13 ms·

John Rawls and the “Veil of Ignorance” (2020)

88 points by rzk 4y ago

guerrilla 4y ago
I think there's a better way of thinking about this subject which leads you to similar conclusions using less imagination. You can actually end up in most people's positions, so it's irrational to promote norms that harm others and benefit you disproportionately. War, economic collapse, disease, disability, climate change, natural disaster, etc. all happen. You can bet on the probabilities all you want, but black swan events do happen and you can become the minority, the immigrant, the homeless, the disabled, etc. in a flash. It's always in your own self-interest to maximize the minimum. As far as Nozick goes, I think Proudhon addressed that a century earlier.
- ReaLNero 4y ago
  Important fyi is that in Rawls's conception of justice, you do not have knowledge of the likelihood of characteristics like handicap, immigrants etc. Otherwise an enslaved minority would be worthwhile enough to make a just society, which is clearly incorrect.
  - guerrilla 4y ago
    I know and that's captured in what I said. You have no idea what could happen to you. This actual fact replaces (or supplements) the need for the Veil of Ignorance. Maximizing the minimum actually reduces the worst case scenario you could end up in and there's nothing hypothetical about that.
    - mistermann 4y ago
      > You have no idea what could happen to you. This actual fact... Sometimes beliefs are more important than facts though. People in general may not have the depth of understanding you do.
    - nickff 4y ago
      You are assuming that everyone shares your risk aversion, which is rather similar to one of Rawls' logical errors.
      - guerrilla 4y ago
        I can't help you if you're not averse to being enslaved and tortured.
        nickff 4y ago
        I think enslavement and torture aversion are widespread, but some people are likely more tolerant of enslavement and torture risk. The fact that people volunteer for military service and combat duties is some evidence of this.
        guerrilla 4y ago
        Okay, I see your point. We should probably be aware that such risk tolerances can change though.
        nickff 4y ago
        All preferences change over time; this is one of many problems with Rawls' logic.
        guerrilla 4y ago
        > All preferences change over time; this is one of many problems with Rawls' logic. No, not even close. Aversion to torture and torture doesn't. Need for air, water, food, hygiene, clothes, shelter, etc. doesn't.
        chongli 4y ago
        People's risk aversion changes throughout their lives. Young people, in general, tend to be much less risk averse than older people. This makes sense, since young people have not accumulated as much property and so have a lot less to lose.
    - eckmLJE 4y ago
      Some people feel in control of their life, have a support system, etc. and believe that such things could never happen to them.
      - kelseyfrog 4y ago
        Right, many of those people are much less likely to be at the receiving end of enslavement and torture and go on the make generalization errors from that position.
        ruined 4y ago
        are you sure it's a generalization error? you forget that people experiencing enslavement and torture also have some amount of agency, and historically, have periodically organized to inflict terror upon people who seem to be immune to or supported by the pains of the momentary status quo. it seems silly to believe that outcome to be impossible and erroneous to consider, when there are people out there actively working towards that objective.
        kelseyfrog 4y ago
        Sorry, just really not convinced by this rebuttal. I don't think the enslavers and torturers today are concerned with Spartacus-type events and that makes them not assume their experiences are generalizable.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- billfruit 4y ago
  Do you mean Proudhomme?
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  Proudhon (IMO) is not nearly as compelling as either Rawls or Nozick, although he is popular among the younger generation of 'professional-class' capitalists.
  - guerrilla 4y ago
    Have you read "What is property?" or Nozick? > although he is popular among the younger generation of 'professional-class' capitalists. This seems like an attempted ad hominem but makes me suspect you might not know who Proudhon is.
    - whimsicalism 4y ago
      I've actually read both, although it's been a while since "What is property?". I have not read any other Proudhon. > makes me suspect you might not know who Proudhon is. No, I know exactly who he is. Left libertarianism is ironically very popular among rich millenials & Gen Z, probably because it allows them to be cynical about all institutions when in reality governmental, collective action is the only realistic counter to capitalism.
      - guerrilla 4y ago
        > No, I know exactly who he is. Left libertarianism is ironically very popular among rich millenials & Gen Z, probably because it allows them to be cynical about all institutions when in reality governmental, collective action is the only realistic counter to capitalism. What you said originally is that Proudhon is popular among a subclass of capitalists, which is a contradiction, being that he was an anti-capitalist. Now you're saying libertarian socialism is popular among a subset of rich people, which also seems pretty suspect at this point in time. Then you're giving an explanation of why this is the case but that also seems implausible and you give no argument or evidence for it (and honestly it just sounds like dismissive hand-waving)... Then you say collective action, exactly what Proudhon (and almost all libertarian socialists, including mutualists) argued for, is the alternative, which is also a contradiction: It can't be the alternative if it was part of the original position. What you're saying isn't making any sense to me...
- wwweston 4y ago
  This is one of the most important ways to think about accessibility, FWIW. Even if you've been lucky enough to have full baseline sensory & motor capabilities for most of your life, on a lifetime horizon chances are pretty good you will eventually develop issues with one or another and who knows what else.
