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Not going to lie, I hold an an insane level of disdain toward Rawl´s Veil of ignorance for many reasons that I don´t want to get into right now. That said, the

Not going to lie, I hold an an insane level of disdain toward Rawl´s Veil of ignorance for many reasons that I don´t want to get into right now. That said, the following sentence - I think - is one of the most important ones that I wish more people would pay very close attention to: > ... And yet, we have largely workable, if _imperfect_, ways to resolve such disagreements, _so that everyone can get on with life_ I agree with you on the first part but disagree on the reasoning behind it. I have a framework that I personally use when I think about topics such as this one. It has helped me understand a fair bit about social organizations in general as I see it applied everywhere I look. I´ll write the gist of it down here and you tell me what you think: 1. There are two types of solutions to problems: deterministic solutions (100% perfect solutions that can be algorithmically spelled out) and heuristics (good enough shortcuts that have x% error margin and y% efficiency - What you called imperfect solutions). 2. We desperately want to find as many deterministic solutions we possibly can to any and all problems that we face. And where we fail to do so, heuristics are brought in to help us, as best as possible, approximate that "deterministic/perfect/ideal". 3. Heuristics are things like religion, moral frameworks, political systems, language, etc. - Notice that none of them is deterministic in any way, shape or form. They are all imperfect. However, they are rule-sets that are more or less ambiguous that helps us navigate most of the problem space with relatively low effort. But the trade-off here is that heuristics break at the edges - free speech vs. hate speech is a clear example of a failure in the heuristic. 4. It is important to note that all heuristics have some error rate. If they did not, they´d be deterministic solutions. So whatever heuristic you want to use to solve a given problem, Popper´s, Rawl´s or otherwise, you have to always make sure to take the errors that might emerge into account. The error rate is far more important than most people realize as it is the determining factor for how successful/effective the heuristic is going to be in society. 5. When suggesting alternatives to an existing heuristic because of some apparent flaws - such as replacing our current understanding and notion of intolerance by Popper´s take on the matter - the new heuristic that you propose that should overwrite the old one must have a smaller margin of error. Otherwise, why even bother? in fact, if this isn´t the case, you risk making things worse rather than better. 6. Iterate on the process until you come up with better and better heuristics that increasingly approximates the deterministic solution (lower error rate over time until you reach the holy grail of 99.999999...%). 7. Every once in a while, as humanity is traversing its path, some heuristics will be replaced by deterministic answers. Ex: science replaces religion when it comes to describing the natural world -> moving from heuristic religious interpretation of the natural world to a more deterministic approach. This is how society betters itself over time. It is an iterative process that replaces old systems with newer ones that are less prone to errors. My beef with Rawl´s, Pooper (as I call him) and most of the other thinkers that people read in 1st year college class is that the heuristics they paint are already far inferior than the ones that we currently have. But unfortunately, the academic class (read teachers) cannot see that because they lack a good framework for assessing the effectiveness/error rates of a given heuristic.

jvalencia 7y ago
This is great if you can agree on the goal and the measure. It seems like that is more the issue.
- wesammikhail 7y ago
  Exactly. I think that a lot of what is plaguing society right now is, in spite of how techno-sophisticated we have become, is in a sense a measurement problem.
  - bambataa 7y ago
    It's not clear to me how you can say that a new heuristic is "far inferior", nor how you can say that the academics lack a good framework but you presumably don't. How do you know what a good framework would look like? I would agree that it's a measurement problem in the sense that we don't even know what or how to measure it. But your analysis is silent on what an error is so I'm not really sure what you think you have gained by it.
    - wesammikhail 7y ago
      Your point would stand only if these new heuristics are truly "new" when in fact, they are actually pretty old, tried and debunked at this point. And we actually do know what we want to measure and we have that as a goal but our methodology/framework isn´t all that good just yet (we currently use a form of bruteforce). > It's not clear to me how you can say that a new heuristic is "far inferior", nor how you can say that the academics lack a good framework but you presumably don't. How do you know what a good framework would look like? It isn´t that I have something that they don´t have. It´s far more sinister than that. And here is my argument: The best tool we have at the moment is: you play it (any given set of ideas) out in the real world and look at the consequences in terms of elevating/reducing the amount of suffering that is at the basis of the human condition - after all, that is the end goal of political heuristics. Popper´s and Rawl´s ideas are not "new" in the sense that they have been extensively tried in the past. They were murderous beyond belief but somehow that is always forgotten and never accounted for as linguistics is used to disguise the actual end-result of the experiment by saying that "they have not been tested at all" or that "these are new cutting edge ideas". As an example, we can take a look at communism. The total body count that was produced under communistic regimes would probably make for a giant mountain that would take months to climb. Yet somehow you always hear the slogan "that wasn´t real communism" as a rebuttal to the inherit evil of said set of ideas. If you pay close attention, parse the ideas given and see if they have previously tried or not, you can most often tell that the vast majorities of proposed changes are new reformulations of old and debunked shit. Example: Marxism views the world as a battle between two groups, the rich and the poor. 3rd wave feminism views the world as a battle group between men and women. This is an over-simplification obviously but what I am hoping to demonstrate here is that it is the same old wolf in sheep´s clothing. We don´t need to replay that experiment to know where it will end up. This is the best we can do at the moment. Am I happy with this methodology of evaluating ideas? hell no. But we have no mechanism that performs any better. And as for the academic class, heck, it is they that purposefully spread these reformulations to the younger generations by actively reworking old debunked ideas as their own "new" takes on how the world ought to be - which is why I tend to believe that academia (especially the social "sciences") is far more sinister than first meets the eye. Note: I used marxism/communism here as an example just for convenience. I could have just as easily used the Veil of Ignorance or the argument of intolerance to demonstrate that same principle. They have been tried many times before and they were incredibly counter-productive. In spite of what most people think, the modern form of western societies can be seen as a function of the set of most effective ideas that have been tested to date (effective = generate the most amount of reduction in overall human suffering). It isn´t perfect (it´s a heuristic after all) but in comparison to all other tried and tested set of ideas, it is the best we can do atm. Besides, even in the west, small variations of these ideas are currently being tried within each nation state. It is a process that takes time but as these experiments unfold, we will learn something new and converge on a better solution once one is found.

