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Why would a lottery be used at all for picking “winners” for immigration? On multiple levels that seems unfair and wrong.
Why would a lottery be used at all for picking “winners” for immigration? On multiple levels that seems unfair and wrong.
Lottery systems are generally considered fairer than first come first serve because they don't advantage people who apply early. Especially in an immigration-related process where circumstances are likely to dictate when you can apply, not everyone will have an opportunity to 'get in early'.
If you have a way to make the process simultaneously non-random, fair, and not have a cap (which I personally would probably be fine with eliminating but is presumably a non-starter for various political reasons), I'm sure some people would love to hear about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_lottery_(1969)https://en...
> People soon noticed that the lottery numbers were not distributed uniformly over the year. In particular, November and December births, or dates 306 to 366, were assigned mainly to lower draft numbers representing earlier calls to serve...Analysis of the procedure suggested that mixing 366 capsules in the shoe box did not mix them sufficiently before dumping them into the jar.
All the other points about the unfairness makes sense, but the complaint about the poor random number generator does not make sense. This isn't a multistep process that the "adversary" has access to. It doesn't matter how bad the random number generator is or even if it is predictable. Sure you could bribe the person putting it into excel I suppose, but you could do that anyway and just have them switch numbers aroun…
And the gambling comparison is particularly bad. Excel is presumably not picking the same seed every day, no matter how bad it is. It's probably using time() when it's loaded, which is not great but also not visible to an 'attacker' and not consistent.
Why would a lottery be used at all for picking “winners” for immigration? On multiple levels that seems unfair and wrong.
Genuinely random selection averts loads of really nasty problems in a system where you need to pick things even though humans tend to be sure some other approach would work better.
Why would a lottery be used at all for picking “winners” for immigration? On multiple levels that seems unfair and wrong.
The other options are to let everybody in or to suppose you already know the right criteria for who'd be the "best" immigrants. Hint: you don't. Genuinely random selection averts loads of really nasty problems in a system where you need to pick things even though humans tend to be sure some other approach would work better.
On an individual basis of course not, but you don't think in the aggregate better candidates can be chosen?
All the other points about the unfairness makes sense, but the complaint about the poor random number generator does not make sense. This isn't a multistep process that the "adversary" has access to. It doesn't matter how bad the random number generator is or even if it is predictable. Sure you could bribe the person putting it into excel I suppose, but you could do that anyway and just have them switch numbers aroun…
The other comments have already expressed why that is the case - but in summary, there is no security flaw coherently expressed here, Excel is possibly the right tool for the job (it saves tens of thousands of dollars of custom software development through government acquisition programs) and the editorialism in the title was unnecessary and further hurt the credibility of the "point."