Yeah I guess it’s ethically questionable if you’re certain about the rank ordering. My guess is that the relative ranking between the 2n best applicants is largely noise in any case, if you’ve got many good applicants (it’s hard to measure and predict skills etc). So as long as you make this clear up front, having a lottery component in a process that’s very noisy should be ethically fine?
I generally agree with you that there’s a lot of candidate noise in rank ordering, but many EAs seem to think there are huge differences between first and second tier candidates in candidate selection in these situatoins. I don’t think a lottery process is implausible here, but it still does feel unfair that you could be the top person selected for a course and not get in because of randomisation.
Just on a purely philosophical level: it could also feel less unfair in expectation, if you randomise and state the rules and your lack of conviction in ranking etc up front in the sense that it can net reduce biases and people get exactly what they agree too. You could even issue a certificate saying “was in the selected cohort, but didn’t win the lottery” or similar to reduce some of the signalling effect.
Yeah I guess it’s ethically questionable if you’re certain about the rank ordering.
My guess is that the relative ranking between the 2n best applicants is largely noise in any case, if you’ve got many good applicants (it’s hard to measure and predict skills etc). So as long as you make this clear up front, having a lottery component in a process that’s very noisy should be ethically fine?
I generally agree with you that there’s a lot of candidate noise in rank ordering, but many EAs seem to think there are huge differences between first and second tier candidates in candidate selection in these situatoins. I don’t think a lottery process is implausible here, but it still does feel unfair that you could be the top person selected for a course and not get in because of randomisation.
I agree with your point etc.
Just on a purely philosophical level: it could also feel less unfair in expectation, if you randomise and state the rules and your lack of conviction in ranking etc up front in the sense that it can net reduce biases and people get exactly what they agree too.
You could even issue a certificate saying “was in the selected cohort, but didn’t win the lottery” or similar to reduce some of the signalling effect.