Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: One day, not long ago, I went to visit the
Speaker 2: Lawrenceville School just outside Princeton, New Jersey, a very old,
Speaker 2: prestigious private school, leafy campus, Gothic this and that. I
Speaker 2: asked one of their deans could I come and meet
Speaker 2: with some students? She said yes, Does everyone have a
Speaker 2: piece of paper and pen? The dean put together a
Speaker 2: group of twenty kids. We met in a conference room
Speaker 2: looking out on the campus lawn. On a scale of
Speaker 2: one at ten, don't put your name on it. I
Speaker 2: would like you to rank your happiness with the Lawrenceville
Speaker 2: School's current electoral process.
Speaker 1: Ten is you think it's perfect?
Speaker 2: One is you think it's maybe time to bring in
Speaker 2: Adam Adam Adam Cronkwright. He was the reason I was there. Okay,
Speaker 2: hi everyone, thanks for coming. My name is Malcolm Babo,
Speaker 2: so you as you know, I am a writer and
Speaker 2: I have a podcast called Revision's History. That's how the
Speaker 2: afternoon began. I said, I wanted to run an idea
Speaker 2: by them, an idea field tested by this person. I
Speaker 2: just met Adam kronkright about talent and chance and how
Speaker 2: we choose others to lead us. And I would encourage
Speaker 2: you all to be. If you think I'm crazy, you
Speaker 2: should say, Malcolm, you're crazy. Maybe this idea could change
Speaker 2: a lot about what's wrong with the world right now,
Speaker 2: or maybe not. Revisionist history is about the overlooked and misunderstood.
Speaker 2: Usually I decide what belongs in either of those categories.
Speaker 2: This time, I thought I'd just run Adam's idea by
Speaker 2: the students of Lawrenceville and that them decide. All this
Speaker 2: had to do with the way they elected their student council.
Speaker 2: I thought they should call a constitutional convention and start over.
Speaker 2: There is no right answer or wrong answer, but I
Speaker 2: want to make a case for something and see how
Speaker 2: that possibly relates to the way you guys do things
Speaker 2: here at Lawrenceville. They listened to Adam's idea argued about
Speaker 2: it for close to two hours. I'll be honest, I
Speaker 2: didn't think I'd get anywhere. The whole student council was
Speaker 2: there as well, all people who had profited from the
Speaker 2: Lawrenceville electoral status quo. And what was wrong with the
Speaker 2: status quo in theory, not much. Lawrenceville elected its leaders
Speaker 2: through the perfect democratic system, campaign speeches, open elections. Their
Speaker 2: constitution might as well have been drawn up by the
Speaker 2: founding Fathers. For all I know, one of the Founding
Speaker 2: fathers went to Lawrenceville. But then at the end of
Speaker 2: the day afternoon, I said, okay, now that I've given
Speaker 2: you an alternative, how happy are you with what you have?
Speaker 2: Scale of one to ten. One is totally miserable with
Speaker 2: the status quo, and ten is delighted. Everything's perfect.
Speaker 1: I want to see your number, rip it off and
Speaker 1: hand it to me. Open to day.
Speaker 2: As the students handed in their little slips of paper,
Speaker 2: I glanced at a few. I was taken aback. Lawrenceville
Speaker 2: had the perfect democratic system, and upon reflection, upon exposure
Speaker 2: to a little of Adam kronk Write's subversion, there were
Speaker 2: a lot of students in that room who decided they
Speaker 2: didn't like it anymore. I told them I'd do an
Speaker 2: official tally later after I got home. But there's some
Speaker 2: unhappiness in this room, and if they seem discontented with
Speaker 2: democracy in the gilded corridors of the Lawrenceville School, I
Speaker 2: can only imagine what it's like elsewhere. I first ran
Speaker 2: across Adam Kronkwrte online. I was just rummaging around Google
Speaker 2: one day, and what he was doing. Struck me is
Speaker 2: so interesting that I tracked him down cold called him.
Speaker 2: Are you ever in New York City? This was November.
Speaker 2: He said yes, he'd be there in February. So he
Speaker 2: settled on a date and he came to my apartment.
Speaker 2: Young guy, beard, big backpack, hiking boots. So tell me, actually,
Speaker 2: before we get into the question, where are you from.
Speaker 3: I'm from just outside of Syracuse, New York. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: central New York.
Speaker 1: How did you end up in Bolivia?
Speaker 2: Coach of Bamba to be more precise, a mid size
Speaker 2: city in the mountains of central Bolivia. It turned out
Speaker 2: to be a long story that starts in Canada, across Lake,
Speaker 2: Ontario from his home town.
Speaker 3: I remember where I was when I thought of the idea,
Speaker 3: Like you know, where were you I was. I was
Speaker 3: outside Victoria Hall, walking on on Queen's campus and it
Speaker 3: was spring.
Speaker 2: It was two thousand and nine. Adam was finishing college
Speaker 2: at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. He wanted to be
Speaker 2: a politician. He had, as he puts it, a pretty
Speaker 2: big hero complex.
