.
Speaker 1: The schools don't tend to have them. They've organized educational
Speaker 1: field trips. The student council put together soccer tournaments and
Speaker 1: poetry competitions. They opened a library. School didn't have one,
Speaker 1: and so they solicited book donations from institutions and DVDs
Speaker 1: and they were able to get a computer donated from
Speaker 1: the Ministry of Education, and they set it up and
Speaker 1: they ran it. They also created their own student ID
Speaker 1: cards because that school didn't have ID cards and didn't
Speaker 1: have uniforms, and since they went to school at seven pm,
Speaker 1: the transportation workers didn't believe that there were students since
Speaker 1: they charged them double. So that was the first thing
Speaker 1: that they worked on. I was like hardy. Number one
Speaker 1: for all the students was we want student ID cards,
Speaker 1: and so they made their own and distributed those to Addam.
Speaker 1: The crucial thing about that long list of accomplishments was
Speaker 1: the range of things the students who were interested in.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by that? That's a more diverse group.
Speaker 1: They come from different social circles versus typically, at least
Speaker 1: in Bolivia. You know, it'll be like a group of
Speaker 1: friends who runs for election, right, and so they have
Speaker 1: similar perspective on the school and what school might need
Speaker 1: and or what they're going to offer to win people's votes,
Speaker 1: which is typically more of the case. And so a
Speaker 1: group that's brought together through a lottery, none of the
Speaker 1: students in the student government know each other prior to
Speaker 1: that first meeting, and they often have very divergent interests.
Speaker 1: You know, you'll have you know, jocks and artists, and
Speaker 1: you know, like just kind of the whole gamut. The
Speaker 1: whole gamut. Democracies are supposed to be the best system
Speaker 1: for ensuring that a whole gamut of interests are represented
Speaker 1: in government. Cronk writes second law says that's not true,
Speaker 1: not if the government is drawn from the same narrow
Speaker 1: band of society a year after year. It's the lottery
Speaker 1: that gives you a truly representative sample of leaders. After
Speaker 1: the success of a few experiments, Adam helps set up
Speaker 1: a nonprofit called Democracy in Practice to work with student
Speaker 1: governments in Bolivia. I can't tell you the number of
Speaker 1: times that, you know, fresh off of a lottery selection,
Speaker 1: we have the first couple orientation meetings and my co founder,
Speaker 1: Role and I will come out and we'll be walking together,
Speaker 1: and we'll be, you know, saying, oh, you know, so
Speaker 1: and so they're going to be a really important part
Speaker 1: of this team. You know. They present themselves well, they
Speaker 1: speak well, they're confident, and they don't even finish the
Speaker 1: term of office. This brings us to Kronk wrights third law.
Speaker 1: Maybe the most important of all. Nobody knows anything the
Speaker 1: number of times that we've walked out of those meetings
Speaker 1: and been worried about a particular student who seemed really unplugged,
Speaker 1: you know, just kind of close body language, uncomfortable, didn't
Speaker 1: participate much, and and we say, oh, we got our
Speaker 1: work cut out with that student. And it you know,
Speaker 1: they within a couple of weeks they figure out what's
Speaker 1: expected of them, how they can plug in, and by
Speaker 1: the end of their term they're even voted by their peers,
Speaker 1: is like one of the most important members of the team.
Speaker 1: And so that's an experience we've had over and over
Speaker 1: again and still kind of get fooled by that. Now,
Speaker 1: the charisma that that that certain students will have and
Speaker 1: the confidence that they'll have. So the prediction, the mechanism
Speaker 1: we're using for predicting who will be a good leader,
Speaker 1: it's just flawed. So what you're saying, yeah, yeah, even you,
Speaker 1: even you sometimes fall into this trap of of thinking
Speaker 1: that because the kid presents herself well and is both
Speaker 1: spoken in charismatic, that she's going to be a good leader. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really difficult to counter that bias, right, And obviously
Speaker 1: not every student who's confident charismatic, you know, has a
Speaker 1: has a big ego and can't work well with others
Speaker 1: and doesn't show up. You know, we've had we've had
Speaker 1: several students who fit that mold, and we're great teammates.
