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Do you argue that hospitals shouldn't provide emergency treatment to people with heart attacks on the same grounds? I'm also going to call bullshit on your ent

Do you argue that hospitals shouldn't provide emergency treatment to people with heart attacks on the same grounds? I'm also going to call bullshit on your entropy argument: the accumulations of wealth we see are unnatural, and a product of artificial social choices about policing. Your entire argument is nonsense post-hoc rationalization about what's "natural". In a natural setting, things would be fairer because we'd have already murdered a bunch of rich people. In stark contrast to your claims, it's the inequality and present social order that's artificial and unnatural.

incadenza 9y ago
Couldn't agree more. Not to mention other mammals, certainly primates, DO seem to have an innate notion of fairness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BYJf2xSONc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BYJf2xSONc Anybody who starts in with the 'natural' order of things argument usually starts off on the wrong foot, in my experience. It's such a loaded word.
Strom 9y ago
I'm confused by your comment. It feels like you're upset about the parent advocating for unfair life, but I think they're merely pointing out what they're observing, not making any moral arguments of what should be. Are you saying that life is actually fair, and thus the parent is arguing in the wrong direction? Or do you agree with the parent that life is unfair, but think that alternative arguments should be used to argue for it?
- SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
  I think primates are innately fairer than modern society is, though they're not totally fair. I don't think we even want things to be totally fair (I don't for instance)... Just fairer. If you poll people, almost everyone thinks things should be more fair -- to the point that some are nearing violence over the issue. I think it's quite unnatural for things to be this unfair, and requires elaborate orchestration to keep it so. I also don't think the idea was a principled attempt to model the situation -- I think it was a post-hoc justification for why it should be as we see, and not an actual attempt to explain why things as they are. Nobody raises "well, it's just natural" for why we shouldn't try to stop heart attacks (and particularly, I've never heard it for why we shouldn't try to reduce the number of heart attacks, as it was used here about unfairness) -- only things like equality, gay marriage, etc. Which happen to all be things that align with the speakers' beliefs (either for or against; I've heard it both ways).
  - Strom 9y ago
    I think pointing out facts like primate fairness is missing the forest for the trees. [1] To me the crux of the argument is that the environment of a new lifeform isn't constant. Indeed, it's pretty much guaranteed to be different for every live entity. One beetle may live a happy resourceful life, another one may get hit by an asteroid. Lifeforms aren't provided equal opportunity by the universe. The default state is one of unfairness. However some intelligent lifeforms like primates, and indeed humans, have taken it upon themselves to artificially move the needle towards more fairness. I too would like to see more fairness. I also think that things are unfair by default, and I don't consider this as moral justification for social policies that keep it in the natural unfair state or worse. While I don't know @adventured's moral policies of whether unfairness is justified, I have re-read the comment a few times and I still see it as purely a description of the situation with no moral judgement at all. -- [1] It's possible that we're having trouble here due to semantics. When answering why life isn't fair, both my arguments and seemingly @adventured's entropy argument are talking about life as a sub-phenomenon of existence (which is to say, the widest scope). However if we're talking about life as limited to social structures, then I can see how any talk about natural unfairness can seem absurd.
    - SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
      You're wrong in your broad, abstract argument in a really obvious and shallow way: It doesn't explain why the predominant strategy of life at all scales is mutualism and synergy between scales and kinds of life. In no particular order, your "technical" argument fails to explain: eukaryotic structure, multicellular life, the interplay of fungii and roots, forests (which are more than adjacent trees), and really just about anything we see in the natural world. (Ed: I've thought of another 5 or 6 examples if you want to protest those -- mutualism is pretty easy to pick out in nature.) And that's because you've failed to account for localized regions of stability able to ratchet themselves to greater and geater levels of stability -- and these metastable systems are the model we see on every scale of existence. Life does this as well, which means that we always see stable collaborations outpace competition (and unfairness) on an asymptotic scale. You literally failed to account for how life does work in your argument. So I still don't believe you're advancing either a genuine observation (ie, it doesn't match fact to say it's unfair in general) or a principled theory (ie, it doesn't actually seem an internally consistent model -- at least, if you believe in physics). I think you're trying to build a post-hoc justification for the human system being as it is.