adamc 4y ago
There's a pretty good "Talking Politics" podcast on Rawls: https://play.acast.com/s/history-of-ideas/rawlsonjustice https://play.acast.com/s/history-of-ideas/rawlsonjustice Sadly, that series has ended, but there's a lot of good stuff: https://www.talkingpoliticspodcast.com/history-of-ideas-series-two https://www.talkingpoliticspodcast.com/history-of-ideas-seri...
yboris 4y ago
The "Veil of Ignorance" is an idea initially developed by John Harsanyi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harsanyi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harsanyi Rawls for some reason focused only on "within a country" so he failed to recognize that the true application of veil of ignorance should push us towards open borders and more aid to developing nations. ps - "veil of ignorance" is probably the best perspective to take when thinking about all the "trolley problems" - because it leads you to recognize the correct (utilitarian) solution (of saving more people).
- lapcat 4y ago
  > Rawls for some reason focused only on "within a country" so he failed to recognize that the true application of veil of ignorance should push us towards open borders and more aid to developing nations. Rawls discussed this in the later work "The Law of Peoples".
- mistermann 4y ago
  To be fair, open borders being necessarily beneficial is a bit of a presumption though. Some people are open to foreign aid, but not all of those people are open to open borders, and that being imposed could also affect their stance on aid. Humans are very complex.
  - yboris 4y ago
    Humans generally don't think hard about big issues (perhaps because) in general they have very little they can do about them anyway. Humans consistently feel overconfident (and are incorrect) about many things. On the topic of ethics, many seem to go with gut feelings (an evolutionary kludge to get small groups of people to cooperate, and to cohere as a tribe). People consistently overestimate (by many orders of magnitude) the amount of their taxes that goes to foreign aid. Many people in the US are reluctant to have open borders because of racism. But most moral frameworks would endorse open borders - and there is tremendous economic benefit to open borders as well. Consider https://openborders.info/ https://openborders.info/
    - 4y ago
wyager 4y ago
One of the most harmful and anti-utilitarian legal theories to ever become popular. It's baby's first attempt at first-order anthropic utilitarianism, with disastrous entailments.
- mrwh 4y ago
  I'm curious, care to elaborate?
  - wyager 4y ago
    Rawls' proposed social optimization strategy is basically, implicitly, minimaxing (although I doubt he would describe it in similar terms), which is terrible for social outcomes. The return/variance pareto frontier for societal optimization is super sharp, so minimaxing makes almost everyone way worse off than expected utility maximization. Even if you're critical of EV maximization in general, it's really hard to claim that minimaxing performs acceptably at society-scale.
    - whimsicalism 4y ago
      Uh, source for your claim? I think that diminishing marginal utility of wealth probably means that EV maximization and so-called "maximin" overlap a considerable amount of the time.
      - wyager 4y ago
        The source is common sense, experience, and original thought. I don't copy every thought I have from an NYT article or whatever you're looking for. Minimax is emphatically not even remotely close to EV maximization, especially for high-dimensional optimization spaces with sharp risk/return curves as I described.
        whimsicalism 4y ago
        You're making empirical claims about the world as if they are obvious, so I expected you would have a shred of evidence backing what you were saying, but I guess I forgot we were on HN. Unsure why you would think I was expecting a NYT article (except as some weird cultural signaling point?), I was thinking more along the lines of a welfare economics or econometrics journal article.
gringoDan 4y ago
For a related application of this concept, highly recommend The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, by Ursula LeGuin (10 min read). http://shsdavisapes.pbworks.com/f/Omelas.pdf http://shsdavisapes.pbworks.com/f/Omelas.pdf
- Sophistifunk 4y ago
  God I hate drivel like this. There's no insight to be found here. These people can only exist in fiction and have no information with which to adjust the bearing on our moral compasses, which have evolved to function only in a universe where effects have causes.
- routerl 4y ago
  Great recommendation, and has the same moral premise as Snowpiercer (for a more recent take on this concept).
- sonofhans 4y ago
  What a nice recommendation in this context! This is a great story. My first encounter with it was LeGuin herself reading it as a guest in a PSU science fiction class, 25 years ago.
- intrepidhero 4y ago
  That was beautiful and poinant, typical of Le Guin. Thank you. I read once about a young man who wanted to give away everything he had and go live with the poor and destitute. His uncle told him it would be much more compassionate if he got a job, made alot of money and have that away. I've thought about that alot. His uncle wasn't wrong. If we want to improve humanity as a whole we need alot more people working hard making a lot of money to improve things for everyone. But if no one gives everything away and goes to live in poverty... Something good is lost. Someone down thread mentioned the obvious solution to the trolley problem being saving more lives. I agree, and also, someone has got to rail against the injustice of whole trolley situation to begin with. Maybe what I'm trying to say is ethical utility can be good, and we should strain to be better. Just my random thoughts after reading above.
setgree 4y ago
For a much more critical take on Rawls, see Michael Huemer's "John Rawls is an Awful Reasoner" [0] Huemer is definitely writing in a polemical style that might turn some folks off, but I think the basic point -- that Rawls contorts himself to avoid a framework that just boils down to 'maximize utility' -- is more or less on point. [0] https://fakenous.net/?p=1824 https://fakenous.net/?p=1824
- guerrilla 4y ago