Speaker 1: But generally, it's a lot easier to teach a shire
Speaker 1: student or student who's not super popular. It's a lot
Speaker 1: easier to teach them to overcome those fears and kind
Speaker 1: of add a few more leadership skills to their their
Speaker 1: skill set than it is to teach some of the
Speaker 1: more confident, charismatic students to kind of set aside their
Speaker 1: ego and like be a good member of a team
Speaker 1: and not try to steal the line. Light in and
Speaker 1: listen to others and not dominate conversations. Democratic elections are
Speaker 1: based on the idea that os are good predictors, that
Speaker 1: they can look at a slate of candidates and accurately
Speaker 1: predict who will be the most effective leader. That's why
Speaker 1: we have campaigns and speeches and debates to help us
Speaker 1: make that prediction. But in Bolivia, Adam and his team
Speaker 1: discovered that people are lousy predictors. The teachers who often
Speaker 1: aren't in the meetings are just constantly fooled by, you know,
Speaker 1: when they come out and say, oh, you know that
Speaker 1: student what a great leader, you know, and they're not
Speaker 1: even aware that the rest of the student government's about
Speaker 1: to kick them out. You know, they've had enough of
Speaker 1: some of their behavior. In its one student who got
Speaker 1: picked in the lottery. And during the lottery I had
Speaker 1: a teacher turned to me and under his breath say
Speaker 1: that students have done You're not going to work out,
Speaker 1: you know. I found out afterwards he was the one
Speaker 1: student from his class thirty five students who had failed
Speaker 1: the previous year, and he was one of the one
Speaker 1: of the more kind of outstanding examples that we've had.
Speaker 1: He just you really loved to work on meaningful projects
Speaker 1: and be a part of a team. Now I know
Speaker 1: what you're thinking. It's Bolivia. What works for teenagers in
Speaker 1: Coachabamba doesn't necessarily work for the rest of us Apples
Speaker 1: and oranges and all that. Except after being schooled by Adam,
Speaker 1: I began to see versions of his logic everywhere. Hello,
Speaker 1: this is Mike Loward and delighted Dutch you fllent time
Speaker 1: to chat with me. I just ran across your papers
Speaker 1: on peer of view and citations and found them absolutely
Speaker 1: fascinating and they fit very much in a theme I'm
Speaker 1: exploring in my podcast this season, so I wanted to chat.
Speaker 1: Michael Lower is Deputy Director of Extramural Research at the
Speaker 1: National Institutes of Health in beathes To, Maryland. If I
Speaker 1: had to make a list of the most important Americans
Speaker 1: you've never heard of, Lowers in the top ten. He's
Speaker 1: way way up in what you might call, and I
Speaker 1: mean this in the nicest possible way, the biomedical deep state.
Speaker 1: His office hands out around thirty billion dollars a year
Speaker 1: in research grants to scientists across the United States. Basically,
Speaker 1: if you walk through any biology or chemistry department, or
Speaker 1: any medical school or any medical research institute, Blower's office
Speaker 1: is what's paying for it. So every year, his office
Speaker 1: gets eighty thousand grant applications from around the country. They
Speaker 1: only have money to find about twenty percent of those,
Speaker 1: so they hold the equivalent of an election. Each of
Speaker 1: those applications gets assigned to a small group of reviewers.
Speaker 1: The reviewers vote for the ones they like and throw
Speaker 1: out the rest. Then those finalists are turned over to
Speaker 1: a second group of voters. The reviewers who are assigned
Speaker 1: to grant will give a brief presentation about the grant
Speaker 1: itself and what they thought were the strengths and weaknesses.