Speaker 3: He was save the world and coming to terms with
Speaker 3: this idea that, like you know, be difficult to get
Speaker 3: to the heights of power without haveting to make some
Speaker 3: serious compromises externally internally, and you know, so then I
Speaker 3: was kind of like, Okay, well what am I going
Speaker 3: to do? What are we going to do?
Speaker 2: He began to read history, political science, turned it over
Speaker 2: in his mind, looking for a big idea.
Speaker 3: This is going to you know, right, all the wrongs.
Speaker 3: But I wasn't that involved in anything.
Speaker 2: He was more of a dreamer than a doer. Adam graduated.
Speaker 2: The world was in a financial crisis. Occupy Wall Street
Speaker 2: was one of the protest movements that grew up in response.
Speaker 2: There was a tense city of activists in Szubcatti Park
Speaker 2: in Lower Manhattan. Adam decided to go down to New
Speaker 2: York and join them. There were working panels and panel discussions,
Speaker 2: and one speaker in particular stuck with him, an activist
Speaker 2: from Bolivia who talked about an epic struggle there over water.
Speaker 2: Adam lived in Subcatti Park for five weeks until everyone
Speaker 2: was evicted by the NYPD. His experience with Occupy left
Speaker 2: him frustrated. He understood what they were fighting for, but
Speaker 2: not how. There was no how in Occupy. They didn't
Speaker 2: have a plan that seemed like it could actually reform
Speaker 2: the systems that had failed during the financial crisis. Adam
Speaker 2: moved to Brooklyn, slept on someone's couch, and all the
Speaker 2: while kept skyping with his new friend Bolivia, the water
Speaker 2: activist Marcella Olivella.
Speaker 3: I kind of shared with her that I was feeling
Speaker 3: a bit burnt out, disillusion from what I was seeing,
Speaker 3: and she said, well, yeah, I come down to Bolivia
Speaker 3: and check out social moments there.
Speaker 2: So he did Syracuse to Kingston, to Zuccotti Park to Bolivia.
Speaker 2: He made his way to coach A Bomba and there
Speaker 2: he met Marcella's brother, Oscar, who runs a foundation.
Speaker 3: So I was working with them for a while, and
Speaker 3: then Oscar one day he was in the car and
Speaker 3: he's asking me, what are you into, you know? And
Speaker 3: so I started telling him about democratic lotteries and he
Speaker 3: had never heard of the.
Speaker 2: Concept democratic lotteries. That's Adam's idea, replace elections with lotteries.
Speaker 2: Adam tells Oscar about it. Oscar says, we could test
Speaker 2: it in the schools. They sign up a rural elementary
Speaker 2: school and two high schools, a night school and a
Speaker 2: regular high school, and Adam sells them on this new
Speaker 2: way of picking the student council. Anyone who wanted to
Speaker 2: be in the lottery put their name forward, and then
Speaker 2: the whole school gathered in the gym to hear the results.
Speaker 3: We wanted something that was very visual that could generate buzz,
Speaker 3: and so they had some clay pots and we used
Speaker 3: faba beans as a crop that they grow there. They're
Speaker 3: kind of the biggest beans you can find, and so
Speaker 3: we had two colors, green and purple. The students would
Speaker 3: put fava beans in the pot and they'd cover it
Speaker 3: with an aguayoun, a traditional cloth, so that it's from
Speaker 3: there and it was also visually beautiful.
Speaker 2: If there were two hundred students running for eight student
Speaker 2: council positions, they would put one hundred and ninety two
Speaker 2: green fava beans in the pot and eight purple ones.
Speaker 2: Then all the candidates would line up. The kid reaches
Speaker 2: in reaches under the cloth. Yeah, grabs a bean.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do they hold it up?
Speaker 3: If it's purple, they hold it up. If it's purple
Speaker 3: or green, they hold They're supposed to hold it up
Speaker 3: so the school can see.
Speaker 2: No campaigning, no speeches or posters, no glad handing, no
Speaker 2: ballots no recounts. The whole selection was over in twenty minutes.
Speaker 2: Those who picked out the purple fava beans were on
Speaker 2: student council. Done. Now, I know that sounds like a
Speaker 2: crazy idea. You would never go for that, would you?
Speaker 2: Or would you? Adam KRONKWRIGHTE learned three important things from
Speaker 2: his work on school lottery in Bolivia. I'm going to
Speaker 2: call them kronk Right's laws. None of them I think
Speaker 2: are obvious beforehand, at least they were not obvious to him. First, numbers,
Speaker 2: as in number of candidates, typically what percentage of the
Speaker 2: kids want to be part of the lottery.
Speaker 3: It varies by the school. Yeah, it varies by the school.
Speaker 3: And so at the night high school, you know, these
Speaker 3: kids often work even on Saturdays, like they got a
Speaker 3: full schedule, So we would usually get between twenty and
Speaker 3: thirty students who are volunteering for like twelve spots. Right,
Speaker 3: So it wasn't a huge, huge turnout. And then at
Speaker 3: the like rural K through eight school, it was literally
Speaker 3: like every student that could participate participated in every lottery.