jvalencia 7y ago

This is great if you can agree on the goal and the measure. It seems like that is more the issue.

wesammikhail 7y ago
Exactly. I think that a lot of what is plaguing society right now is, in spite of how techno-sophisticated we have become, is in a sense a measurement problem.
- bambataa 7y ago
  It's not clear to me how you can say that a new heuristic is "far inferior", nor how you can say that the academics lack a good framework but you presumably don't. How do you know what a good framework would look like? I would agree that it's a measurement problem in the sense that we don't even know what or how to measure it. But your analysis is silent on what an error is so I'm not really sure what you think you have gained by it.
  - wesammikhail 7y ago
    Your point would stand only if these new heuristics are truly "new" when in fact, they are actually pretty old, tried and debunked at this point. And we actually do know what we want to measure and we have that as a goal but our methodology/framework isn´t all that good just yet (we currently use a form of bruteforce). > It's not clear to me how you can say that a new heuristic is "far inferior", nor how you can say that the academics lack a good framework but you presumably don't. How do you know what a good framework would look like? It isn´t that I have something that they don´t have. It´s far more sinister than that. And here is my argument: The best tool we have at the moment is: you play it (any given set of ideas) out in the real world and look at the consequences in terms of elevating/reducing the amount of suffering that is at the basis of the human condition - after all, that is the end goal of political heuristics. Popper´s and Rawl´s ideas are not "new" in the sense that they have been extensively tried in the past. They were murderous beyond belief but somehow that is always forgotten and never accounted for as linguistics is used to disguise the actual end-result of the experiment by saying that "they have not been tested at all" or that "these are new cutting edge ideas". As an example, we can take a look at communism. The total body count that was produced under communistic regimes would probably make for a giant mountain that would take months to climb. Yet somehow you always hear the slogan "that wasn´t real communism" as a rebuttal to the inherit evil of said set of ideas. If you pay close attention, parse the ideas given and see if they have previously tried or not, you can most often tell that the vast majorities of proposed changes are new reformulations of old and debunked shit. Example: Marxism views the world as a battle between two groups, the rich and the poor. 3rd wave feminism views the world as a battle group between men and women. This is an over-simplification obviously but what I am hoping to demonstrate here is that it is the same old wolf in sheep´s clothing. We don´t need to replay that experiment to know where it will end up. This is the best we can do at the moment. Am I happy with this methodology of evaluating ideas? hell no. But we have no mechanism that performs any better. And as for the academic class, heck, it is they that purposefully spread these reformulations to the younger generations by actively reworking old debunked ideas as their own "new" takes on how the world ought to be - which is why I tend to believe that academia (especially the social "sciences") is far more sinister than first meets the eye. Note: I used marxism/communism here as an example just for convenience. I could have just as easily used the Veil of Ignorance or the argument of intolerance to demonstrate that same principle. They have been tried many times before and they were incredibly counter-productive. In spite of what most people think, the modern form of western societies can be seen as a function of the set of most effective ideas that have been tested to date (effective = generate the most amount of reduction in overall human suffering). It isn´t perfect (it´s a heuristic after all) but in comparison to all other tried and tested set of ideas, it is the best we can do atm. Besides, even in the west, small variations of these ideas are currently being tried within each nation state. It is a process that takes time but as these experiments unfold, we will learn something new and converge on a better solution once one is found.