Speaker 1: This is then followed by an open discussion. After the
Speaker 1: discussion is complete, there is then a scoring. So first
Speaker 1: round is you're throwing out the bottom the bottom half.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. The second round is you're scoring
Speaker 1: the remainder and how what is the score? The scores
Speaker 1: on a scale of what to water? How is the
Speaker 1: score represented? This is like golf, so a lower score
Speaker 1: is better. A score of ten would be perfect. That
Speaker 1: means that as far as the reviewers are concerned, they
Speaker 1: can't think of anything better. A score of ninety would
Speaker 1: represent the absolute worst. Those scores are predictions about how
Speaker 1: good a scientists proposal is, in exactly the same way
Speaker 1: that the choices voters make are predictions about how good
Speaker 1: a leader a candidate will be. Cronchriste's third law says
Speaker 1: that voters aren't very good at that prediction. So lower wonders,
Speaker 1: what about the nah's grant reviewers? Are we any good
Speaker 1: at it? Does the proposal that got a perfect ten
Speaker 1: from the voters grant approval time actually end up being
Speaker 1: the most influential or innovative research once it's finished Laura
Speaker 1: looks around. He can't find any definitive answer to that question.
Speaker 1: This period view process that you've just described has been
Speaker 1: in place at NIH for how long seventy five years?
Speaker 1: Twenty five years. So we have this situation where we
Speaker 1: have a process in place for many, many years, seventy
Speaker 1: five years, which is from an empirical perspective, unexamined. Well,
Speaker 1: that's right, so Lauer says, let's take a look. His
Speaker 1: method is simple. The standard way that science measures the
Speaker 1: value of a bit of research is how often it's
Speaker 1: cited by other scientists in their work. So if I
Speaker 1: spend five years working on an experiment and no one
Speaker 1: mentions that experiment again, it would be considered a failure.
Speaker 1: And if it's mentioned a thousand times, it's considered a
Speaker 1: home run. So what is the relation between the score
Speaker 1: of your grant application and the number of citations your
Speaker 1: work gets once it's finished? I think you know where
Speaker 1: this is going. We did not find the strong correlation
Speaker 1: between the peer review score and the citation metrics of
Speaker 1: the subsequently funded grant. Now it's worth pointing something out.
Speaker 1: Laura doesn't go into this thinking that the NAH is
Speaker 1: going to be subject to Kronkrit's third law, nobody knows anything.
Speaker 1: After all, Laura's not talking about adolescents judging other adolescents.
Speaker 1: He's talking about distinguished scientists judging the potential of other
Speaker 1: distinguished scientists. We had assumed that we would find a
Speaker 1: reasonably strong correlation between the peer review score and the
Speaker 1: grant productivity. Really yeah, I had assumed that you went
Speaker 1: in skeptical. No. But then again, exactly as I said,
Speaker 1: if we knew what we were doing, we wouldn't call
Speaker 1: it research. Kronk writes, third law applies outside of coach
Speaker 1: of Bamba. It applies even at the National Institutes of Health,
Speaker 1: to the process by which billions of dollars of research
Speaker 1: money is distributed. It's not Cronk writes third law. It's
Speaker 1: Cronk writes universal third law. When Lawar publishes his research,
Speaker 1: lots of other scientists look at his results and say,
Speaker 1: if he's right, our electoral system in science is broken.
Speaker 1: I mean, why bother voting on grants at all. People
Speaker 1: throughout the scientific community start talking like Adam, start saying,
Speaker 1: let's just do a lottery. Let the reviewers make the
Speaker 1: first cut and get rid of the obvious losers then
Speaker 1: put the rest in a hat. My favorite article ran
Speaker 1: in the Walls Journal by two microbiologists, Ferrik Fang and
Speaker 1: Arturo Costat of All entitled taking the Powerball Approach to
Speaker 1: funding medical research Powerball for goodness Sake, with the subtitle
Speaker 1: winning a government grant is already a crapshoot, Making it
Speaker 1: official by running a lottery would be an improvement. There's
Speaker 1: a famous line from Neil's Board, and also attributed to
Speaker 1: Yogi Bearra that prediction is very hard, especially about the future.