Speaker 3: And then you know, at another school we worked out
Speaker 3: later on. It was an urban high school, but in
Speaker 3: the morning you know there you had at least half
Speaker 3: of the school.
Speaker 2: After the student council members finished their time in office.
Speaker 2: Adam always asks a simple question, would you have run
Speaker 2: if we had done things the old way with campaigns
Speaker 2: and speeches.
Speaker 3: It's about three quarters who say no right away?
Speaker 1: Why do they say no?
Speaker 3: Well, let's say that nobody would have voted for me.
Speaker 3: I was new in the school, didn't have a lot
Speaker 3: of friends. You know, I would not want to run
Speaker 3: a campaign, you know, and ask people to vote for me.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: It's the things that you can kind of guess are impediments.
Speaker 2: They liked serving in office. They just didn't want to
Speaker 2: run for office. The demands of the campaign were filtering
Speaker 2: out all kinds of people who would otherwise have been
Speaker 2: very interested in student council politics. Overwhelmingly those who win
Speaker 2: the lottery one year in fact run again the next.
Speaker 3: So yeah, they tend to line back up. But when
Speaker 3: we ask them, you know, it'd be normal elections, would
Speaker 3: you have done it? The majority of saying now.
Speaker 2: What's interesting is the extent to which running for an
Speaker 2: office and running an office are two very very different things,
Speaker 2: and someone may be both capable and interested in running
Speaker 2: an office, but have no interest in running for That's
Speaker 2: the first law. In a democracy. Elections are supposed to
Speaker 2: encourage participation, but they don't. They discourage it. Lotteries encourage participation. Okay,
Speaker 2: crank write's second law. When you choose your student government
Speaker 2: by lottery, you see a change in the kinds of
Speaker 2: things the government actually does. In my high school, the
Speaker 2: student council basically organized dances, not at Adams schools. In
Speaker 2: coach of Bamba, at the Night School, for example, the
Speaker 2: student government tackled all kinds of issues.
Speaker 3: Human trafficking is a big problem there, and so they
Speaker 3: organized a workshop on human trafficking that had like you know,
Speaker 3: theatrical production and breakout groups and stuff. They've gotten First
Speaker 3: aid kits for their schools. The schools don't tend to
Speaker 3: have them. They've organized educational field trips.
Speaker 2: The student council put together soccer tournaments and poetry competitions.
Speaker 2: They opened a library.
Speaker 3: School didn't have one, and so they solicited book donations
Speaker 3: from institutions and DVDs and they were able to get
Speaker 3: a computer donated from the Ministry of Education and they
Speaker 3: set it up and they ran it. They also created
Speaker 3: their own student ID cards because that school didn't have
Speaker 3: ID cards and didn't have uniforms, and since they went
Speaker 3: to school at seven pm, the transportation workers didn't believe
Speaker 3: that there were students since they charged them double. So
Speaker 3: that was the first thing that they worked on that
Speaker 3: was like already number one for all the students was
Speaker 3: we want student ID cards, and so they made their
Speaker 3: own and distributed those to Adam.
Speaker 2: The crucial thing about that long list of accomplishments was
Speaker 2: the range of things the students were interested in.
Speaker 3: What do you mean by that? That's a more diverse group.
Speaker 3: They come from different social circles versus typically, at least
Speaker 3: in Bolivia. You know, it'll be like a group of
Speaker 3: friends who runs for election, right, and so have similar
Speaker 3: perspective on the school and what the school might need
Speaker 3: and or what they're going to offer to win people's votes,
Speaker 3: which is typically more the case. And so a group
Speaker 3: that's brought the book together through lottery. None of the
Speaker 3: students in the student government know each other prior to
Speaker 3: that first meeting, and they often have very divergent interests.
Speaker 3: You know, you'll have you know, jocks and artists and
Speaker 3: you know, like just kind of the whole gamut.
Speaker 2: The whole gamut. Democracies are supposed to be the best
Speaker 2: system for ensuring that a whole gamut of interests are
Speaker 2: represented in government. Kronk Right's second law says that's not true,
Speaker 2: not if the government is drawn from the same narrow
Speaker 2: band of society year after year. It's the lottery that
Speaker 2: gives you a truly representative sample of leaders. After the
Speaker 2: success of a few experiments, Adam helps set up a
Speaker 2: nonprofit called Democracy in Practice to work with student governments
Speaker 2: in Bolivia.
Speaker 3: I can't tell you the number of times that, you know,
Speaker 3: fresh off of a lottery selection, we have the first
Speaker 3: couple orientation meetings and my co founder, Raoul and I
Speaker 3: will come out and we'll be walking together and will
Speaker 3: be saying, oh, you know, so and so they're going
Speaker 3: to be a really important part of this team. You know.
Speaker 3: They present themselves well, they speak well, they're confident, and
Speaker 3: they don't even finish the term of office.
Speaker 2: This brings us to kronk Right's third law, maybe the
Speaker 2: most important of all. Nobody knows anything.
