Alamut

Ancient Greek juries were much larger than modern ones. The article mentions one trial with a jury of 883. It's also worth noting they took quite a few precautions to ensure jurors were not bribed: https://www.alamut.com/subj/artiface/deadMedia/agoraMuseum.html#4

It's worth it. Goes straight at the philosophical underpinnings of software, maybe even knowledge, with a hacksaw. It's not much longer than its own Wikipedia page: https://www.alamut.com/subj/artiface/language/johnWilkins.html Foucault wrote: "This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought [...] breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other." This is good too: https://eukaryotewritesblog.com/2021/05/02/ But it all sums to "the map is not the territory". Broadly agree with the thrust of what you're saying, disagree with some of the fine detail.

If anyone is interested in reading about Ancient Greek information technology beyond the antikythera device, this is a great post: http://www.alamut.com/subj/artiface/deadMedia/agoraMuseum.html

I found this story some time ago before I knew Hacker News. The sites where I found it at the time were: an excerpt from The Ages of Gaia, James Lovelock (story like): http://www.alamut.com/proj/98/nuclearGarden/bookTexts/Lovelock_Oklo.ht… and department of energy (fact like): http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/factsheets/doeymp0010.shtml

That link is worth expanding (Rudy Rucker interview, also quoted source of singularityhub piece): http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/ai/wolframalpha-searching-truth And in that page, the tail 'Resource' links include this: http://www.alamut.com/subj/artiface/language/johnWilkins.html which is the Jorge Luis Borges essay with the amusing mention of a system of animal classification: "(a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame ..." Borges lucidly nails the Achilles' heel - the definition of the database scheme. I stand by my less insightful comment of three weeks ago - care and feeding of 'fact databases' is hard (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=520281)

You are correct, "stoiciocrat" cf "stoichiocracy" is apparently not the correct term. When I learned about this concept about 8 years ago [1], I seem to misremember this to be the word on wikipedia. Apparently the correct spelling is "stochocracy" although the results are very few if I try to look them up today. I was referring to concepts that seem to be more conventionally called sortition (apparently the better term at least in academia according to Google Scholar result counts), demarchy, random ballot... [1] The history page of "stochocracy" at wikipedia suggests this wasn't my imagination: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stochocracy&action=hist… I also remember distinctly the page about the Kleroterion / Cleroterium, which I highly encourage to read: http://www.alamut.com/subj/artiface/deadMedia/agoraMuseum.html While I still consider myself a "stochocrat", this is but one of my many ideologies. I believe many different forms of governance are the best depending on the problem class or issue class, or properties of the problems themselves. For example a the problem "choose or design a setup to isolate heavy water from naturally abundant water" will not fare well under sortition, since it requires expertise. On the other hand, problems that have been broken down to such simplicity that anyone could execute it, but that typically suffer from corruption by a minority fare better under sortition: perhaps the selection or patrol routes and the assignment…

For more technical details on the machinery that the ancient greeks used to select folks: http://www.alamut.com/subj/artiface/deadMedia/agoraMuseum.html From the OP article: > The pressures of party politics have ensured that, although the formal mechanism remains the same, today's electors are bound by their party mandate to vote for the party's candidates; hence, the outcome of the election turns entirely on the party composition of the Electoral College. In many states, it is against the law for an electoral college elector to vote for anyone other than the party that appointed them. Disclaimer: I actually ran for elected office in 2008. While I came in dead last, I learned a lot and had a blast. In your local community, you will find that there are part time positions that you (hah! even you!) can run for. If there is an office you care about, then I recommend you learn what it takes and then run for office.

The essay itself: https://www.alamut.com/subj/artiface/language/johnWilkins.html

It is, in a way, the idea behind Borge's “Analytical Language of John Wilkins”: https://www.alamut.com/subj/artiface/language/johnWilkins.html

I couldn't tell when this was written. It appears to be from 1993: http://www.alamut.com/subj/ideologies/manifestos/cryptoanarchist.html Edit: See comments below. Turns out it's from 1988.

"Info tech of ancient democracy": http://www.alamut.com/subj/artiface/deadMedia/agoraMuseum.html

As a counterpoint, I'd argue that the "mathematical" approach to good writing is inherently flawed. That is, trying to arrive at the formula for the "best" essay via dialectic (argument) is to miss the forest for the trees. Writing is an art, not a science. Formal logic was developed to display arguments, so if you are trying to be as precise and mathematical as possible, use that instead. Instead, I'd suggest reading the great writers of the past and present (but focus more on the past). Study what works, what speaks to you, what stylistic approach you favor, and so on. As a bonus, you'll learn more about what has been said by other intelligent people and subsequently avoid writing over-confident, ill-informed essays... If you're looking for stellar examples of essay-writing, I personally recommend Jorge Luis Borges and David Foster Wallace. Both manage to write in a manner both erudite and coherent, without seeming too florid or too simplistic. Here are a few samples: - A New Refutation of Time, Borges: https://www.gwern.net/docs/borges/1947-borges-anewrefutationoftime.pdf - The Analytical Language of John Wilkins, Borges: http://www.alamut.com/subj/artiface/language/johnWilkins.html - David Lynch and Lost Highway, Wallace: http://www.lynchnet.com/lh/lhpremiere.html - Laughing with Kafka, Wallace: https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-1998-07-0059612… - Consider the Lobster, Wallace: http://www.columbia.edu/~col8/lobsterarticle.pdf Edit:…