  > that Rawls contorts himself to avoid a framework that just boils down to 'maximize utility' -- is more or less on point. It clearly doesn't though and is specifically constructed to avoid overfeeding utility monsters.
- slaymaker1907 4y ago
  This is a horrible take. Huemer dismisses the risk way too quickly despite risk being a tremendous, possibly most important, concern in microeconomics. The goal is still to maximize utility, but subject to certain constraints within a certain level of risk tolerance. I'm not sure why this would be so controversial within the realm of ethics when it is widely accepted in economics. Maximin is also pretty widely accepted in software engineering (though modified to use percentiles) since the 99th percentile response time is much more important than the average response time.
- notahacker 4y ago
  Id argue the framework is more interesting than Rawls' conclusion. I don't agree with Rawls that it tends to imply maximin (most humans aren't that risk averse) but it doesn't imply maximising expected utility either (it's pretty rational to prefer 'levelling down' to an incredibly unequal society with a low chance of elite status). And whilst the implied risk of the "veil of ignorance" is a hypothetical thing (as are many utilitarian arguments and arguments against utilitarianism) it underlines the fact humans reason differently about value when downside risks are significant.
reality_inspctr 4y ago
For a predecessor that makes more sense but includes many of the same underpinnings, Amartya Sen's notion of a Human Development Index is a great thought exercise and tool. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  I don't really see how this is relevant tbph, except in the standard utilitarian sense.
cato_the_elder 4y ago
- guerrilla 4y ago
  > Rawls is the guy who is probably most responsible for corruption of the word "justice", which used to mostly mean "the proper administration of law". Oh, you mean before Aristotle? Yeah, those Orwellian Greeks... and Buddhists, and Muslims and that damned Confucius. Plato should have died with Socrates, I agree. Down with the gadflies!
  - cato_the_elder 4y ago
    > Oh, you mean before Aristotle? Yeah, those Orwellian Greeks The word "justice" comes from Latin, not Greek. > Muslims Muslims have their own vocabulary for these things, related words include "Adl", "Insaf", and "Qada".
    - guerrilla 4y ago
      > The word "justice" comes from Latin, not Greek. And here I thought it came from English and that the Romans would have used iūstitia for the same universally debated concept. You learn something new every day.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > Rawls is the guy who is probably most responsible for corruption of the word "justice", which used to mostly mean "the proper administration of law". The definition of justice has been debated since at least Plato's "Republic" more than 2000 years ago.
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  Words mean different things to different people. Your premise that "justice" had some universally agreed upon meaning prior to Rawls' "orwellian" corruption is silly.
- stewbrew 4y ago
legalcorrection 4y ago
I think one big problem with Rawls’s position is that it has no room for desert (as in, the idea that people can deserve their fates). His thought experiment wants me to consider the risk that I be born a very bad man. But why should I want to design my society for the benefit of the dishonest, the slothful, and the wicked? I want a society designed for the benefit of the good, of the excellent, of the virtuous. We should of course have humanity and mercy for everyone.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > But why should I want to design my society for the benefit of the dishonest, the slothful, and the wicked? It's not designed to benefit them, it's designed to benefit the least fortunate. Put it this way: what's the "harm" of dishonesty? If a dishonest person ends up being the worst off in society, then dishonesty has no advantage. Can you even say in that case that dishonesty causes harm? Whereas if someone uses dishonesty to gain personal advantage, then that person is not the worst off in society, and so the society is not designed to benefit them. You might even say that the society is designed to benefit the victims of dishonesty, not the perpetrators.
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  Yes, Rawls' position is explicitly anti-'desert' and entitlement. I find his critique relatively compelling. Nothing about his position is saying that you must design a society specifically for the benefit of "the dishonest, the slothful, and the wicked," if such a design would be worse off under the difference principle. Indeed, many societies would benefit from punishing or disincentivizing such behavior. What Rawls critiques is the (Christian) notion that the slothful are apriori deserving of punishment or the hard-working apriori deserving of reward, if such a reward structure is not one that would benefit a society of free individuals.
- dmead 4y ago
  that is literally the point of the veil. you're not supposed to assume the worst about others, lest they also assume the worst about you.
  - 4y ago
avgcorrection 4y ago
The Veil seems nice and useful in theory. But someone wrote once (don’t remember who) that people who advocate for it still end up defending the liberal status quo, where the lottery of life still plays a big part.
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  I consider myself a socialist-leaning individual who favors the abolition of large portions of inherited wealth and I am very sympathetic to Rawls' arguments. I think you are reasoning backwards (from the preferred social/political outcome, rather than starting with the ethical principles that make one social/political outcome preferred over another).
  - avgcorrection 4y ago
    Why?
    - whimsicalism 4y ago
      Because you are saying that Rawls' argument is flawed because the people who believe it tend to support the liberal status quo, supposing apriori that the liberal status quo is bad and then reasoning that therefore Rawls' arguments must be bad if they provide some ethical mooring for that status quo.
      - avgcorrection 4y ago