Speaker 3: The number of times that we've walked out of those
Speaker 3: meetings and been worried about a particular student who seemed
Speaker 3: really unplugged, you know, just kind of close body language, uncomfortable,
Speaker 3: didn't participate much, and and we say, we've got to
Speaker 3: work cut out with that student. And it, you know,
Speaker 3: they within a couple of weeks they figure out what's
Speaker 3: expected of them, how they can plug in, and by
Speaker 3: the end of the term they're even voted by their peers.
Speaker 3: It's like one of the most important members of the team.
Speaker 3: And so that's an experience we've had over and over
Speaker 3: again and still kind of get fooled by that. Now,
Speaker 3: the charisma that that that certain students will have and
Speaker 3: the confidence that they'll have.
Speaker 2: So the prediction, the mechanism we're using for predicting who
Speaker 2: will be a good leader, it's just flawed. So you're saying, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: even you, even you sometimes fall into this trap of
Speaker 2: of thinking that because a kid presents herself well and
Speaker 2: it's both spoken and charismatic, that she's going to be
Speaker 2: a good leader.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it's really difficult to counter that bias, right,
Speaker 3: And obviously not every student who's confident charismatic, you know,
Speaker 3: has has a big ego and can't work well with
Speaker 3: others and doesn't show up, you know, we've had. We've
Speaker 3: had several students who fit that mold, and we're great teammates.
Speaker 3: But generally it's a lot easier to teach a Shire
Speaker 3: student or student who's not super popular. It's a lot
Speaker 3: easier to teach them to overcome those fears and kind
Speaker 3: of add a few more leadership skills to their skill set.
Speaker 3: Then it is to to teach some of the more confident,
Speaker 3: charismatic students to kind of set aside their ego and
Speaker 3: like be a good member of a team and not
Speaker 3: try to steal the limelight and listen to others and
Speaker 3: not dominate conversations.
Speaker 2: Democratic elections are based on the idea that voters are
Speaker 2: good predictors, that they can look at a slate of
Speaker 2: candidates and accurately predict who will be the most effective leader.
Speaker 1: That's why we.
Speaker 2: Have campaigns and speeches and debates to help us make
Speaker 2: that prediction. But in Bolivia, Adam and his team discovered
Speaker 2: that people are lousy predictors.
Speaker 3: The teachers who often aren't in the meetings are just
Speaker 3: constantly fooled by, you know, when they come up and say, oh,
Speaker 3: you know that student, what a great leader you know,
Speaker 3: and they're not even aware that the rest of the
Speaker 3: student government's about to kick them out. You know, they've
Speaker 3: had enough of some of their behavior. And it's one
Speaker 3: student who got picked in the lottery. And during the
Speaker 3: lottery I had a teacher turned to me under his
Speaker 3: breath say, you know that students a dud. You're not
Speaker 3: going to work out, you know. I found out afterwards
Speaker 3: he was the one student from his class of thirty
Speaker 3: five students who had failed the previous year, and he
Speaker 3: was one of the one of the more kind of
Speaker 3: outstanding examples that we've had. He just you really loved
Speaker 3: to work on meaningful projects and be a part of
Speaker 3: a team.
Speaker 2: Now I know what you're thinking. It's Bolivia. What works
Speaker 2: for teenagers and coach of Bamba doesn't necessarily work for
Speaker 2: the rest of us Apples and oranges and all that.
Speaker 2: Except after being schooled by Adam, I began to see
Speaker 2: versions of his logic everywhere.
Speaker 5: Hello, this is Michael Loward.
Speaker 2: Nih delighted that you found time to chat with me.
Speaker 2: I just ran across your papers on peer review and
Speaker 2: citations and found them absolutely fascinating and they fit very
Speaker 2: much in a theme I'm exploring in my podcast. This season,
Speaker 2: so I wanted to chat. Michael Lawer is Deputy Director
Speaker 2: of Extramural Research at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.
Speaker 2: If I had to make a list of the most
Speaker 2: important Americans you've never heard of, Flower's in the top ten.
Speaker 2: He's way way up in what you might call, and
Speaker 2: I mean this in the nicest possible way, the biomedical
Speaker 2: deep state. His office hands out around thirty billion dollars
Speaker 2: a year in research grants to scientists across the United States. Basically,
Speaker 2: if you walk through any biology or chemistry department, or
Speaker 2: any medical school or any medical research institute, Lawer's office
Speaker 2: is what's paying for it. So every year, his office
Speaker 2: gets eighty thousand grant applications from around the country. They
Speaker 2: only have money to find about twenty percent of those,
Speaker 2: so they hold the equivalent of an election. Each of
Speaker 2: those applications gets assigned to a small group of reviewers.
Speaker 2: The reviewers vote for the ones they like and throw
Speaker 2: out the rest. Then those finalists are turned over to
Speaker 2: a second group of voters.
Speaker 5: The reviewers who are assigned to grant will give a
Speaker 5: brief presentation about the grant itself and what they thought
Speaker 5: were the strengths and weaknesses. This is then followed by
Speaker 5: an open discussion. After the discussion is complete, there is
Speaker 5: then a scoring.
