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andyjohnsonman

John Rawls - the veil of ignorance

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This seems a pretty flawless thought experiment to design and govern a society. I remember Leo using this example in his conscious politics multi part series. The only critique i would have of it is that it doesn't take into account historical context. If you don't know about how black people have historically had a disadvantage for example then you would be ignorant of how to design a society fairly. It doesn't take into account certain disadvantaged groups who would need more aid within the society. 

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Yes, this is a great thought experiment which I indirectly referred to. Unfortunately most people cannot preform it because they are too self-biased and they are not conscious of: 1) their privileges, 2) how bad life is for some people on this planet. And ultimately they don't care because all they are about is increasing their personal survival advantage, regardless of where they are situated in the hierarchy.

Watch that Vice documentary video on Liberia and imagine that you were born there. If that doesn't open your political eyes, nothing will.

A big part of the libertarian and conservative fantasy is that they assume everyone is as equally capable and privileged as them.

Most conservatives cannot even imagine that 200 years ago it was only a matter of luck that they were not born slaves or terrorists. In their minds such an outrage isn't even a possibility. Because they purely see themselves as "the good guys". It does not enter a conservative's mind that he could be born a mentally crippled kid in a poor urban neighborhood to drug addicted parents surviving on food stamps, so someone predisposed to drug addiction.

A conservative mind is not capable of such empathy. For example, an Evangelical cannot imagine being born a Wahhabist Muslim. Nor can a materialist scientist, really. Which is why they demonize divergent worldviews. It takes an extraordinarily developed and open mind to run such thought experiments in an objective, non-self-biased way.

Rawls' through experiment is only the tip of the iceberg. It's not merely that you COULD be born as someone else. It's that you WILL be born as EVERYONE else! It's that YOU ARE EVERYONE ELSE! The moment you realize this your entire politics is revolutionized. You can on longer advance positions which exploit the ignorance and weaknesses of others. Because it's like fucking over your own mother on her birthday.


You are God. You are Truth. You are Love. You are Infinity.

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34 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Yes, this is a great thought experiment which I indirectly referred to. Unfortunately most people cannot preform it because they are too self-biased and they are not conscious of: 1) their privileges, 2) how bad life is for some people on this planet. And ultimately they don't care because all they are about is increasing their personal survival advantage, regardless of where they are situated in the hierarchy.

Watch that Vice documentary video on Liberia and imagine that you were born there. If that doesn't open your political eyes, nothing will.

A big part of the libertarian and conservative fantasy is that they assume everyone is as equally capable and privileged as them.

Most conservatives cannot even imagine that 200 years ago it was only a matter of luck that they were not born slaves or terrorists. In their minds such an outrage isn't even a possibility. Because they purely see themselves as "the good guys". It does not enter a conservative's mind that he could be born a mentally crippled kid in a poor urban neighborhood to drug addicted parents surviving on food stamps, so someone predisposed to drug addiction.

A conservative mind is not capable of such empathy. For example, an Evangelical cannot imagine being born a Wahhabist Muslim. Nor can a materialist scientist, really. Which is why they demonize divergent worldviews. It takes an extraordinarily developed and open mind to run such thought experiments in an objective, non-self-biased way.

Rawls' through experiment is only the tip of the iceberg. It's not merely that you COULD be born as someone else. It's that you WILL be born as EVERYONE else! It's that YOU ARE EVERYONE ELSE! The moment you realize this your entire politics is revolutionized. You can on longer advance positions which exploit the ignorance and weaknesses of others. Because it's like fucking over your own mother on her birthday.

But if we truly were to feel that we are everyone else, would we not feel our utmost imperative to be to fight against the animal agriculture? After all, compared to human suffering, the suffering found as result of our consumption is far, far greater than the suffering of all human beings during the entire history of mankind.

Trillions of selves being killed in gruesome ways every year, compared to the suffering of a few hundred million human being selves. Especially when we consider that animals most likely have a more vivid experience of life and therefore their emotional suffering is more amplified, considering they do not have intellectual frameworks to navigate reality as humans do.

A good question to ask is, would you rather live every life of every person who was killed in the jewish holocaust, or would you rather live the lifes of every animal that is killed as a result of animal agriculture? That is literally more lifes each year than there have been humans born in all of earths history. I think we all know the answer to that, yet we do not behave accordingly at all.

The question is, how could a sane, non-biased being not find this the most pressing moral and political issue? Just by putting yourself into the position and trying to quantify the suffering, I don't think any exclusive human problem comes even close to it. The only argument that could be made is that prioritizing human suffering will result in a quicker abolishment of animal agriculture. But I feel like that same argument can be made from a place of bias towards human suffering, as an excuse to shut out the suffering that is caused to other species.

Edited by Scholar

Glory to Israel

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10 minutes ago, Scholar said:

But if we truly were to feel that we are everyone else, would we not feel our utmost imperative to be to fight against the animal agriculture? After all, compared to human suffering, the suffering found as result of our consumption is far, far greater than the suffering of all human beings during the entire history of mankind.

Yes, this will become a big issue in the next 100-200 years.

But right now we have so many exploited and suffering humans that worrying about animal suffering is basically a luxury. We simply aren't advanced enough as a species to end such animal suffering. Not yet. One day we will.

In the next 100 years our technology should get so good that we will be able to grow meat in a lab.

You are never going to get rid of eating meat. But we could make the manufacture of that meat free of suffering. We are getting close. Soon it will only be a question of scale and cost.

Of course we can work on both issues at once -- which is already happening. But human suffering will always be a first priority because we are human and survival drives us.