Speaker 1: By its very nature, science is unpredictable. And essentially what
Speaker 1: we are asking scientists to do is to make predictions
Speaker 1: about something which is itself inherently unpredictable. Well, so is leadership.
Speaker 1: Leadership is even more unpredictable than scientific merit, So why
Speaker 1: do we insist on making predictions about something which is
Speaker 1: inherently unpredictable? Along these lines, I did something fun two
Speaker 1: days ago. I went to the Lawrenceville School, I got
Speaker 1: fancy boarding school in New Jersey, and I spoke to
Speaker 1: a group of kids, seniors and juniors, a random group
Speaker 1: of kids, but including the student council and student uncil president.
Speaker 1: And I told them about your work, describe it to them,
Speaker 1: and I said, you know, at Lawrenceville you have a
Speaker 1: very similar situation. This is a preselected group of highly
Speaker 1: able people, which you use essentially a peer review process
Speaker 1: to decide who was eligible for the student council, right,
Speaker 1: they have a vote, And I said, well, given the
Speaker 1: fact that doctor Lower's work suggests that we're bad at
Speaker 1: making those kinds of predictions at the very top, would
Speaker 1: you consider change in a way you elect your student
Speaker 1: council and student council president. Laughs. No. On the contrary,
Speaker 1: as you'll discover, the students at the Lawrenceville School did
Speaker 1: not laugh at this idea at all. Thoughts comments, is
Speaker 1: this something you'd ever think of trying here? Do you
Speaker 1: think Bolivia is different than New Jersey. The students at
Speaker 1: the Lawrenceville School take the argument I brought them very seriously.
Speaker 1: They have lots of questions. The democratic process at Lawrenceville
Speaker 1: is steeped in tradition. They're a little leery of leaving
Speaker 1: the process up to chance, especially for the top student
Speaker 1: body president. You don't want to have to go to
Speaker 1: the first school meeting and have a president who's a
Speaker 1: little bit shaky, because the first time you go to
Speaker 1: school meeting, you're expecting the freshmen to be excited about
Speaker 1: the school year ahead, and the seniors everyone in between
Speaker 1: to be excited about the school year ahead. You don't
Speaker 1: want to have to learn with them. The students are
Speaker 1: crammed into a small conference room. Some sit at a
Speaker 1: long table, others stand along the walls. The headmaster and
Speaker 1: one of the school steens stand by the door. A
Speaker 1: microphone is passed to whomever wants to speak. This is
Speaker 1: a student named Soley. You want to have someone initially
Speaker 1: who is a figurehead who can immediately be put into
Speaker 1: a stressful situation of talking to the entire school and
Speaker 1: basically the entire faculty perform at the high school. One
Speaker 1: of the president's most important functions at Lawrenceville is the
Speaker 1: school meeting that happens in the auditorium every Thursday morning.
Speaker 1: Forty five minutes all the students show up. It's a
Speaker 1: central part of the school culture. Hi Am Quinn, I
Speaker 1: think that a good public speaker is someone who's willing
Speaker 1: to be vulnerable with the audience, which is also why
Speaker 1: I think that being a good public speaker and being
Speaker 1: a sociable, energetic person is really important in being a
Speaker 1: good leader, because when you're vulnerable on stage, like Tay
Speaker 1: last year, wrapped on stage, which was awesome and god
Speaker 1: us really excited. Tay Lawrenceville's current student body president. He's
Speaker 1: standing at the back of the room. Later when we chat,
Speaker 1: I learned he's half Nigerian, half Kenyon, grew up in London.