Speaker 2: So first round is you're throwing out the bottom the
Speaker 2: bottom half.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 2: Second round is you're scoring the remainder. And how what
Speaker 2: is the the scores on a scale of what to water?
Speaker 2: How is the score represented?
Speaker 5: This is like golf, So a lower score is better.
Speaker 5: A score of ten would be perfect. That means that
Speaker 5: as far as the reviewers are concerned, they can't think
Speaker 5: of anything better. A score of ninety would represent the
Speaker 5: absolute worst.
Speaker 2: Those scores are predictions about how good a scientist's proposal is,
Speaker 2: in exactly the same way that the choices voters make
Speaker 2: are predictions about how good a leader a candidate will be.
Speaker 2: Kronkrite's third law says that voters aren't very good.
Speaker 1: At that prediction.
Speaker 2: So Lower wonders, what about the NIH's grant reviewers? Are
Speaker 2: we any good at it? Does the proposal that got
Speaker 2: a perfect ten from the voters grant approval time actually
Speaker 2: end up being the most influential or innovative research. Once
Speaker 2: it's finished, lawer looks around. He can't find any definitive
Speaker 2: answer to that question. This peer review process that you've
Speaker 2: just described has been in place at NIH.
Speaker 3: For how long seventy five years?
Speaker 2: Twenty five years. So we had this situation where we
Speaker 2: have a process in place for many, many years, seventy
Speaker 2: five years, which is from an empirical perspective, unexamined.
Speaker 5: Well, that's right, so.
Speaker 2: Lauer says, let's take a look. His method is simple.
Speaker 2: The standard way that science measures the value of a
Speaker 2: bit of research is how often it's cited by other
Speaker 2: scientists in their work. So if I spend five years
Speaker 2: working on an experiment and no one mentions that experiment again,
Speaker 2: it would be considered a failure. And if it's mentioned
Speaker 2: a thousand times, it's considered a home run. So what
Speaker 2: is there between the score of your grant application and
Speaker 2: the number of citations your work gets once it's finished.
Speaker 1: I think you know where this is going.
Speaker 5: We did not find a strong correlation between the peer
Speaker 5: review score and the citation metrics of the subsequently funded grant.
Speaker 2: Now it's worth pointing something out. Flower doesn't go into
Speaker 2: this thinking that the NAH is going to be subject
Speaker 2: to Chronkrit's third law. Nobody knows anything after all, lower's
Speaker 2: not talking about adolescents judging other adolescents. He's talking about
Speaker 2: distinguished scientists judging the potential of other distinguished scientists.
Speaker 5: We had assumed that we would find a reasonably strong
Speaker 5: correlation between the peer review score and the grant productivity.
Speaker 2: Really, I had assumed that you went in skeptical No.
Speaker 5: But then again, exactly as I said, if we knew
Speaker 5: what we were doing, we wouldn't call it research.
Speaker 2: Kronk Wrt's third law applies outside of coach of Bamba.
Speaker 2: It applies even at the National Institutes of Health, to
Speaker 2: the process by which billions of dollars of research money
Speaker 2: is distributed. It's not kronk Wrt's third law. It's kronk
Speaker 2: Right's universal third law. When Lauer publishes his research, lots
Speaker 2: of other scientists look at his results and say, if
Speaker 2: he's right, our electoral system in science is broken. I mean,
Speaker 2: why bother voting on grants at all. People throughout the
Speaker 2: scientific community start talking like Adam, start saying, let's just
Speaker 2: do a lottery. Let the reviewers make the first cut
Speaker 2: and get rid of the obvious losers, then put the
Speaker 2: rest in a hat. My favorite article ran in the
Speaker 2: wallst Journal by two microbiologists, Ferrik Fang and Arturo cost
Speaker 2: of All entitled taking the Powerball Approach to funding medical
Speaker 2: research Powerball for goodness Sake with the subtitle winning a
Speaker 2: government grant is already a crapshoot, Making it official by
Speaker 2: running a lottery would be an improvement.
Speaker 5: There's a famous line from Nil's board, and also attributed
Speaker 5: to Yogi Berra, that prediction is very hard, especially about
Speaker 5: the future. By its very nature, science is unpredictable. And
Speaker 5: essentially what we are asking scientists to do is to
Speaker 5: make predictions about something which is itself inherently unpredictable.
Speaker 2: Well so is leadership. Leadership is even more unpredictable than
Speaker 2: scientific merit, So why do we insist on making predictions
Speaker 2: about something which is inherently unpredictable? Along these lines, I
Speaker 2: did something fun two days ago. I went to a
Speaker 2: to the Lawrenceville School, I got fancy boarding school in
Speaker 2: New Jersey, and I spoke to a group of kids,
Speaker 2: seniors and juniors, a random group of kids, but including
Speaker 2: the student council and student uncil president, and I told
Speaker 2: them about your work. I describe it to them, and
Speaker 2: I said, you know at Lawrenceville, you have a very
Speaker 2: similar situation. This is a pre selected group of highly
Speaker 2: able people which you use essentially a peer review process
Speaker 2: to decide who was eligible for the student council. Right,
Speaker 2: they have a vote, yep. And I said, well, given
Speaker 2: the fact that doctor Lower's work suggests that we're bad
Speaker 2: at making those kinds of predictions at the very top,
Speaker 2: would you consider change in the way you elect your
Speaker 2: student council and student council president?