        Not a priori. A posteori the lottery of life plays a big part in liberal praxis. Dunno why my reasoning is “backwards”. Politics from first principles is fruitless and I don’t intend to play that game. But he can play it if he wishes.
- routerl 4y ago
  There's a lot more to say there. For instance, many[0] have argued that the things Rawls places behind the veil are precisely the things that make us human, and ignoring them to make a procedural argument therefore begs the question: his conclusion (i.e. liberal democracy) is built-in to the premises. Then there are purely distributive arguments: if everyone wants to pay a bunch of money to go see Lewis Hamilton race, thereby enriching Lewis and producing an unequal distribution of goods, can we reasonably say this situation is unjust?[1] The literature on replies to Rawls is extremely rich, and Rawls himself went on to respond to critics and amend his views in 1993's Political Liberalism. The influence of his earlier work has been longer lived in the public mind than in his own. [0] Usually communitarians, especially Charles Taylor. [1] This is a variation of Robert Nozick's "Wilt Chamberlain argument", updated to use my preferred sports star.
temp8964 4y ago
I have no problem with the idea of the veil of ignorance, but what's wrong with the discussion is the fundamental idea that you can use your imagination to design a society. Itself is supposed to be a thought experiment, it has no pretention or suggestion that the imagined design could work. Buuuuuuut, tons of people confuse the two and they start think the society can work as how they imagined. It's like when someone designs a machine, he/she begins with: let's assume there is no gravity. Well, in science actually you can do a thought experiment like that, but that's not how you design a machine! You need to know what the reality is and work with the reality! If you want to design a society, you need to start with knowledge about the human nature and the nature of a society. You can't just assume everyone is selfless, or assume nobody is going to kill/rob anybody, or assume everyone will work hard, or assume everyone has the same capabilities, or assume a community of a hundred will work like a community of a thousand. There are lots of fundamental knowledge you need to learn. While you are learning more and more about human nature and societies, you will find out there are lot of common features across cultures and societies, and you will find out the whole idea of imagining a society with your simple rule of justice is just so superficial that it's totally laughable.
_gabe_ 4y ago
Am I understanding this correctly? The idea of the veil of ignorance is we do a thought experiment where we pretend there are no societal standards and then imagine what proper justice may look like? If this is the correct understanding, what an asinine and inane idea that as an individual I can do better at imagining how justice should work then the thousands of years of cultural development that have gone before me. I don't care how smart you are, if you literally throw out all of our societal standards and think you can do better using your imagination, you're a fool. Don't throw out the baby with the bath water, our justice today has a lot of good ideas. If we want reform, that involves extracting the good ideas and getting rid of the bad ones. Otherwise we're not reforming justice, instead we're coming up with our own standards that we pulled out of our arse.
- bitwize 4y ago
  The veil of ignorance is where we pretend we're gods designing a society and putting social rules and standards in place, and we will be incarnated as humans within that society -- but we don't know specifics about what kind of humans we'll be, what race or gender or class or whatever (the "ignorance" part). So if you put in place rules that favor one group of people over another, you might get screwed when you are incarnated into this society. Rawls wasn't proposing throwing anything out. He was asking the question, if a bunch of gods got together and set down some social rules under these conditions, what would the society they created look like if they didn't want to end up screwing themselves? His answer was "something like liberal democracy". I don't know if he'd be right, or even if we should pattern our society in the manner of these hypothetical gods. It may be asking the wrong question entirely. Current trends in social justice, for instance, favor rules oriented toward payback for past injustices toward real groups.
- Sparkle-san 4y ago
  Under the veil of ignorance I fail to see how people, unaware of their own race, would agree that certain races were inferior and should be subject to slavery, such as that of the early United States. This is because they would know that they might end up being part of the subjected underclass. Societal standards on the other hand, brought us the institution of slavery. The veil of ignorance is a lens for viewing society through and arguing whether or not someone that came from societal standards is just.
nootropicat 4y ago
>You do not know your gender, race, wealth, or facts about your personal strengths and weaknesses, such as their intelligence or physical prowess. Rawls thought these facts are morally arbitrary: individuals do not earn or deserve these features, but simply have them by luck. That's what makes the whole concept nonsensical. This implicitly assumes the existence of a soul. If 'you' were born as someone else, you wouldn't be you! The only actually coherent thought experiment is being born the same, just in a different environment, but that leads to completely different conclusions. Wealth is an external property, but intelligence, race, gender - aren't.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
lordgrenville 4y ago
I've never read A Theory of Justice, but a few years ago I read a short book by Rawls called The Law of Peoples, which is basically an attempt to apply his theory to international relations, and he suggests that if one country is governed by a state that clearly violates the international consensus of how to treat people then the other nations should get together, invade, overthrow that government and replace it with a new one. And it seems like...we tried that about ten years after the book came out, with not-such-great results. Seems like there should be a lesson in that, but I'm not quite sure what it is.

