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Essai sur l'application de l'analyse à la probabilité des décisions
Condorcet's 1785 treatise — the founding document of social choice theory — that applied the calculus of probabilities to collective decision-making and produced both the jury theorem and the paradox whose implications AI governance has not yet absorbed.
The full title is Essai sur l'application de l'analyse à la probabilité des décisions rendues à la pluralité des voix — 'Essay on the Application of Analysis to the Probability of Decisions Rendered by Majority Vote.' The work is 500 pages of dense probability calculus applied to the theory of collective judgment: how large must a jury be to reach a reliable verdict; how should voting procedures be designed to approximate rational collective choice; what is the probability that a democratically decided question is correctly decided. It is simultaneously the most ambitious mathematical treatment of democracy ever attempted and the most sobering, producing results that simultaneously justify inclusive governance and demonstrate its fundamental limitations.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The Essai was not merely a mathematical exercise. It was the foundation of Condorcet's political philosophy. If democracy is