Speaker 1: I've noticed if we have not heard from the currents
Speaker 1: president student counsel old on thank for the Tay is
Speaker 1: the only one in the room wearing a suit, a
Speaker 1: little bit of his English formality. Tell me why you
Speaker 1: think you were elected? Why do I think? I think
Speaker 1: a large part of why I was elected is the
Speaker 1: fact that I am someone who has made sure that
Speaker 1: I am very president on campus. I speak to as
Speaker 1: many people as possible. I think I'm known for generally
Speaker 1: being someone who does speak to people and looks to
Speaker 1: make change and help people. Did you really rap in
Speaker 1: your speech? Yes, so my closing speech. The person I
Speaker 1: was running against, he was a phenomenal speaker. He partakes
Speaker 1: in theater, so he was, if not as good, he was,
Speaker 1: definitely he's actually I would actually say he's a better
Speaker 1: public speaker than I was, So I knew that I
Speaker 1: had all the great public speakers by the way, I
Speaker 1: do that exactly. They that others a better public speak
Speaker 1: for him. No, but genuinely, he is someone who who
Speaker 1: who speaks on stage of law. He is a theater kid,
Speaker 1: so he's great public speaking. So I knew that he
Speaker 1: was going to come in essence, all guns blazing and
Speaker 1: produce a phenomenal speech. So I knew that there was
Speaker 1: some way in which I had to show that I
Speaker 1: am a quote unquote fun guy and someone that the
Speaker 1: student body could relate to. So I decided to go
Speaker 1: out with a wrapping my closing statement. I have to
Speaker 1: say I really liked Tay. He's incredibly thoughtful and charismatic.
Speaker 1: My first thought after talking to him was would I
Speaker 1: have voted for him? I think I would have. But
Speaker 1: then I thought, aren't I making the same mistake that
Speaker 1: Adam kronk Right warned about. Am I unfairly ruling out
Speaker 1: other students who might be just as capable of being
Speaker 1: a great student body president. Back when I met with
Speaker 1: Adam cronk Right, he talked about this one student at
Speaker 1: one of his schools in coach of Bamba. What happened
Speaker 1: to him like what happened? I really should have played
Speaker 1: this tape for the Lauren Hill students. He just he
Speaker 1: started off. He looked bored, he looked uncomfortable, you know,
Speaker 1: just like slouched in his chair, didn't know if he
Speaker 1: was listening and stuff. The moment that they started to
Speaker 1: do some of that work, he just would wake up
Speaker 1: and the meetings basically and start bottom lining things. He said, Oh,
Speaker 1: I can go, you know, I can go take the
Speaker 1: letter down of the Mayor's office. I can go do this,
Speaker 1: I can go to that. And he'd do it. He'd
Speaker 1: fall through, you know, and that sometimes is in short
Speaker 1: supply when you're working with teenagers, you know, and he
Speaker 1: really liked to do those types of things, and he'd
Speaker 1: fall through. And so then people started to count on him,
Speaker 1: and they realized they could count on him, and he
Speaker 1: took out a lot of responsibility. Adam Cronquid also told
Speaker 1: me about another student named Richard Knew in school, completely introverted,
Speaker 1: who then blossomed and turned out to be one of
Speaker 1: the most effective student council members. I remember walking with
Speaker 1: him after one of the first meetings and I told them,
Speaker 1: you know, this is your opportunity everyone else in the
Speaker 1: group is looking to you as a leader. And he
Speaker 1: stopped dead in his tracks. You know, it looks at me,
Speaker 1: all confused, and he says, I'm not a leader. I'm
Speaker 1: not always out front and dominando, like dominating the conversation,
Speaker 1: you know. And I told them, like, that's not that's
Speaker 1: not our conception of leadership. You know. A leader is
Speaker 1: someone who develops leadership and other people ran it works
Speaker 1: well on the team. And I think this is the key,
Speaker 1: the larger lesson behind Cronk writes three laws. It isn't
Speaker 1: just that we're bad at making predictions. It's worse than that.
Speaker 1: It's that our whole system of prediction is screwed up.
