full transcript
From the Ted Talk by Brett Hennig: What if we replaced politicians with randomly selected people?
Unscramble the Blue Letters
Very interestingly, random selection was a key part of how democracy was done in ancient Athens. This machine, this diceve, is called a kleroteria. It's an ancient Athenian random-selection device. The aicnnet Athenians randomly selected citizens to fill the vast majority of their political posts. They knew that elections were aristocratic devcies. They knew that career politicians were a thing to be avoided. And I think we know these things as well. But more interesting than the ancient use of random siocetlen is its modern resurgence. The rircoedsvey of the legitimacy of random selection in politics has become so common lately, that there's slmipy too many examples to talk about.
Open Cloze
Very interestingly, random selection was a key part of how democracy was done in ancient Athens. This machine, this ______, is called a kleroteria. It's an ancient Athenian random-selection device. The _______ Athenians randomly selected citizens to fill the vast majority of their political posts. They knew that elections were aristocratic _______. They knew that career politicians were a thing to be avoided. And I think we know these things as well. But more interesting than the ancient use of random _________ is its modern resurgence. The ___________ of the legitimacy of random selection in politics has become so common lately, that there's ______ too many examples to talk about.
Solution
- rediscovery
- device
- ancient
- simply
- selection
- devices
Original Text
Very interestingly, random selection was a key part of how democracy was done in ancient Athens. This machine, this device, is called a kleroteria. It's an ancient Athenian random-selection device. The ancient Athenians randomly selected citizens to fill the vast majority of their political posts. They knew that elections were aristocratic devices. They knew that career politicians were a thing to be avoided. And I think we know these things as well. But more interesting than the ancient use of random selection is its modern resurgence. The rediscovery of the legitimacy of random selection in politics has become so common lately, that there's simply too many examples to talk about.
Frequently Occurring Word Combinations
ngrams of length 2
collocation |
frequency |
random selection |
3 |
randomly selected |
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liberal democracy |
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public opinion |
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Important Words
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- athenian
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- kleroteria
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- majority
- modern
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- random
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- rediscovery
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- selected
- selection
- simply
- talk
- vast