Eliezer, you claim that there is no necessity we should accept Dennis’s claim he should get the whole pie as fair. I agree.
There is also no necessity he should accept our alternative claim as fair.
There is no abstract notion that is inherently fair. What there is, is that when people do reach agreement that something is fair, then they have a little bit more of a society. And when they can’t agree about what’s fair they have a little less of a society. There is nothing that says ahead of time that they must have that society. There is nothing that says ahead of time what it is that they must agree is fair. (Except that some kinds of fairness may aid the survival of the participants, or the society.)
Concepts of fairness aren’t inherent in the universe, they’re an emergent property that comes from people finding ways to coexist and to find mutual aid. If they agree that it’s fair for them to hunt down and kill and eat each other because each victim has just as much right and almost as much opportunity to turn the tables, this does not lead to a society that’s real useful to its participants and it does not lead them to be particularly useful to each other. It’s a morality that in many circumstances will not be fully competitive. But this is a matter of natural selection among ideas, there isn’t anything less fair about this concept than other concepts of fairness. It’s only less competitive, which is an entirely different thing.
It’s an achievement to reach agreement about proper behavior. The default is no agreement. We make an effort to reach agreement because that’s the kind of people we are. The kind of people who’ve survived best so far. When Dennis feels he deserves something different from what we think, we often feel we should try to understand his point of view and see if we can come to a common understanding.
And we have to accept that sometimes we cannot come to any common understanding, that’s just how it works. We have to accept that sometimes somebody will feel that it isn’t fair, that he’s been mistreated, and we have to live with whatever consequences come from that. Society isn’t an all-or-none thing. We walk together, we stumble, we fall down, we get back up and try some more.
Why would anybody think that there is a single perfect morality, and if everybody could only see it then we’d all live in peace and harmony?
You might as well imagine there’s a single perfect language and if we all spoke it we’d understand each other completely and everything we said would be true.
Eliezer, you claim that there is no necessity we should accept Dennis’s claim he should get the whole pie as fair. I agree.
There is also no necessity he should accept our alternative claim as fair.
There is no abstract notion that is inherently fair. What there is, is that when people do reach agreement that something is fair, then they have a little bit more of a society. And when they can’t agree about what’s fair they have a little less of a society. There is nothing that says ahead of time that they must have that society. There is nothing that says ahead of time what it is that they must agree is fair. (Except that some kinds of fairness may aid the survival of the participants, or the society.)
Concepts of fairness aren’t inherent in the universe, they’re an emergent property that comes from people finding ways to coexist and to find mutual aid. If they agree that it’s fair for them to hunt down and kill and eat each other because each victim has just as much right and almost as much opportunity to turn the tables, this does not lead to a society that’s real useful to its participants and it does not lead them to be particularly useful to each other. It’s a morality that in many circumstances will not be fully competitive. But this is a matter of natural selection among ideas, there isn’t anything less fair about this concept than other concepts of fairness. It’s only less competitive, which is an entirely different thing.
It’s an achievement to reach agreement about proper behavior. The default is no agreement. We make an effort to reach agreement because that’s the kind of people we are. The kind of people who’ve survived best so far. When Dennis feels he deserves something different from what we think, we often feel we should try to understand his point of view and see if we can come to a common understanding.
And we have to accept that sometimes we cannot come to any common understanding, that’s just how it works. We have to accept that sometimes somebody will feel that it isn’t fair, that he’s been mistreated, and we have to live with whatever consequences come from that. Society isn’t an all-or-none thing. We walk together, we stumble, we fall down, we get back up and try some more.
Why would anybody think that there is a single perfect morality, and if everybody could only see it then we’d all live in peace and harmony?
You might as well imagine there’s a single perfect language and if we all spoke it we’d understand each other completely and everything we said would be true.