4 ms·

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 ima

by _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.
- pyuser583 4y ago
  One major problem is “what’s included/removed in this veil of ignorance?” Rawls likely would have excluded sexual orientation and gender identity. It also requires imagination some people don’t have: “I’m a member of the elite caste, but if I were a member of the lower caste I would accept my position.” And perhaps they would have.
yboris 4y ago
Please consider steelmanning (as opposed to strawmanning) ideas you come across. To call an idea considered by numerous people as important "inane" seems inappropriate. You do suggest you may be misunderstanding the idea, but rather than inquisitively asking for an elaboration, you call it stupid. You should try to think of a more charitable interpretation of the idea. Here's a thought: in a society as unequal as ours, with many people in power satisfied with the status quo, what Rawls is asking them to do is to imagine that they could have been born randomly into any of the families in our society. https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/steelmanning https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/steelmanning
xboxnolifes 4y ago
I prefer the way my ethics professor explained what I believe is the same, or at least similar, topic. Imagine you are not born yet. You do not yet exist. You can be born at any location, of any race, with any birth defect, of any gender, of any societal class. Now, what kind of societal structure would you like to exist if you had to be born into such world? Would you be ok with large wealth/social inequality if you could be born into the bottom rung? Or about survival of the fittest without collective support with the chance you might be born with a inhibiting birth defect? There was a lot I didn't like about how that class was taught, but this thought experiment alone made it worth taking.
- haihaibye 4y ago
  It depends on whether everyone will be born into the first and only generation or the random assignment to people has a time component as well. Much like how the strategies of prisoners dilemma change If you are playing an iterated game. For your birth defect example, consider 2 societies, where 1 bans cousin marriage and the other encourages it. In 50 years time the chance of being born with a birth defect is 5x higher in 1 than the other. That wouldn't matter for the first generation but imagine you will be born to a random generation between now and 1000 years from now. Which do you choose? Once you take into account time, then growth, social institutions and incentives come into play. You may prefer to bet on a much richer, healthier society that had a bit less equality or freedom in the past for a while.
- slavik81 4y ago
  Is there a reason to assume we will be born as a human being? In this hypothetical, I'm already asked to discard everything that makes me who I am. It seems like the logical extension would be to apply it to all life.
whimsicalism 4y ago
This is just the appeal to tradition fallacy in long-form as a comment.
adammarples 4y ago
The past few thousand years of the history of justice have been full of such great ideas as the divinity of Kings and suttee. The norms which you live in and are familiar with on the other hand, are quite heavily based on Rawls.
jrm4 4y ago
It's not that at all? It's simply "We live in a society in which everyone is born with different RPG loadouts, and so we should set it up from the POV of, 'What if I didn't know what my loadout was going to be?'"

by _gabe_ 4y ago

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.

pyuser583 4y ago
One major problem is “what’s included/removed in this veil of ignorance?” Rawls likely would have excluded sexual orientation and gender identity. It also requires imagination some people don’t have: “I’m a member of the elite caste, but if I were a member of the lower caste I would accept my position.” And perhaps they would have.

yboris 4y ago

Please consider steelmanning (as opposed to strawmanning) ideas you come across. To call an idea considered by numerous people as important "inane" seems inappropriate. You do suggest you may be misunderstanding the idea, but rather than inquisitively asking for an elaboration, you call it stupid. You should try to think of a more charitable interpretation of the idea. Here's a thought: in a society as unequal as ours, with many people in power satisfied with the status quo, what Rawls is asking them to do is to imagine that they could have been born randomly into any of the families in our society. https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/steelmanning https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/steelmanning

xboxnolifes 4y ago

I prefer the way my ethics professor explained what I believe is the same, or at least similar, topic. Imagine you are not born yet. You do not yet exist. You can be born at any location, of any race, with any birth defect, of any gender, of any societal class. Now, what kind of societal structure would you like to exist if you had to be born into such world? Would you be ok with large wealth/social inequality if you could be born into the bottom rung? Or about survival of the fittest without collective support with the chance you might be born with a inhibiting birth defect? There was a lot I didn't like about how that class was taught, but this thought experiment alone made it worth taking.

haihaibye 4y ago
It depends on whether everyone will be born into the first and only generation or the random assignment to people has a time component as well. Much like how the strategies of prisoners dilemma change If you are playing an iterated game. For your birth defect example, consider 2 societies, where 1 bans cousin marriage and the other encourages it. In 50 years time the chance of being born with a birth defect is 5x higher in 1 than the other. That wouldn't matter for the first generation but imagine you will be born to a random generation between now and 1000 years from now. Which do you choose? Once you take into account time, then growth, social institutions and incentives come into play. You may prefer to bet on a much richer, healthier society that had a bit less equality or freedom in the past for a while.
slavik81 4y ago
Is there a reason to assume we will be born as a human being? In this hypothetical, I'm already asked to discard everything that makes me who I am. It seems like the logical extension would be to apply it to all life.

whimsicalism 4y ago

This is just the appeal to tradition fallacy in long-form as a comment.

adammarples 4y ago

The past few thousand years of the history of justice have been full of such great ideas as the divinity of Kings and suttee. The norms which you live in and are familiar with on the other hand, are quite heavily based on Rawls.

jrm4 4y ago

It's not that at all? It's simply "We live in a society in which everyone is born with different RPG loadouts, and so we should set it up from the POV of, 'What if I didn't know what my loadout was going to be?'"