Speaker 4: Laughs.
Speaker 2: No. On the contrary, as you'll discover, the students at
Speaker 2: the Lawrenceville School did not laugh at this idea. Yeah,
Speaker 2: at all thoughts comments, this is something you'd ever think
Speaker 2: of trying here? Do you think Bolivia is different than
Speaker 2: New Jersey? The students at the Lawrenceville School take the
Speaker 2: argument I brought them very seriously. They have lots of questions.
Speaker 2: The democratic process at Lawrenceville is steeped in tradition. They're
Speaker 2: a little leery of leaving the process up to chance,
Speaker 2: especially for the top student body president.
Speaker 6: You don't want to have to go to a first
Speaker 6: school meeting and have a president who's a little bit shaky,
Speaker 6: because the first time you go to school meeting, you're
Speaker 6: expecting the freshmen to be excited about the school year ahead,
Speaker 6: and the seniors everyone in between to be excited about
Speaker 6: the school yearhead. You don't want to have to learn
Speaker 6: with them.
Speaker 2: The students are crammed into a small conference room. Some
Speaker 2: sit at a long table, others stand along the walls.
Speaker 2: The headmaster and one of the schools steens stand by
Speaker 2: the door. A microphone is passed to whomever wants to speak.
Speaker 2: This is a student named solet you want.
Speaker 6: To have someone initially who is a figurehead who can
Speaker 6: immediately be put into a stressful situation of talking to
Speaker 6: the entire school and basically the entire faculty perform at
Speaker 6: the high level.
Speaker 2: One of the president's most important functions at Lawrenceville is
Speaker 2: the school meeting that happens in the auditorium every Thursday morning.
Speaker 2: Forty five minutes all the students show up. It's a
Speaker 2: central part of the school culture.
Speaker 7: Hi Am Quinn, I think that a good public speaker
Speaker 7: is someone who is willing to be vulnerable with the audience,
Speaker 7: which is also why I think that being a good
Speaker 7: public speaker and being a sociable, energetic person is really
Speaker 7: important in being a good leader, because when you're vulnerable
Speaker 7: on stage like Tay last year wrapped on stage, which
Speaker 7: was awesome and got us really excited.
Speaker 2: Hey, Lawrenceville's current student body. He's standing at the back
Speaker 2: of the room. Later, when we chat, I learned he's
Speaker 2: half Nigerian half Kenyon, grew up in London. I've noticed
Speaker 2: that we have not heard from the current president student Council.
Speaker 2: Hold on k for the Tay is the only one
Speaker 2: in the room wearing a suit. A little bit of
Speaker 2: his English formality.
Speaker 1: Tell me why you think you were elected?
Speaker 3: What I think?
Speaker 8: I think a large part of why I was elected
Speaker 8: is the fact that I am someone who has made
Speaker 8: sure that I am very president on campus. I speak
Speaker 8: to as many people as possible. I think I'm known
Speaker 8: for generally being someone who does speak to people and
Speaker 8: looks to make change and help people.
Speaker 1: Did you really wrap in your speech?
Speaker 8: Yes, so my my closing speech. The person I was
Speaker 8: running against, he was a phenomenal speaker. He partakes in theaters,
Speaker 8: so he was, if not as good, he was definitely
Speaker 8: he's actually I would actually say he's a better public
Speaker 8: speaker than I was. So I knew that I had.
Speaker 1: All the great public speakers. By the way, do that exactly.
Speaker 1: They claim that others are better public speech.
Speaker 8: Oh oh no, But genuinely, he is someone who who
Speaker 8: speaks on stage law. He is a theater kid, so
Speaker 8: he is he's greater at public speaking. So I knew
Speaker 8: that he was going to come in essence, all guns
Speaker 8: blazing and produce a phenomenal speech. So I knew that
Speaker 8: there was some way in which I had to show
Speaker 8: that I am a quote unquote fun guy and someone
Speaker 8: that the student body could relate to. So I decided
Speaker 8: to go out with a wrap.
Speaker 3: In my closing statement, I.
Speaker 2: Have to say I really liked Day. He's incredibly thoughtful
Speaker 2: and charismatic. My first thought after talking to him was
Speaker 2: would I have voted for him? I think I would have.
Speaker 2: But then I thought, aren't I making the same mistake
Speaker 2: that Adam kronk Write warned about. Am I unfairly ruling
Speaker 2: out other students who might be just as capable of
Speaker 2: being a great student body president. Back when I met
Speaker 2: with Adam kronk Wright, he talked about this one student
Speaker 2: at one of his schools in coach Obamba.
Speaker 1: What happened to him?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 1: What happened?
Speaker 2: I really should have played this tape for the Laurens
Speaker 2: Hill students.