88 points by rzk 4y ago

I think there's a better way of thinking about this subject which leads you to similar conclusions using less imagination. You can actually end up in most people's positions, so it's irrational to promote norms that harm others and benefit you disproportionately. War, economic collapse, disease, disability, climate change, natural disaster, etc. all happen. You can bet on the probabilities all you want, but black swan events do happen and you can become the minority, the immigrant, the homeless, the disabled, etc. in a flash. It's always in your own self-interest to maximize the minimum. As far as Nozick goes, I think Proudhon addressed that a century earlier.

ReaLNero 4y ago
Important fyi is that in Rawls's conception of justice, you do not have knowledge of the likelihood of characteristics like handicap, immigrants etc. Otherwise an enslaved minority would be worthwhile enough to make a just society, which is clearly incorrect.
- guerrilla 4y ago
  I know and that's captured in what I said. You have no idea what could happen to you. This actual fact replaces (or supplements) the need for the Veil of Ignorance. Maximizing the minimum actually reduces the worst case scenario you could end up in and there's nothing hypothetical about that.
  - mistermann 4y ago
    > You have no idea what could happen to you. This actual fact... Sometimes beliefs are more important than facts though. People in general may not have the depth of understanding you do.
  - nickff 4y ago
    You are assuming that everyone shares your risk aversion, which is rather similar to one of Rawls' logical errors.
    - guerrilla 4y ago
      I can't help you if you're not averse to being enslaved and tortured.
      - nickff 4y ago
        I think enslavement and torture aversion are widespread, but some people are likely more tolerant of enslavement and torture risk. The fact that people volunteer for military service and combat duties is some evidence of this.
        guerrilla 4y ago
        Okay, I see your point. We should probably be aware that such risk tolerances can change though.
        nickff 4y ago
        All preferences change over time; this is one of many problems with Rawls' logic.
        guerrilla 4y ago
        > All preferences change over time; this is one of many problems with Rawls' logic. No, not even close. Aversion to torture and torture doesn't. Need for air, water, food, hygiene, clothes, shelter, etc. doesn't.
        chongli 4y ago
        People's risk aversion changes throughout their lives. Young people, in general, tend to be much less risk averse than older people. This makes sense, since young people have not accumulated as much property and so have a lot less to lose.
  - eckmLJE 4y ago
    Some people feel in control of their life, have a support system, etc. and believe that such things could never happen to them.
    - kelseyfrog 4y ago
      Right, many of those people are much less likely to be at the receiving end of enslavement and torture and go on the make generalization errors from that position.
      - ruined 4y ago
        are you sure it's a generalization error? you forget that people experiencing enslavement and torture also have some amount of agency, and historically, have periodically organized to inflict terror upon people who seem to be immune to or supported by the pains of the momentary status quo. it seems silly to believe that outcome to be impossible and erroneous to consider, when there are people out there actively working towards that objective.
        kelseyfrog 4y ago
        Sorry, just really not convinced by this rebuttal. I don't think the enslavers and torturers today are concerned with Spartacus-type events and that makes them not assume their experiences are generalizable.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
billfruit 4y ago
Do you mean Proudhomme?
whimsicalism 4y ago
Proudhon (IMO) is not nearly as compelling as either Rawls or Nozick, although he is popular among the younger generation of 'professional-class' capitalists.
- guerrilla 4y ago
  Have you read "What is property?" or Nozick? > although he is popular among the younger generation of 'professional-class' capitalists. This seems like an attempted ad hominem but makes me suspect you might not know who Proudhon is.
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
    I've actually read both, although it's been a while since "What is property?". I have not read any other Proudhon. > makes me suspect you might not know who Proudhon is. No, I know exactly who he is. Left libertarianism is ironically very popular among rich millenials & Gen Z, probably because it allows them to be cynical about all institutions when in reality governmental, collective action is the only realistic counter to capitalism.
    - guerrilla 4y ago
      > No, I know exactly who he is. Left libertarianism is ironically very popular among rich millenials & Gen Z, probably because it allows them to be cynical about all institutions when in reality governmental, collective action is the only realistic counter to capitalism. What you said originally is that Proudhon is popular among a subclass of capitalists, which is a contradiction, being that he was an anti-capitalist. Now you're saying libertarian socialism is popular among a subset of rich people, which also seems pretty suspect at this point in time. Then you're giving an explanation of why this is the case but that also seems implausible and you give no argument or evidence for it (and honestly it just sounds like dismissive hand-waving)... Then you say collective action, exactly what Proudhon (and almost all libertarian socialists, including mutualists) argued for, is the alternative, which is also a contradiction: It can't be the alternative if it was part of the original position. What you're saying isn't making any sense to me...
wwweston 4y ago
This is one of the most important ways to think about accessibility, FWIW. Even if you've been lucky enough to have full baseline sensory & motor capabilities for most of your life, on a lifetime horizon chances are pretty good you will eventually develop issues with one or another and who knows what else.