You are God. You are Truth. You are Love. You are Infinity.

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43 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Yes, this will become a big issue in the next 100-200 years.

But right now we have so many exploited and suffering humans that worrying about animal suffering is basically a luxury. We simply aren't advanced enough as a species to end such animal suffering. Not yet. One day we will.

In the next 100 years our technology should get so good that we will be able to grow meat in a lab.

You are never going to get rid of eating meat. But we could make the manufacture of that meat free of suffering. We are getting close. Soon it will only be a question of scale and cost.

Of course we can work on both issues at once -- which is already happening. But human suffering will always be a first priority because we are human and survival drives us.

I feel like when we take the environmental damage in consideration and future prospects if we continue doing what we are, that atleast in the western world even from the perspective of human survival it would still be an imperative to at least transform the most damaging forms of animal agriculture.

Do we really have 100 years to solve this? I feel like if we had a cultural movement here that would push and invest into technology like lab grown meat that it wouldn't take us as long. But people aren't even aware of how damaging animal agriculture is, let alone the moral implications. If our world wasn't in such a dire state we could take our time but we have taken such a path that I don't know if it is possible. It doesn't seem like the next few decades will get any better, but far worse, as far as environmental destruction goes.

Is it not maybe time to create a momentum for more radical action? It's strange to me how nature puts us into these situations, it's like there are checkboxes for survival.

"Better get along before you invent nuclear weapons"

"Better start caring about your environment before it bites you in the ass"

Sometimes I feel like we are barely good enough to pass the tests and that one day we will fail and another species who will be more evolved in the future will be able to navigate all of this in a manner which allows it to thrive. It's like reality cannot allow something to continue to survive if it does not evolve certain traits. What if dolphines or other cetaceans are the future? They seem to have a much higher capacity for empathy, which would prohibit them from the kind of self-destruction we are causing.

What if dolphines are actually more evolved than we are, what if they have a greater potential? One could argue they would have to find a way to somehow get their hands on tools and the like, but what if they evolve differently? What if there could be an animal with a far higher capacity for spirituality than us?

Edited by Scholar

Glory to Israel

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16 minutes ago, Scholar said:

Do we really have 100 years to solve this? I feel like if we had a cultural movement here that would push and invest into technology like lab grown meat that it wouldn't take us as long. But people aren't even aware of how damaging animal agriculture is, let alone the moral implications.

Which is why it will take some 100+ years.

Starting a significant cultural movement takes a long time.

We still barely have a cultural movement on climate change. And it's been like 50 years. And it's an issue that directly impacts all humans.

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Is it not maybe time to create a momentum for more radical action?

By all means, devote your whole life to it and transform society. If you dare ;)

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What if dolphines are actually more evolved than we are, what if they have a greater potential? One could argue they would have to find a way to somehow get their hands on tools and the like, but what if they evolve differently? What if there could be an animal with a far higher capacity for spirituality than us?

We have a better chance of simply evolving current humans. And anyways, you shouldn't be too worried about spiritual competition. There exist beings in our universe 1 million times more conscious and advanced than humans. So it's really not a race. We can only do so much so fast.


You are God. You are Truth. You are Love. You are Infinity.

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9 hours ago, Serotoninluv said:

@Scholar Are you familiar with Peter Singer? You seem to share a frequency with him.

I have heard of him but haven't read any of his books. I know he made the argument from marginal cases popular:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_marginal_cases

It basically states that there is no difference between animals and humans that would justify our treatment of them without justifying some form of it in the human context. Any difference we will find that we would apply to humans would make us look like psychopaths if then decided to take their right to life away.

For example, someone mentally handicapped might be on the same level of intelligence and consciousness as any specific animal, if we were to take the difference in intelligence as justification to treat animals the way we treat them, we would have to accept the same for mentally handicapped people.

This basically reveals a fundamental bias we have towards accepting arguments to kill other species but not accepting the same arguments when it is about our own species.

 

The argument basically reveals that the only thing we truly care about, and why we truly care about human beings in the first place, is their capacity for sentience and suffering. After all, I can modify you in any way I want, as long as you are capable of experiencing suffering, you will not want to experience suffering. It's not like if I turn you into a cow you suddenly will be fine with someone killing you.

Edited by Scholar

Glory to Israel

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@Scholar Yea. Meat-eating culture is generally resistant to emotional appeals. Singer gives a strong rational argument for veganism - much stronger than the counter-argument, imo. . . In theory, I think the argument is lopsided toward veganism - both empathically and logically. . . .Similar to homosexuality - there is a very weak argument against homosexuality. 

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2 hours ago, Serotoninluv said:

@Scholar Yea. Meat-eating culture is generally resistant to emotional appeals. Singer gives a strong rational argument for veganism - much stronger than the counter-argument, imo. . . In theory, I think the argument is lopsided toward veganism - both empathically and logically. . . .Similar to homosexuality - there is a very weak argument against homosexuality. 

I don't like these kinds of arguments too much because they would mean that if it was logically possible to justify the animal holocaust it would follow that we could proceed to do so.

I prefer to expand the Self-identity of others so that they have an internal motivation to protect the animals, an irreducable desire to share compassion with all beings. Not torturing an animal because it isn't logically consistent with ones beliefs is to me not a very good and stable reason. As soon as the self-identity is threatened, like when there might be health decline or social pressure, there will be a tendency for the ego to ignore consistency and opt for survival.

My self-identity feels threatened when it sees animals being killed, that threat-perception it greater than the preference to avoid the challenges that come from being a vegan.

Edited by Scholar

Glory to Israel

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