Important new paper:
It's OK for Moslems
to use lotteries.
That is the clear message from a new paper from Crone & Silverstein ‘THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST AND ISLAM:THE CASE OF LOT-CASTING in Journal of Semitic Studies 2010 55(2):423-450;
This explains the practice of using lot-casting to allocate inheritance shares, conquered land, and official functions, and briefly surveys the history of this practice from ancient through Hellenistic to pre-Islamic times in order to examine its Islamic forms as reflected in historical and legal sources. They argue that the evidence does suggest continuity between the ancient and the Islamic Near East, above all in the first century of the hijra, but also long thereafter, if only at a fairly low level of juristic interest.
You can read the full paper here
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Lotteries are widely used to decide places at schools, colleges and universities. Conall Boyle explores many examples to find out why. The emotional turmoil that the use of ballots can cause to students and parents alike is graphically described. But lottery selection teaches lessons too; now we can find proper answers to controversial questions like “Does choice work?” This book will be of interest to parents, pupils and teachers as well as educational administrators. Any student applying for admission onto a university course should learn about the amazing weighted lottery for entry to medical schools in the Netherlands. There is a better way: it’s a lottery!
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LOTTERIES for EDUCATION: Origins, experiences, lessons
June 2010,
NOW AVAILABLE
at £14.95/$29.90
Order for £11.96 from the publishers
Imprint Academic
(forthcoming; scroll down to title)
Or for £11.21 (+p&p) from
Amazon uk
or for $29.90 at
Amazon.com
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Why Lotteries for Life? Why lotteries for social housing, educational places, medical treatments, but above all why lotteries for jobs—lotteries for short-listing, lotteries for appointments from the short-list, lotteries for promotions, even lotteries for redundancies?
Because applying random selection to the most significant prizes in our lifetimes changes the things that matter most in our lives for the better. Lottery-selection could do far more to achieve a truly fair, just and democratic society than would any reform of Parliament.
A crazy idea, shouldn't prizes be awarded on MERIT?
We should not award prizes to those who lack merit, of course, but we should allow each of us with sufficient merit an equal chance, or at least a chance proportional to their merit. Hence the need for lotteries because many will be qualified by having sufficient merit.
Nice idea, but it will never work, will it?
Actually, it does work.
For more than 30 years now, students have been selected for
Medical School in Holland
using a lottery.
Every year the US government organises the
Green Card
citizenship lottery for entry into the USA.
There are many more
examples of lottery selection in current use
On this website you can find out lots more
about this highly democratic way of sharing out burdens and benefits.
Click on one of the boxes above
Let the dice, not frail and devious human judgement, decide my fate!
Site set up and maintained by
Conall Boyle
For more about me, click on my name.
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