Speaker 3: He just he started off. He looked bored, he looked uncomfortable,
Speaker 3: you know, just like slouched in his chair, didn't know
Speaker 3: if he was listening and stuff. The moment that they
Speaker 3: started to do some of that work, he just would
Speaker 3: wake up in the meetings basically and start bottom lining things.
Speaker 3: He said, Oh, I can go, you know, I can
Speaker 3: go take the letter down to the Mayor's office. I
Speaker 3: can go do this, I can go do that, and
Speaker 3: he'd do it. He'd file through, you know, and that
Speaker 3: sometimes is in short supply when you're working with teenagers,
Speaker 3: you know. And he really liked to do those types
Speaker 3: of things and he'd file through. And so then people
Speaker 3: started to count on him, and they realized they could
Speaker 3: count on him, and he took on a lot of responsibility.
Speaker 2: Adam CRONKWRD also told me about another student named Richard
Speaker 2: Knew in school, completely introverted, who then blossomed and turned
Speaker 2: out to be one of the most effective student council members.
Speaker 3: I remember walking with him after one of the first
Speaker 3: meetings and I told them, you know, this is your opportunity.
Speaker 3: Everyone else in the group is looking to you as
Speaker 3: a leader and he stopped dead in his tracks. You know,
Speaker 3: he looks at me all confused, and he says, I'm
Speaker 3: not a leader. I'm not always out front and don't
Speaker 3: menando like dominating the conversation, you know. And I told them, like,
Speaker 3: that's not our conception of leadership.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: A leader is someone who develops leadership and other people
Speaker 3: right and works well on the team.
Speaker 2: And I think this is the key, the larger lesson
Speaker 2: behind Cronkrite's three laws. It isn't just that we're bad
Speaker 2: at making predictions. It's worse than that. It's that our
Speaker 2: whole system of prediction is screwed up because we require
Speaker 2: that our candidates perform for us. Will never get the
Speaker 2: richards of the world or the student who everyone thought
Speaker 2: would be a dud. Neither of them could win an election,
Speaker 2: could they. They'd slouch in their chairs and look bored
Speaker 2: and uncomfortable. They get blown off the stage, even though
Speaker 2: both those kids could end up being great leaders in
Speaker 2: their own right. In that room at Lawrenceville, they were
Speaker 2: Indian and Korean, and Chinese and African and African American
Speaker 2: and white American kids. They were from all over. Some
Speaker 2: were funny, some were serious. Some sounded like they were
Speaker 2: forty five years old, some seemed very young. They were
Speaker 2: as varied and idiosyncratic as any group of teenagers anywhere
Speaker 2: would be. So why when it came to their leader
Speaker 2: did they cling to a system that ensured that only
Speaker 2: one type the performer could win. Now, even if you
Speaker 2: accept those arguments, there's still the problem that a lottery
Speaker 2: doesn't feel right. If you win an NAH grant under
Speaker 2: the old system, you get to walk around and say
Speaker 2: my grant was selected over thousands of others.
Speaker 1: It feels earned.
Speaker 2: If you win an election, you get to say that
Speaker 2: people chose me, and that people get to say I
Speaker 2: chose her.
Speaker 4: My name's Frankie. And I think another aspect of the
Speaker 4: sort of arbitrarily picked lottery like it's effect. I think
Speaker 4: it's worth thinking about its effect on like the students
Speaker 4: themselves and their kind of response in terms of their
Speaker 4: lack of control or say over who is decided to
Speaker 4: be the leader.
Speaker 2: But here's what I think Adam Krunkwright would have said
Speaker 2: to Frankie. You can't just pay attention to the legitimacy
Speaker 2: of the end result. You have to pay attention to
Speaker 2: the legitimacy of the process. I suppose we did this
Speaker 2: in you know, we chosen a big set of people
Speaker 2: and then chosen our president by lottery. What percent of
Speaker 2: American presidents would have been female?
Speaker 1: Fifty?
Speaker 2: So wait, you guys twice I've heard this argument that
Speaker 2: by in depends on elections, but when it comes to presidents,
Speaker 2: it seems to be the opposite. Is true that if
Speaker 2: we had a lottery a, a whole lot of people
Speaker 2: right now who feel disenfranchised would feel enfranchised. It was
Speaker 2: at that point that a sophomore ninged Summer, suggested a
Speaker 2: hybrid plan, kind of like the Lawrenceville version of the
Speaker 2: idea that has been floated for the NIH. Have voters
Speaker 2: make a first cut, then pick the final winners by
Speaker 2: lottery who has.
Speaker 9: That potential to learn and to grow and is open
Speaker 9: to other viewpoints, whereas someone who's already stuck in their ways.
Speaker 2: Summer laid out her idea, then stopped, looked around the room. Wait, Summer,
Speaker 2: don't give up. This is this is I love this,
Speaker 2: keep going, so walk me through. I'm going to make
Speaker 2: you dean of students for the day. By the way,
Speaker 2: the fact that Summer stopped like that while exploring her idea.