incadenza 9y ago

Couldn't agree more. Not to mention other mammals, certainly primates, DO seem to have an innate notion of fairness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BYJf2xSONc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BYJf2xSONc Anybody who starts in with the 'natural' order of things argument usually starts off on the wrong foot, in my experience. It's such a loaded word.

Strom 9y ago

I'm confused by your comment. It feels like you're upset about the parent advocating for unfair life, but I think they're merely pointing out what they're observing, not making any moral arguments of what should be. Are you saying that life is actually fair, and thus the parent is arguing in the wrong direction? Or do you agree with the parent that life is unfair, but think that alternative arguments should be used to argue for it?

SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
I think primates are innately fairer than modern society is, though they're not totally fair. I don't think we even want things to be totally fair (I don't for instance)... Just fairer. If you poll people, almost everyone thinks things should be more fair -- to the point that some are nearing violence over the issue. I think it's quite unnatural for things to be this unfair, and requires elaborate orchestration to keep it so. I also don't think the idea was a principled attempt to model the situation -- I think it was a post-hoc justification for why it should be as we see, and not an actual attempt to explain why things as they are. Nobody raises "well, it's just natural" for why we shouldn't try to stop heart attacks (and particularly, I've never heard it for why we shouldn't try to reduce the number of heart attacks, as it was used here about unfairness) -- only things like equality, gay marriage, etc. Which happen to all be things that align with the speakers' beliefs (either for or against; I've heard it both ways).
- Strom 9y ago
  I think pointing out facts like primate fairness is missing the forest for the trees. [1] To me the crux of the argument is that the environment of a new lifeform isn't constant. Indeed, it's pretty much guaranteed to be different for every live entity. One beetle may live a happy resourceful life, another one may get hit by an asteroid. Lifeforms aren't provided equal opportunity by the universe. The default state is one of unfairness. However some intelligent lifeforms like primates, and indeed humans, have taken it upon themselves to artificially move the needle towards more fairness. I too would like to see more fairness. I also think that things are unfair by default, and I don't consider this as moral justification for social policies that keep it in the natural unfair state or worse. While I don't know @adventured's moral policies of whether unfairness is justified, I have re-read the comment a few times and I still see it as purely a description of the situation with no moral judgement at all. -- [1] It's possible that we're having trouble here due to semantics. When answering why life isn't fair, both my arguments and seemingly @adventured's entropy argument are talking about life as a sub-phenomenon of existence (which is to say, the widest scope). However if we're talking about life as limited to social structures, then I can see how any talk about natural unfairness can seem absurd.
  - SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
    You're wrong in your broad, abstract argument in a really obvious and shallow way: It doesn't explain why the predominant strategy of life at all scales is mutualism and synergy between scales and kinds of life. In no particular order, your "technical" argument fails to explain: eukaryotic structure, multicellular life, the interplay of fungii and roots, forests (which are more than adjacent trees), and really just about anything we see in the natural world. (Ed: I've thought of another 5 or 6 examples if you want to protest those -- mutualism is pretty easy to pick out in nature.) And that's because you've failed to account for localized regions of stability able to ratchet themselves to greater and geater levels of stability -- and these metastable systems are the model we see on every scale of existence. Life does this as well, which means that we always see stable collaborations outpace competition (and unfairness) on an asymptotic scale. You literally failed to account for how life does work in your argument. So I still don't believe you're advancing either a genuine observation (ie, it doesn't match fact to say it's unfair in general) or a principled theory (ie, it doesn't actually seem an internally consistent model -- at least, if you believe in physics). I think you're trying to build a post-hoc justification for the human system being as it is.