adamc 4y ago

There's a pretty good "Talking Politics" podcast on Rawls: https://play.acast.com/s/history-of-ideas/rawlsonjustice https://play.acast.com/s/history-of-ideas/rawlsonjustice Sadly, that series has ended, but there's a lot of good stuff: https://www.talkingpoliticspodcast.com/history-of-ideas-series-two https://www.talkingpoliticspodcast.com/history-of-ideas-seri...

yboris 4y ago

The "Veil of Ignorance" is an idea initially developed by John Harsanyi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harsanyi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harsanyi Rawls for some reason focused only on "within a country" so he failed to recognize that the true application of veil of ignorance should push us towards open borders and more aid to developing nations. ps - "veil of ignorance" is probably the best perspective to take when thinking about all the "trolley problems" - because it leads you to recognize the correct (utilitarian) solution (of saving more people).

lapcat 4y ago
> Rawls for some reason focused only on "within a country" so he failed to recognize that the true application of veil of ignorance should push us towards open borders and more aid to developing nations. Rawls discussed this in the later work "The Law of Peoples".
mistermann 4y ago
To be fair, open borders being necessarily beneficial is a bit of a presumption though. Some people are open to foreign aid, but not all of those people are open to open borders, and that being imposed could also affect their stance on aid. Humans are very complex.
- yboris 4y ago
  Humans generally don't think hard about big issues (perhaps because) in general they have very little they can do about them anyway. Humans consistently feel overconfident (and are incorrect) about many things. On the topic of ethics, many seem to go with gut feelings (an evolutionary kludge to get small groups of people to cooperate, and to cohere as a tribe). People consistently overestimate (by many orders of magnitude) the amount of their taxes that goes to foreign aid. Many people in the US are reluctant to have open borders because of racism. But most moral frameworks would endorse open borders - and there is tremendous economic benefit to open borders as well. Consider https://openborders.info/ https://openborders.info/
  - 4y ago

wyager 4y ago

One of the most harmful and anti-utilitarian legal theories to ever become popular. It's baby's first attempt at first-order anthropic utilitarianism, with disastrous entailments.

mrwh 4y ago
I'm curious, care to elaborate?
- wyager 4y ago
  Rawls' proposed social optimization strategy is basically, implicitly, minimaxing (although I doubt he would describe it in similar terms), which is terrible for social outcomes. The return/variance pareto frontier for societal optimization is super sharp, so minimaxing makes almost everyone way worse off than expected utility maximization. Even if you're critical of EV maximization in general, it's really hard to claim that minimaxing performs acceptably at society-scale.
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
    Uh, source for your claim? I think that diminishing marginal utility of wealth probably means that EV maximization and so-called "maximin" overlap a considerable amount of the time.
    - wyager 4y ago
      The source is common sense, experience, and original thought. I don't copy every thought I have from an NYT article or whatever you're looking for. Minimax is emphatically not even remotely close to EV maximization, especially for high-dimensional optimization spaces with sharp risk/return curves as I described.
      - whimsicalism 4y ago
        You're making empirical claims about the world as if they are obvious, so I expected you would have a shred of evidence backing what you were saying, but I guess I forgot we were on HN. Unsure why you would think I was expecting a NYT article (except as some weird cultural signaling point?), I was thinking more along the lines of a welfare economics or econometrics journal article.

gringoDan 4y ago

For a related application of this concept, highly recommend The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, by Ursula LeGuin (10 min read). http://shsdavisapes.pbworks.com/f/Omelas.pdf http://shsdavisapes.pbworks.com/f/Omelas.pdf

Sophistifunk 4y ago
God I hate drivel like this. There's no insight to be found here. These people can only exist in fiction and have no information with which to adjust the bearing on our moral compasses, which have evolved to function only in a universe where effects have causes.
routerl 4y ago
Great recommendation, and has the same moral premise as Snowpiercer (for a more recent take on this concept).
sonofhans 4y ago
What a nice recommendation in this context! This is a great story. My first encounter with it was LeGuin herself reading it as a guest in a PSU science fiction class, 25 years ago.
intrepidhero 4y ago
That was beautiful and poinant, typical of Le Guin. Thank you. I read once about a young man who wanted to give away everything he had and go live with the poor and destitute. His uncle told him it would be much more compassionate if he got a job, made alot of money and have that away. I've thought about that alot. His uncle wasn't wrong. If we want to improve humanity as a whole we need alot more people working hard making a lot of money to improve things for everyone. But if no one gives everything away and goes to live in poverty... Something good is lost. Someone down thread mentioned the obvious solution to the trolley problem being saving more lives. I agree, and also, someone has got to rail against the injustice of whole trolley situation to begin with. Maybe what I'm trying to say is ethical utility can be good, and we should strain to be better. Just my random thoughts after reading above.

