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I think having a jury of your peers is important in criminal cases and they shouldn’t be done away with. Juries protect the accused from abuse of authority and unjust laws.
Yes, unless one find the action fun (like I find jury duty fun). If I didn't find it fun, I'd argue I am in the right for doing things to get out of jury duty.
One has the right to do things he find interesting, no matter how trivial.
Rand defines duty as "the moral necessity to perform certain actions for no reason other than obedience to some higher authority." Can one completely remove duty from their worldview? In other words, can one completely remove oneself from doing things as an obedience to a higher authority, imagined or real?
If the authority is real, one might still decide to do the thing by rationally deciding not doing it has consequences.
they will just vote for whatever outcome will get them out of there the fastest
Making it voluntary and with pay could fix this problem, but not necessarily. I can imagine a scenario where a juror is looking to get as many duties as possible.
There is no contract with the country. A contract implies consent, the freedom to sign or not sign. A forced signature is null and void.
If jury duty were required for a free society to work, that would mean some people would have to be enslaved for a while to ensure freedom for everyone else. In other words, freedom would require some amount of slavery. That’s contradictory.
No, again, if you persuade enough people, you will have a diverse pool to choose from.
Nonsense. If you persuade people, make it worth their while, they will show up in droves.
By the same logic, we should force people to produce food for free, because there might be some people who can’t afford it and would starve.
Ironically, countries that nationalized food production have historically starved millions to death, while countries where food production is purely voluntary and only done in exchange for payment feed their populations best. In the latter countries, food is good, abundant, and cheap.
Yes. Juries don’t grow on trees. If you want a service, you have to pay for it.
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.
No, you want unbiased people. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t care.
Force means you get a bunch of people on a jury who don’t want to be there. This either introduces friction because they will drag their feet, or they will just vote for whatever outcome will get them out of there the fastest, which isn’t necessarily justice. For example (emphasis added):
[A] guy said to use the opportunity to fight back against laws you don't agree with. I thought about doing that even though we were asked if we could put personal feelings aside and enforce the law and I didn't want to be the one to say I couldn't so I stayed quiet. Then I thought, “What if I'm the only juror who thinks the law is unjust”? “Do I really want to drag this out just to fight the system”? I decided to make my decision based solely on whatever would get this over with the quickest. In this particular case a guy was charged with crimes that I don't think should be crimes anyway. Since I know the majority of people in my community feel the opposite, I chose to keep my opinion to myself for fear of ridicule of people knowing my feelings.
… I'm supposed to report for jury duty tomorrow. I hope it gets cancelled or I'm not chosen but if not, I'll [do] whatever I have to to get out of there the fastest.
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.
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.
Why would it automatically be an elite profession? Just adjust your selection process accordingly.
No, again (#3300), if you make it worth their while, plenty of people will show up voluntarily.
If you make it worth their while, you will have plenty of people signing up voluntarily.
A duty is an unchosen obligation. It’s an expression of mysticism. Immanuel Kant is responsible for spreading this anti-concept.
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.