One obvious reply would be to hire rationalists only to adjudicate that which has been phrased as a question of simple fact.

If the two parties can agree on the phrasing of the question, then I think it would be better to hire experts in the domain of the disputed facts, with only minimal training in rationality required. (Really, such training should be required to work in any fact-based discipline anyway.)

Is the idea that rationalists have an advantage here, enough that people would still hire them, but the advantage is much weaker and hence they can be swayed by highly paid arguers?

If there's a tradition of such adjudication - and if there's a good supply of rationalists - then people will hire them as long as they can agree in advance on submitting to arbitrage. Now, I didn't suggest this; my argument is that if this system somehow came to exist, it would soon collapse (or at least stop serving its original purpose) due to lawyer-y behavior.

But let's say better lawyers win the case for my target in all 50 cases; now he's impoverished by the thousands of billable hours (although I do get nothing).

How is this different from how things currently are, beyond a factor of two in cost for the target?

Surely that only works if the probability of winning a case depends only on the skill of the lawyers, and not on the actual facts of the cases. I imagine a lawyer with no training at all could unravel your plan and make it clear that your hobos had nothing to back up their case.

Also, being English myself, it hadn't dawned on me that the losers-pay rule doesn't apply everywhere. Having no such system at all seems really stupid.

It also occurs to me that hiring expensive lawyers under losers-pay is like trying to fix a futarchy: you don't lose anything if you succeeded, but you stand to lose a lot if you fail.

If the defending party is only required to match the litigating party's contribution, the suits will never proceed because the litigating bums can't afford to pay for a single hour of a lawyer's time. And while I don't know if this is true, it makes sense that funding the bums yourself would be illegal.

Then your lawyer gets arrested.

It sometimes is possible to have laws or guild rules if the prohibited behavior is clear enough that people can't easily fool themselves into thinking they're not violating them. Accepting advice and briefs prepared outside the courtroom is illegal, in this world.

Have a karma point for using Farscape profanity.

Would a lawyer by any other name still speak bullshit? Yes. But why are we talking about lawyers and judges?

Because I think that in the proposed scenario, where people hire master rationalists to arbitrate disputes, these arbitrators and other rationalists who would be hired by each side independently for advice would start behaving like judges and lawyers do, respectively. (Although case law probably wouldn't become important.)

You have explained well the reason that capping is a terrible idea. Now it is time to update the 'probably capped' part.

I didn't mean they would be capped by guild rules or something like that, but rather, that the effective market prices would stay low. I've no proof of this, economics is not my strong suit, but here are the reasons I think that's likely to happen:

1. If arbitration is so expensive that some people can't afford it (and it needs to be affordable by the poorer party in a conflict), that's an untapped market someone could profit from. Whenever your argument is with a poor party, you have to have an arbitrator whose fee is at most twice the fee the other party can or is willing to afford, and there's no effective low limit here. (State-provided judges and loser pays winner's fees do have something going for them.)
2. Being a better arbitrator doesn't require direct investment of money on part of the arbitrator. So a good arbitrator who's not getting enough work can lower his prices.
3. Third parties interested in seeing a dispute resolved - if only to achieve peace and unity - might contribute money towards the fee, or send volunteer arbitrators, in exchange for the parties to the dispute agreeing to arbitration. Finally, competition between arbitrators (for money and work) would eventually draw the fees down, assuming a reasonable supply of arbitrators.
4. What would make people choose an arbitrator that wasn't the cheapest available? Assuming some kind of minimal standard or accreditation (e.g., LW karma > 1000), an arbitrator is inferior if he cannot properly comprehend your rational argument or might be swayed by your opponent's master rationalist lawyer. You then have a choice: invest your money in a costlier and fairer arbitrator, or in a better lawyer so you can sway the cheap arbitrator to your own side. I do hope that one dollar buys more unswayingness than swaying-power, but with humans you never know.
5. How does someone prove she's a good arbitrator in the first place? Wouldn't you need another, more senior arbitrator to decide on that and to handle appeals? Either there's a hierarchy, in which case the lowest ranked arbitrators are cheap (because it's their own entry price in the business); or there's a less centralized web of trust, and if it's fragmented enough the whole idea of universally trusted arbitration is undermined.

Now, the system might be unfair to those who couldn't afford a lawyer and so can't present as much data to further their cause.

If that's so then there's no point to arbitration. He with the best lawyer wins.

Put it this way: take, in the general (average) case, any decision made by an arbitrator. For simplicity, suppose it's "A is right, B is wrong." Now suppose party B had employed the services of the very best rationalist ever to live as a lawyer. What is the probability the arbitrator would have given the opposite judgment instead? How high a probability are you willing to accept before giving up on the system? And how high a probability do you estimate, in practice?

Cyan, the poster Larks wrote that response. I had not read that post before I made the comment.

Eliezer says that authority is not 100% irrelevent in an argument. I think this is true because 100% of reliance on authority can't ordinarily be removed. Unless the issue is pure math or directly observable phenomena. But removal of reliance on a particular individual's authority/competence/biological state etc. is one the first steps in achieving objective rationality.

"

Also, what is a leader other than an authority figure to be obeyed? "

In our world, that is what a leader must be. In the general human concept of an ideal world, I do not know if this is the case. I actually think that humans have some basic agreement about what an ideal world would be like. The ideal world is based on priorities from our instincts as mortal animals, but it is not subjected to the confines of natural experience. I think the concept of heaven illustrates the general human fantasy of the ideal world.

I get the impression that almost everyone's concept of heaven includes that there are no rich and poor- everyone has plenty. There is no battle of the sexes, and perhaps even no gendered personalities. There is no unhappiness, pain, sickness or death. I personally think there are no humans that hold authority over other humans in heaven (to clarify, I know that a theological heaven cannot actually exist). What this means to me is that to have a more ideal world, the power differential between leaders and the led should be minimized. I understand that humans with their propensities for various follies aren't as they are necessarily suited for the ideal world they'd like to inhabit, but striving for an ideal world would to me mean that human nature would in some ways be corrected so that the ideal world became more in tune with human desires for that state.

" Can you provide an example of one your female social hierarchies?"

Say a nursing floor. There is such a thing as a nurse with the most authority, but the status differential between head nurse and other floor nurses is sometimes imperceptible to all but the nurses that work there. The pay difference is not that great either. Sometimes the nurse who makes the most decisions is the one that chooses to invest the most time and has the longest experience, not necessarily one who is chosen to be obeyed. This is entirely unlike a traditionaly male structure like an army where the difference between general and a corporal.