Dennis Hackethal

People say the same thing when it comes to police services and the fire department. The solution to the free-rider problem is to not provide the service to people who don’t pay.

[I]f you’re on trial, you can force the state to use a jury to decide the facts of the case.

So it’s a trade off - if you have the right to a jury trial, so also do you have the obligation to serve on a jury for a person who has chosen a jury trial.

Otherwise, you get what’s called a “free rider problem”, people who refuse to serve on juries still insisting on a jury trial if they’re on trial.

Source

Commented on the wrong idea.

No, you want unbiased people. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t care.

You want people who don’t care. You need neutrality.

You want people who don’t care. You need neutrality.

Force means you get people who don’t care about justice. For example (emphasis added):

Another issue that makes me a bad juror is I simply don't care. Unless someone does something to me or someone I care about, I don't care. If someone had done something to me or mine then I couldn't be a juror for that trial anyway. If John Smith steals Jane Doe's car, I don't care. Even if John Smith kills Jane Doe's [sic], I don't care. I think killing someone is wrong but if it doesn't effect [sic] me personally I don't care what punishment they get. If that makes me a bad person, so be it.

Force means you get a bunch of people on a jury who don’t want to be there. This introduces friction because they will drag their feet.

I understand that you don’t want to introduce bias, but it just doesn’t follow that jurors have to be selected by force. You can make it voluntary without introducing bias.

“The random selection helps keep all citizens equal.” (Source)

Why would it automatically be an elite profession? Just adjust your selection process accordingly.

“If we make it a profession, we'll still have elites judging commoners and commoners unable to get justice.” (Source)

No, again (#3300), if you make it worth their while, plenty of people will show up voluntarily.

“If we only take volunteers, we'll be perpetually lacking jurors or we'll have jurors that don't represent the general populace.” (Source)

If you make it worth their while, you will have plenty of people signing up voluntarily.

We need jury duty because without it, “we can't guarantee the accused their right to trial by a jury of their peers if we don't have peers available to serve on juries.”

A duty is an unchosen obligation. It’s an expression of mysticism. Immanuel Kant is responsible for spreading this anti-concept.

https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/duty.html

@zelalem-mekonnen shared in my Twitter space that he has been ‘summoned’ for jury duty. It seems strange and incompatible with freedom that the courts can just ‘command’ you to perform a service for them.

A population of 1 is still a population.

Accounts of the origin of replicators (such as RNA World) involve proto-replicators. By the time the first ‘full-fledged’ replicator came on the scene, it was already part of a larger population of proto-replicators.

I suppose it’s theoretically possible for the very first replicator to exist in isolation until it replicates for the first time. But that’s what it does right away anyway.

I’m using standard neo-Darwinian phrasing. Compare, for example, BoI chapter 4:

The most general way of stating the central assertion of the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution is that a population of replicators subject to variation (for instance by imperfect copying) will be taken over by those variants that are better than their rivals at causing themselves to be replicated.

And, same chapter:

[T]he knowledge embodied in genes is knowledge of how to get themselves replicated at the expense of their rivals.

See also several instances in chapter 15 in the context of meme evolution.

Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene has a ton on rivals (alleles), too, for example (chapter 2):

Ways of increasing stability and of decreasing rivals’ stability became more elaborate and more efficient. Some of them may even have ‘discovered’ how to break up molecules of rival varieties chemically, and to use the building blocks so released for making their own copies.

Rivalry means competition, win/lose outcomes. If one replicator spreads, it will be at the expense of its rivals (if any), eg taking up niches that rivals would otherwise have taken up.