setgree 4y ago

For a much more critical take on Rawls, see Michael Huemer's "John Rawls is an Awful Reasoner" [0] Huemer is definitely writing in a polemical style that might turn some folks off, but I think the basic point -- that Rawls contorts himself to avoid a framework that just boils down to 'maximize utility' -- is more or less on point. [0] https://fakenous.net/?p=1824 https://fakenous.net/?p=1824

guerrilla 4y ago
> that Rawls contorts himself to avoid a framework that just boils down to 'maximize utility' -- is more or less on point. It clearly doesn't though and is specifically constructed to avoid overfeeding utility monsters.
slaymaker1907 4y ago
This is a horrible take. Huemer dismisses the risk way too quickly despite risk being a tremendous, possibly most important, concern in microeconomics. The goal is still to maximize utility, but subject to certain constraints within a certain level of risk tolerance. I'm not sure why this would be so controversial within the realm of ethics when it is widely accepted in economics. Maximin is also pretty widely accepted in software engineering (though modified to use percentiles) since the 99th percentile response time is much more important than the average response time.
notahacker 4y ago
Id argue the framework is more interesting than Rawls' conclusion. I don't agree with Rawls that it tends to imply maximin (most humans aren't that risk averse) but it doesn't imply maximising expected utility either (it's pretty rational to prefer 'levelling down' to an incredibly unequal society with a low chance of elite status). And whilst the implied risk of the "veil of ignorance" is a hypothetical thing (as are many utilitarian arguments and arguments against utilitarianism) it underlines the fact humans reason differently about value when downside risks are significant.

reality_inspctr 4y ago

For a predecessor that makes more sense but includes many of the same underpinnings, Amartya Sen's notion of a Human Development Index is a great thought exercise and tool. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index

whimsicalism 4y ago
I don't really see how this is relevant tbph, except in the standard utilitarian sense.

cato_the_elder 4y ago

guerrilla 4y ago
> Rawls is the guy who is probably most responsible for corruption of the word "justice", which used to mostly mean "the proper administration of law". Oh, you mean before Aristotle? Yeah, those Orwellian Greeks... and Buddhists, and Muslims and that damned Confucius. Plato should have died with Socrates, I agree. Down with the gadflies!
- cato_the_elder 4y ago
  > Oh, you mean before Aristotle? Yeah, those Orwellian Greeks The word "justice" comes from Latin, not Greek. > Muslims Muslims have their own vocabulary for these things, related words include "Adl", "Insaf", and "Qada".
  - guerrilla 4y ago
    > The word "justice" comes from Latin, not Greek. And here I thought it came from English and that the Romans would have used iūstitia for the same universally debated concept. You learn something new every day.
lapcat 4y ago
> Rawls is the guy who is probably most responsible for corruption of the word "justice", which used to mostly mean "the proper administration of law". The definition of justice has been debated since at least Plato's "Republic" more than 2000 years ago.
whimsicalism 4y ago
Words mean different things to different people. Your premise that "justice" had some universally agreed upon meaning prior to Rawls' "orwellian" corruption is silly.
stewbrew 4y ago

legalcorrection 4y ago

I think one big problem with Rawls’s position is that it has no room for desert (as in, the idea that people can deserve their fates). His thought experiment wants me to consider the risk that I be born a very bad man. But why should I want to design my society for the benefit of the dishonest, the slothful, and the wicked? I want a society designed for the benefit of the good, of the excellent, of the virtuous. We should of course have humanity and mercy for everyone.

lapcat 4y ago
> But why should I want to design my society for the benefit of the dishonest, the slothful, and the wicked? It's not designed to benefit them, it's designed to benefit the least fortunate. Put it this way: what's the "harm" of dishonesty? If a dishonest person ends up being the worst off in society, then dishonesty has no advantage. Can you even say in that case that dishonesty causes harm? Whereas if someone uses dishonesty to gain personal advantage, then that person is not the worst off in society, and so the society is not designed to benefit them. You might even say that the society is designed to benefit the victims of dishonesty, not the perpetrators.
whimsicalism 4y ago
Yes, Rawls' position is explicitly anti-'desert' and entitlement. I find his critique relatively compelling. Nothing about his position is saying that you must design a society specifically for the benefit of "the dishonest, the slothful, and the wicked," if such a design would be worse off under the difference principle. Indeed, many societies would benefit from punishing or disincentivizing such behavior. What Rawls critiques is the (Christian) notion that the slothful are apriori deserving of punishment or the hard-working apriori deserving of reward, if such a reward structure is not one that would benefit a society of free individuals.
dmead 4y ago
that is literally the point of the veil. you're not supposed to assume the worst about others, lest they also assume the worst about you.
- 4y ago

avgcorrection 4y ago

The Veil seems nice and useful in theory. But someone wrote once (don’t remember who) that people who advocate for it still end up defending the liberal status quo, where the lottery of life still plays a big part.