Speaker 1: Because we require that our candidates performed for us. We'll
Speaker 1: never get the Richards of the world or the student
Speaker 1: who everyone thought would be a dud. Neither of them
Speaker 1: could win an election, could they. They'd slouch in their
Speaker 1: chairs and look bored and uncomfortable. They get blown off
Speaker 1: the stage, even though both those kids could end up
Speaker 1: being great leaders in their own right. In that room
Speaker 1: at Lawrenceville, they were Indian and Korean and Chinese and
Speaker 1: African and African American and white American kids. They were
Speaker 1: from all over. Some were funny, some were serious, Some
Speaker 1: sounded like they were forty five years old, some seem
Speaker 1: very young. They were as varied and idiosyncratic as any
Speaker 1: group of teenagers anywhere would be. So why when it
Speaker 1: came to their leader did they cling to a system
Speaker 1: that ensured that only one type the performer could win. Now,
Speaker 1: even if you accept those arguments, there's still the problem
Speaker 1: that a lottery doesn't feel right. If you win an
Speaker 1: NIH grant under the old system, you get to walk
Speaker 1: around and say my grant was selected over thousands of others.
Speaker 1: It feels earned. If you win an election, you get
Speaker 1: to say the people chose me, and the people get
Speaker 1: to say I chose her. My name's Frankie. And I
Speaker 1: think another aspect of the sort of arbitrarily picked lottery,
Speaker 1: like it's effect. I think it's worth thinking about its
Speaker 1: effect on like the students themselves and their kind of
Speaker 1: response in terms of their lack of control or say
Speaker 1: over who is decided to be the leader. But here's
Speaker 1: what I think Adam Krunkwright would have said to Frankie.
Speaker 1: You can't just pay attention to the legitimacy of the
Speaker 1: end result, you have to pay attention to the legitimacy
Speaker 1: of the process. Suppose we did this, and you know,
Speaker 1: we've chosen a big set of people and then chosen
Speaker 1: our president by lottery. What percent of American presidents would
Speaker 1: have been female? So wait, you guys twice I've heard
Speaker 1: this argument that buy in depends on elections, but when
Speaker 1: it comes to presidents, it seems to be the opposite.
Speaker 1: Is true that if we had a lottery, a whole
Speaker 1: lot of people right now who feel disenfranchised would feel enfranchised.
Speaker 1: It was at that point that a sophomore named Summer
Speaker 1: suggested a hybrid plan, kind of like the Lawrenceville version
Speaker 1: of the idea that has been floated for the NIH.
Speaker 1: Have voters make a first cut, then picked the final
Speaker 1: winners by lottery who has that potential to learn and
Speaker 1: to grow and is open to other viewpoints, whereas someone
Speaker 1: who's already stuck in their ways. Summer laid out her idea,
Speaker 1: then stopped, looked around the room. Wait, Summer, don't don't
Speaker 1: give up. This is I love this, keep going, so
Speaker 1: walk me through. I'm going to make you dean of
Speaker 1: students for the day. By the way, the fact that
Speaker 1: Summer stopped like that while exploring her idea. That's exactly
Speaker 1: the point of Adam Kronk Wrighte's lottery work with students
Speaker 1: in Bolivia, because the electoral system does not reward the
Speaker 1: candidate who, midway through explaining her idea during a debate
Speaker 1: pauses to get feedback and take the temperature of the
Speaker 1: room and reflect on, waow what she's saying is actually
Speaker 1: what she wants to say. No, the system rewards the
Speaker 1: candidate who blunders ahead, convinced of their own brilliance. I
Speaker 1: want more candidates like Summer keep going, So describe to
Speaker 1: me how this works. I like this idea a lot.