Speaker 2: That's exactly the point of Adam kronk Write's lottery work
Speaker 2: with students in Bolivia, because the electoral system does not
Speaker 2: reward the candidate who, midway through explaining her idea during
Speaker 2: a debate pauses to gather feedback and take the temperature
Speaker 2: of the room and reflect on whether what she's saying
Speaker 2: is actually what she wants to say. No, the system
Speaker 2: rewards the candidate who blunders ahead, convinced of their own brilliance.
Speaker 2: I want more candidates like Summer keep going. So describe
Speaker 2: to me how this works. I like this idea a lot.
Speaker 9: So I think the preliminary part, like I said, would
Speaker 9: be an anonymous procedure, where people could prepare a piece,
Speaker 9: any piece they wanted, whether it be a project, an
Speaker 9: essay of video. And then from there I was either
Speaker 9: thinking that there could be a lottery system from there,
Speaker 9: because at that point you know that people chosen are
Speaker 9: ones you're equally interested in representing the community.
Speaker 2: Right, So Summer, we're gonna call us the Summer proposal.
Speaker 2: So what you're saying is suppose all the students look
Speaker 2: at these fifty projects, and then you're saying that they
Speaker 2: would vote on the ones they liked the best. Yes,
Speaker 2: and then from that pool you would do potentially a lottery. Yes.
Speaker 8: Yes, love this idea.
Speaker 2: Now that they had thought about their electoral system and
Speaker 2: talked about the alternatives, how happy were they with the
Speaker 2: status quo?
Speaker 1: I wanted to vote?
Speaker 2: I want to show up hands. Scale of one to ten.
Speaker 2: Ten meant happy, one meant disillusion.
Speaker 1: What should it be?
Speaker 2: Hold? What should it be? Because I'm gonna let you know,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to hold you to this. And I
Speaker 2: got them to agree that six should be the threshold.
Speaker 2: Anything less than six, anything less than that, and they
Speaker 2: should consider calling their own constitutional convention and rewriting the rules.
Speaker 1: Raise your hands, way up, way up, way up, way up.
Speaker 1: It carries a day, cooks right. I'll let you know.
Speaker 1: Thank you all very much.
Speaker 2: I went home and counted their average happiness score with
Speaker 2: the electoral status quo five point three. A tried and
Speaker 2: tested democratic process honed over generations at one of America's
Speaker 2: most prestigious private schools. And when you ask the students,
Speaker 2: even for a moment to think about how well it works,
Speaker 2: they say, we're not so sure. Oh, I forgot to
Speaker 2: mention one thing, kind of a big thing. Wait, so
Speaker 2: do you think colleges should Where I really wanted to
Speaker 2: push this discussion was maybe colleges should choose their students
Speaker 2: by lottery.
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot to be said for that.
Speaker 1: It you liked that idea, Machia, I.
Speaker 2: Think I do. I'm not prepared to give you a
Speaker 2: full answer on it.
Speaker 1: You guys write down age.
Speaker 2: They were mostly juniors and seniors either on the cusp
Speaker 2: of the endless college application process or in the middle
Speaker 2: of it. And selection is the student body president problem
Speaker 2: times ten. Right, the student runs for a highly coveted position,
Speaker 2: the university makes its prediction. But if NAA T viewers
Speaker 2: can't predict the best scientists based on grant proposals, and
Speaker 2: if voters pass over perfectly good candidates because they slouch
Speaker 2: in the corner, how on earth can universities pick the
Speaker 2: best students based on college applications. There are much much
Speaker 2: bigger fish to fry here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like it.
Speaker 3: I like the idea a lot.
Speaker 2: Another revolutionary I was suddenly so giddy with excitement that
Speaker 2: I didn't catch his name. Lanky kid, big head of
Speaker 2: curly hair. Do you think that the reason you and
Speaker 2: I think alike. So much is that our hair is similar?
Speaker 2: I think?
Speaker 1: Sorry exactly, I called.
Speaker 2: For another vote on support for college admission lotteries. Show
Speaker 2: of hands, Oh most of you? Well, half the revolutionaries
Speaker 2: are not at the gates Lawrenceville.
Speaker 1: They're inside the gates.
Speaker 2: Next stop for Adam Kronkwright, New Jersey. Revicious History is
Speaker 2: produced by Mia LaBelle and Lee Mingestu, with Jacob Smith,
Speaker 2: Eloise Linton, and Anna Naime. Our editor is Julia Barton.
Speaker 2: Original scoring by Louis Scara, mastering by Flawn Williams. Fact
Speaker 2: checking by Beth Johnson. A special thanks to the Pushkin Crew,
Speaker 2: Hede Fane, Carly Migliori, Maya Knig, Maggie Taylor, Jason Gambrell,
Speaker 2: and of course LFA Jacob Weisberg. Oh and big thanks
Speaker 2: to the staff and students of the Lawrenceville School for
Speaker 2: a really fun afternoon. I'm Malcolm Goma. It would have
Speaker 2: been so much clever if I had had them to
Speaker 2: have a lottery to decide on whether to have a lottery.
Speaker 2: That would have been so meta and great. But I
Speaker 2: missed that opportunity.