The Simple Reason Fairness Is Bullshit
There is nothing fair about life, how it came to be and how it evolves. Fairness is simply a human narrative, a complicated lie we all agreed to believe in order to make sense of our own flawed ethics.
We believe is fair for two candidates to have equal opportunity at job interviews but in reality so many other factors matter so much more. No interviewer can be impartial even if they try to be. Experiments done throughout the years demonstrate that humans are ridden with cognitive biases that are impossible to tame.
Fairness is thus a political word much like peace, freedom or anything you might hear from a person speaking from a podium. All these words aim to address large crowds and thus they need to be watered down in meaning, content, and appeal. One size needs to fit all. This is how after all the men and women spouting that awesome sounding bullshit got to stand there. Nothing fair about this process either.
I could go on and make this post drag for a page or two but there is no need. I dare anyone to try and find an example in regards to how the world will become more fair, even summoning A.I. technologies that can somehow weight down everything - from each and every ones genetic profile to the last cent that we saved in random coupons and ICO deals. Fairness is just a word defended either by scoundrels or by the idiots who believe them.
Fair is such a hard concept to ever materialize.
The NFL, AFL, NBA... try their darnedest to make things fair between teams.
If it isn't the battlefield isn't considered flat by the fans, they will complain bitterly. Further, if it isn't mostly fair (balanced) then the entire sports loses its followers.
And man how these groups work hard to make things fair, with draft picks, rules, penalties... No expense is spared to make things fair. And, often times it is not fair. One team just trashes all the others.
If fairness can't be delivered here, then it is a joke to try to apply it to the rest of the world.
Further, fairness usually means attaching chains and weights to the faster person, thus slowing them down. Thus, making the whole world worse off.
The law of nature is simple. The strongest survive. But humans have empathy as well. In the modern society most of us have the basic things to survive. So we can practice empathy more :)
We are empathetic only when we can afford it. Thus, even empathy is just a commodity ready to be traded.
Just something that crossed my mind: There is some evidence from Evolutionary Game Theory that at least altruism can evolve naturally within a group, even when that altruism doesn't benefit, or even is detrimental to, the individual having it. This altruism may even extend outside of the group as long as it is in some way beneficial to the survival of the individuals gene pool, but not necessarily the individual himself.
This greatly baffled thinkers on evolution who took the individual as the centre of their theories.
Well i guess this will be the "sacrifice" moment. And like most of the things it is debatable. Is the individual more important or the group? This days probably the individual. But back in our wild life, if there was no group the individual will hardly survive, have offspring, that survive as well, and pass the genes. So in a way taking care of the group is taking care of yourself.
Yes i agree. But i like to put things in perspective. On a scale of humanity existence. Humanity is around 200k years old, civilization around 4k and industrial age 0.1-0.2k years. So 99% of our existence we were hunting and fighting wild animals and struggle to find food. Our body and brain is sculpted from evolution for this conditions. So old brain, new conditions. We can try to reprogram. This is hard work :)
Well, we are still mentally evolving animals but not collectively. Instead of uplifting the weak, we prey on them.
The law of nature may be simple, but it is not what you say. It is: "The good-enough survive".
Just a quick correction - The law of nature doesn't always favor the strongest. It favors the most adapted to the environment. They could be strength, speed, camouflage, intelligence, rate-of-growth, or so many other variables.
I agree humans can be empathetic and take steps to increase the amount of variables that can be successful in an environment.
This is true as well. The point is that we are past those things. People this days cant imagine what is like living in a cave, and not having what to eat for days, with no other options. If they can only imagen they will very hapy with todays situation. But with all that we have today, we lost purpose .... and this is a modern day problem.
My guess is that the world will be more fair if fractional reserve banking is provably ended.
Other forces would take over and make things even more unbalanced. The scales are way too many to even ponder upon.
What's fair in your eyes it might not be in mine. Fairness is just a mental concept praised for decades to manipulate the masses that we are equal and everyone should be treated equal. In my opinion we are not equal, we never were and will never be.
I guess common sense is the best fairness someone can have or offer.
By the way I love when I read such short posts like this one with such a powerful topic. The proof that you don't need a thousand words to make a point clear.
You nailed it.
We talk about fairness when we want something in our own favour, not minding whether it favours the other party too.
Imagine the job interview you used as example in the post, if the two of us go for the interview and I am preferred to you. To me, the interview is fair, but to you it's unfair... Common, we are talking about the same interview, why is it fair to me and not to you? Smiles
Their is element of greed in what we call fair .
We all die. I'd say that's pretty fair.
Wasn't there some study with monkeys where they showed they have a sense of fairness when it comes to food distribution? If so that might indicate the human sense of fairness doesn't originate from ethics.
Seems to me that Blockchain has already made the world more fair. Not perfectly fair, but more fair.
Also, I think I heard that sum total of energy in the universe is zero. That would make the entire universe perfectly fair, wouldn't it?
How, when and where you die makes a shit lot of difference.
all animals have a sense of fairness. Having a sense of something and actually be something are totally two different things.
Nah. It just made some new blood filthy rich because they prayed upon even lesser noobs. Old money is still richer, even with blockchain.
No. That's merely an abstract addition. Not a distribution.
Really? Why would anything matter post-mortem?
Thank you for making my point for me. Fairness is not just a human narrative.
Fairness of outcome and fairness of opportunity are not the same thing. Fairer opportunity, not completely fair outcome.
Fun arguing with you. I actually do agree with the gist of your post. But the innate sense of fairness in humans will most likely keep driving most people to strive toward that goal, even if it is unreachable.
The blockchain has created the same inequality gap by making some people filthy rich and this is done by taking from others (the ignorants and inexperienced). Maybe that would be possible if the bockchain had a mind of its own and not programmed or controlled by humans.
Much the same applies to the so-called "natural rights".
I quote, because it is too warm to type much:
"Natural rights are exactly as knowable as invisible pink unicorns: anybody can fantasize them any way they want. During the Enlightenment, when liberalism was invented, liberal natural rights were a propaganda tool used to undermine the equally fictitious natural rights of kings. But even among liberals there was no agreement about whether slaveholding was a natural right or not, because natural rights are really just words.”
The only rights you are born with, including the right to being treated "fairly", are the ones your group enforces for you. YMMV greatly here, because reasons you give.
Actually you should. Not enough supporting points and too much of an abrupt end.
What are thoughts on things like blind auditions that help combat biases in picking musicians?
I would argue just because we never reach a state of 'perfect fairness' doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to take steps to reduce bias.
Just tossing up our hands and saying, "Well, we will never be completely fair, less just give up here." is a bit too defeatist for my taste.