[rayiner]

> It has always been surprising to me that the original position argument had so much impact when it seems like a very odd starting point to me. But I like probability and statistics, so maybe I'm weird.

It’s not just you. The formulation of Rawls’ question is designed to get people to focus on statistically unlikely scenarios at the expense of probable ones. As an engineer and an Asian I find it incomprehensible that Rawls has so much purchase.

[tptacek]

You find it incomprehensible of late, but you've made similar arguments on this site in the past; for instance, the Rawlsian logic you're objecting to here is the same as the logic you use to justify antiterrorism work. So whatever the issue is here, I don't think it's your background in engineering.

[rayiner]

I don’t support anti terrorism because I put myself in the shoes of victims of terrorism. I do it because I think terrorism requires harsh responses to maintain norms against political violence. So for example I would abolish the TSA because I’m not afraid of actually being the victim of a terrorist attack.

It’s possible this sentiment is punitive—I just want to see terrorists punished—and such a response isn’t necessary to maintain the state’s monopoly on violence. But I would submit that extreme responses to e.g. Islamism is important to keep a real threat to order at bay. We’ll probably have a real A/B experiment with this in Bangladesh now that Hasina—who was doing a good job crushing the Islamists—has been overthrown. Will Bangladesh turn into Pakistan in the absence of that enforcement? We will see.

[tptacek]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10563156

Can you reconcile this with the comment I just replied to?

[rayiner]

It’s the same thought. Terrorist attacks are directed to the nation as a whole even if they kill a small percentage of the population. That makes them different from events that just happen to kill the same number of people.

[selimthegrim]

The biggest problem in Pakistan right now is the Army propping up everything. But I doubt that’s what you were driving at.

If even half of what I read about Hasina is true she has completely gone around the bend and has no business running any country anymore.

[hollerith]

>designed to get people to focus on statistically unlikely scenarios

I'm not seeing it. Under the veil of ignorance, it is better to give everyone one utilon than to give "the 1%" 90 utilons while the rest get nothing (because the "protagonist" who is deciding how to distribute the utilons has only a 1% chance of being born into the 1%). I.e., statistical likelihood is baked into the scheme.

It is true that Rawls's scheme assigns no intrinsic worth to society as a whole, only to individuals, but that is quite different from the point you made.

[rayiner]

Humans are risk averse and overestimate the probability of low-probability outcomes. So focusing people on hypothetical scenarios where they are someone other than themselves leads to over-focusing on the welfare of small minorities at the expense of the majority.

Rawls was explicit about this: he thought society should focus on increasing the utility of the worst case outcomes instead of maximizing total utility: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egalitarian_rule

This leads to dysfunctional societies where the majority can’t have nice things. E.g. the utility of public transit or public parks goes down for 90% of the population in order to avoid draconian enforcement against 1-2% of the population that’s homeless, mentally unwell, or drug users.

Contrast public spaces and public transit in San Francisco to the same things in objectively poorer East Asian countries.

[hollerith]

>Rawls was explicit about this: he thought society should focus on increasing the utility of the worst case outcomes

Oh, wow, I had no idea. (Rawls's response is quite different from my response to the hypothetical of the veil of ignorance.) Sorry for adding noise to this thread. I agree with everything you wrote in this thread.

[dctoedt]

> the utility of public transit or public parks goes down for 90% of the population in order to avoid draconian enforcement against 1-2% of the population that’s homeless, mentally unwell, or drug users.

It's possible to provide alternatives for the 1-2%, but proposals to do that will generally be met by outcries from various corners — NIMBYs, small-government types, etc.

[rayiner]

But that’s just another type of catering to the minority at the expense of the majority.

[dctoedt]

> But that’s just another type of catering to the minority at the expense of the majority.

Rawls's original position (a.k.a. veil of ignorance) is, in essence, "There, but for the grace of God, go I or my loved ones — so let's help others the way we'd hope to be helped if life had dealt us a similarly-bad hand." (That latter part should sound familiar ....)

[even_639765]

Not to mention that relief of human suffering comes mainly from technological advances and that, in turn, depends on advances in material science and basic science which wouldn't exist except for the economic incentives produced by a capitalist society which produces "stuff" for the 90%.

[dctoedt]

> The formulation of Rawls’ question is designed to get people to focus on statistically unlikely scenarios at the expense of probable ones. As an engineer and an Asian I find it incomprehensible that Rawls has so much purchase.

We saw a lot of folks carefully ignoring a related issue during the covid pandemic: They argued angrily that it made no sense to mandate masks, lock down society, and spend billions on vaccine development, when only a small percentage of people would die or have long-term adverse effects. (There was a lot of that kind of talk in Texas.) But those folks never seemed willing to admit that they were really saying, "I'm willing to roll the dice that I'll be all right; the rest of you, well, you're on your own."

Sadly, folks like that seldom take enough precautions on their own — and they're often the first to plead for "the gummint" to help them when they get in trouble. (Cf. the bail-outs of big, de-regulated banks during the financial crisis that kicked off the Great Recession, the demands for federal hurricane assistance by people who lived in flood zones, etc. Privatize the profits, socialize the risks.)

[even_639765]

Masking does nothing to stop the spread of viruses. Neither does social distancing. Look it up. The vax was hugely destructive to healthy people and did not prevent transmission. These things are well established facts. The argument was never ”I'm too selfish to care about grandma”, it was always about the facts at hand.

[dctoedt]

> Masking does nothing to stop the spread of viruses. Neither does social distancing. Look it up.

You’re going against what’s been widely publicized as the overwhelming scientific consensus, so it’d be useful if you’d cite some evidence, including your qualifications, to help the rest us feel comfortable accepting your judgment in this area. And you seem excessively sure of yourself (as do some of your other comments — yes, I looked you up), which tends to weigh against accepting your view.