Speaker 1: So I think the preliminary part, like I said, would
Speaker 1: be an anonymous procedure where people could prepare a peace
Speaker 1: any piece they wanted, whether it be a project and
Speaker 1: essay a video. And then from there I was either
Speaker 1: thinking that there could be a lottery system from there,
Speaker 1: because at that point you know that people chosen are
Speaker 1: ones you're equally interested in representing the community. Right, So Summer,
Speaker 1: we're gonna call us the Summer proposal. So what you're
Speaker 1: saying is suppose all the students look at these fifty projects,
Speaker 1: and then you're saying that they would vote on the
Speaker 1: ones they liked the best. Yes, and then from that
Speaker 1: pool you would do potentially a lottery. Yes, yes of
Speaker 1: this idea. Now that they had thought about their electoral
Speaker 1: system and talked about the alternatives, how happy were they
Speaker 1: with the status quo? I wanted to vote? Should I
Speaker 1: own a show of hands? Scalable one to ten? Ten ment, happy, one, ment, disillusion?
Speaker 1: What should it be? Hold on? What should it be?
Speaker 1: Because I'm gonna let you know, and I'm gonna hold
Speaker 1: you to this. And I got them to agree that
Speaker 1: six should be the threshold. Anything less than six, anything
Speaker 1: less than that, and they should consider calling their own
Speaker 1: constitutional convention and rewriting the rules. Pays your hands up.
Speaker 1: I care as the day of folks, all right, I'll
Speaker 1: let you know, thank you all for much. I went
Speaker 1: home and counted their average happiness score with the electoral
Speaker 1: status quo five point three. A tried and tested democratic process,
Speaker 1: honed over generations at one of America's most prestigious private schools.
Speaker 1: And when you ask the students, even for a moment
Speaker 1: to think about how well it works, they say, we're
Speaker 1: not so sure. Oh, I forgot to mention one thing,
Speaker 1: kind of a big thing. Wait, so do you think
Speaker 1: colleges should Where I really wanted to push this discussion
Speaker 1: was maybe colleges should choose their students by lottery. I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot to be said for that. You
Speaker 1: liked that idea, MCA, I think I do. I'm not
Speaker 1: prepared to give you a full answer on it. You
Speaker 1: guys right now aging They were mostly juniors and seniors
Speaker 1: either on the cusp of the endless college application process
Speaker 1: or in the middle of it. And selection is the
Speaker 1: student body president problem times ten. Right, the student runs
Speaker 1: for a highly coveted position, the university makes its prediction.
Speaker 1: But if nih reviewers can't predict the best scientists based
Speaker 1: on grand proposals, and if voters pass over perfectly good
Speaker 1: candidates because they slouch in the corner, how on earth
Speaker 1: can universities pick the best students based on college applications.
Speaker 1: There are much much bigger fish to fry here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like it. I like the idea a lot. Another
Speaker 1: revolutionary I was suddenly so giddy with excitement that I
Speaker 1: didn't catch his name. Lanky kidd, big head of curly hair.
Speaker 1: Do you think that The reason you and I think
Speaker 1: alike so much is that our hair is similar. I think,
Speaker 1: sorry exactly, I called for another vote on support for
Speaker 1: college admission lotteries. Right, short hands, Oh most of you. Well,
Speaker 1: half the revolutionaries are not at the gates Lawrenceville. They're
Speaker 1: inside the gates. Next stop for Adam Cronkwright, New Jersey.
Speaker 1: Revigious History is produced by Miya LaBelle and Lee Mingustu,
Speaker 1: with Jacob Smith, Eloise Linton, and Anna naim Our. Editor
Speaker 1: is Julia Barton. Original scoring by Louis Skara, mastering by
Speaker 1: Flawn Williams, fact checking by Beth Johnson. Has special thanks
Speaker 1: to the Pushkin crew. Had a fine Carlie Megliori, Maya Kanig,
Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor, Jason Gambrell, and of course La Jacob Weisper Oh,
Speaker 1: and big thanks to the staff and students of the
Speaker 1: Lawrenceville School for a really fun afternoon. I'm Malcolm Goblin.
Speaker 1: It would have been so much clever if I had
Speaker 1: had them to have a lottery to decide on whether
Speaker 1: to have a lottery. That would have been so meta
Speaker 1: and great. But I missed that opportunity.