whimsicalism 4y ago
I consider myself a socialist-leaning individual who favors the abolition of large portions of inherited wealth and I am very sympathetic to Rawls' arguments. I think you are reasoning backwards (from the preferred social/political outcome, rather than starting with the ethical principles that make one social/political outcome preferred over another).
- avgcorrection 4y ago
  Why?
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
    Because you are saying that Rawls' argument is flawed because the people who believe it tend to support the liberal status quo, supposing apriori that the liberal status quo is bad and then reasoning that therefore Rawls' arguments must be bad if they provide some ethical mooring for that status quo.
    - avgcorrection 4y ago
      Not a priori. A posteori the lottery of life plays a big part in liberal praxis. Dunno why my reasoning is “backwards”. Politics from first principles is fruitless and I don’t intend to play that game. But he can play it if he wishes.
routerl 4y ago
There's a lot more to say there. For instance, many[0] have argued that the things Rawls places behind the veil are precisely the things that make us human, and ignoring them to make a procedural argument therefore begs the question: his conclusion (i.e. liberal democracy) is built-in to the premises. Then there are purely distributive arguments: if everyone wants to pay a bunch of money to go see Lewis Hamilton race, thereby enriching Lewis and producing an unequal distribution of goods, can we reasonably say this situation is unjust?[1] The literature on replies to Rawls is extremely rich, and Rawls himself went on to respond to critics and amend his views in 1993's Political Liberalism. The influence of his earlier work has been longer lived in the public mind than in his own. [0] Usually communitarians, especially Charles Taylor. [1] This is a variation of Robert Nozick's "Wilt Chamberlain argument", updated to use my preferred sports star.

temp8964 4y ago

I have no problem with the idea of the veil of ignorance, but what's wrong with the discussion is the fundamental idea that you can use your imagination to design a society. Itself is supposed to be a thought experiment, it has no pretention or suggestion that the imagined design could work. Buuuuuuut, tons of people confuse the two and they start think the society can work as how they imagined. It's like when someone designs a machine, he/she begins with: let's assume there is no gravity. Well, in science actually you can do a thought experiment like that, but that's not how you design a machine! You need to know what the reality is and work with the reality! If you want to design a society, you need to start with knowledge about the human nature and the nature of a society. You can't just assume everyone is selfless, or assume nobody is going to kill/rob anybody, or assume everyone will work hard, or assume everyone has the same capabilities, or assume a community of a hundred will work like a community of a thousand. There are lots of fundamental knowledge you need to learn. While you are learning more and more about human nature and societies, you will find out there are lot of common features across cultures and societies, and you will find out the whole idea of imagining a society with your simple rule of justice is just so superficial that it's totally laughable.

_gabe_ 4y ago

Am I understanding this correctly? The idea of the veil of ignorance is we do a thought experiment where we pretend there are no societal standards and then imagine what proper justice may look like? If this is the correct understanding, what an asinine and inane idea that as an individual I can do better at imagining how justice should work then the thousands of years of cultural development that have gone before me. I don't care how smart you are, if you literally throw out all of our societal standards and think you can do better using your imagination, you're a fool. Don't throw out the baby with the bath water, our justice today has a lot of good ideas. If we want reform, that involves extracting the good ideas and getting rid of the bad ones. Otherwise we're not reforming justice, instead we're coming up with our own standards that we pulled out of our arse.

bitwize 4y ago
The veil of ignorance is where we pretend we're gods designing a society and putting social rules and standards in place, and we will be incarnated as humans within that society -- but we don't know specifics about what kind of humans we'll be, what race or gender or class or whatever (the "ignorance" part). So if you put in place rules that favor one group of people over another, you might get screwed when you are incarnated into this society. Rawls wasn't proposing throwing anything out. He was asking the question, if a bunch of gods got together and set down some social rules under these conditions, what would the society they created look like if they didn't want to end up screwing themselves? His answer was "something like liberal democracy". I don't know if he'd be right, or even if we should pattern our society in the manner of these hypothetical gods. It may be asking the wrong question entirely. Current trends in social justice, for instance, favor rules oriented toward payback for past injustices toward real groups.
Sparkle-san 4y ago
Under the veil of ignorance I fail to see how people, unaware of their own race, would agree that certain races were inferior and should be subject to slavery, such as that of the early United States. This is because they would know that they might end up being part of the subjected underclass. Societal standards on the other hand, brought us the institution of slavery. The veil of ignorance is a lens for viewing society through and arguing whether or not someone that came from societal standards is just.

nootropicat 4y ago

>You do not know your gender, race, wealth, or facts about your personal strengths and weaknesses, such as their intelligence or physical prowess. Rawls thought these facts are morally arbitrary: individuals do not earn or deserve these features, but simply have them by luck. That's what makes the whole concept nonsensical. This implicitly assumes the existence of a soul. If 'you' were born as someone else, you wouldn't be you! The only actually coherent thought experiment is being born the same, just in a different environment, but that leads to completely different conclusions. Wealth is an external property, but intelligence, race, gender - aren't.

deleted 4y ago
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lordgrenville 4y ago

I've never read A Theory of Justice, but a few years ago I read a short book by Rawls called The Law of Peoples, which is basically an attempt to apply his theory to international relations, and he suggests that if one country is governed by a state that clearly violates the international consensus of how to treat people then the other nations should get together, invade, overthrow that government and replace it with a new one. And it seems like...we tried that about ten years after the book came out, with not-such-great results. Seems like there should be a lesson in that, but I'm not quite sure what it is.