Feb 20, 2018 11:31 PM
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/02/08/ju...fantasies/
EXCERPT: . . . If justice is what is revealed by negotiations of injustice, then it is a very broad category, including not only all behaviors, but also the distribution of income, wealth, roads, transportation, housing, food, clothing, fresh water, pollution, education, art, fun, and much more. Bad actions may be judged to be unjust, but even good actions are targets for justice talk when they are considered suboptimal; consider how many people berated Elon Musk for frivolity in sending a car into space, implying that he had a duty to use his resources to solve certain social problems instead (such as buying houses for poor people). Injustice is simply the state of a misfit between the fairness expectations of a group of people and reality.
[...] it is no surprise that many theories of justice posit [...] an omniscient being. In some cases, the being is said to actually exist in reality; in other cases, the being is explicitly imaginary. In all cases, contact with this being (in some cases, only in imagination) provides a grounding for the experience of justice. Here I will discuss in turn the various worldviews that involve communication with “higher levels” of being in some way [...]
[...] GODS - Many systems of justice involve actual supernatural beings, who can transcend mind and dimension. All-seeing, all-knowing, and for some reason interested in humans, these special beings can help with the trickier parts of justice.
[...] ALL IS ONE - Theodicies often resort to dualism, positing some adversary or devil who interferes with the benevolent god’s plans. The next worldview I will discuss is monism, or the expended conception of self. Monism, as David Chapman puts it, is the belief that all is one, that there is no distinction between “self” and “universe.” In this worldview, the self, properly conceived, is revealed to be the kind of supernatural being that can transcend identity and do perfect justice.
[...] THE VEIL OF IGNORANCE - A surprising innovation by John Rawls (A Theory of Justice) is to use ignorance to do justice, in addition to knowledge.
[...] COMMUNISM - Under communism, the entity responsible for doing justice is the state.
[...] DEMOCRACY - In democratic forms of government, the will of the people is expressed through voting in elections (and occasionally directly on propositions).
[...] MARKETS - Markets are an emergent order; no one being’s knowledge is responsible for the distribution of goods. In this worldview, everyone is made better off by simply allowing consensual exchanges to occur, generally assisted by the technology of money.
[...] THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT - A nineteenth century theory of radical indeterminacy that was popularized in the middle twentieth century, the “butterfly effect” or “ripple effect” suggests that even the tiniest actions or omissions can have major effects on the world. As with Rawls, ignorance is emphasized, but here it is the impossibility of knowing what outcome a particular action will lead to.
[...] EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM - A worldview with some similarities to the chaos underlying the butterfly effect is Effective Altruism. In EA, there is no superhuman being who can advise on justice (at least, not yet). Each individual participant must become the higher level entity, using math and rationality, but also intuition, to do justice.
[...] SIMULATORS - The simulation hypothesis – the idea that we are living in a computer simulation – posits non-supernatural beings on a higher level of reality. They are literally on a higher level looking “down” on us: omniscient in the sense of access to information as the simulation progresses. But no claims are made about their benevolence, power to intervene, or attention. Theoretically, they have all the information the would need to do justice, but they may not be paying attention, and they may not care.
[...] SOCIAL MEDIA - Misha Gurevich acknowledges [...] “higher level” beings support the structures of justice [...] we have a new all-seeing god, he says: we call it the media. If we act unjustly, we may rightly fear being shamed by the all-seeing eye of social media; if we are wronged, social media may help us get revenge or raise funds to become whole again.
[...] THE JUSTICE MESS - [...] I think that being able to look down, as if from a higher level, is a large part of the motivation for understanding things, similar to climbing a mountain. It feels powerful and high-status to look down and see others as they can’t see you. But in practice, without supernatural entities, the view from above is necessarily incomplete, messy, and vague.
MORE: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/02/08/ju...fantasies/
EXCERPT: . . . If justice is what is revealed by negotiations of injustice, then it is a very broad category, including not only all behaviors, but also the distribution of income, wealth, roads, transportation, housing, food, clothing, fresh water, pollution, education, art, fun, and much more. Bad actions may be judged to be unjust, but even good actions are targets for justice talk when they are considered suboptimal; consider how many people berated Elon Musk for frivolity in sending a car into space, implying that he had a duty to use his resources to solve certain social problems instead (such as buying houses for poor people). Injustice is simply the state of a misfit between the fairness expectations of a group of people and reality.
[...] it is no surprise that many theories of justice posit [...] an omniscient being. In some cases, the being is said to actually exist in reality; in other cases, the being is explicitly imaginary. In all cases, contact with this being (in some cases, only in imagination) provides a grounding for the experience of justice. Here I will discuss in turn the various worldviews that involve communication with “higher levels” of being in some way [...]
[...] GODS - Many systems of justice involve actual supernatural beings, who can transcend mind and dimension. All-seeing, all-knowing, and for some reason interested in humans, these special beings can help with the trickier parts of justice.
[...] ALL IS ONE - Theodicies often resort to dualism, positing some adversary or devil who interferes with the benevolent god’s plans. The next worldview I will discuss is monism, or the expended conception of self. Monism, as David Chapman puts it, is the belief that all is one, that there is no distinction between “self” and “universe.” In this worldview, the self, properly conceived, is revealed to be the kind of supernatural being that can transcend identity and do perfect justice.
[...] THE VEIL OF IGNORANCE - A surprising innovation by John Rawls (A Theory of Justice) is to use ignorance to do justice, in addition to knowledge.
[...] COMMUNISM - Under communism, the entity responsible for doing justice is the state.
[...] DEMOCRACY - In democratic forms of government, the will of the people is expressed through voting in elections (and occasionally directly on propositions).
[...] MARKETS - Markets are an emergent order; no one being’s knowledge is responsible for the distribution of goods. In this worldview, everyone is made better off by simply allowing consensual exchanges to occur, generally assisted by the technology of money.
[...] THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT - A nineteenth century theory of radical indeterminacy that was popularized in the middle twentieth century, the “butterfly effect” or “ripple effect” suggests that even the tiniest actions or omissions can have major effects on the world. As with Rawls, ignorance is emphasized, but here it is the impossibility of knowing what outcome a particular action will lead to.
[...] EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM - A worldview with some similarities to the chaos underlying the butterfly effect is Effective Altruism. In EA, there is no superhuman being who can advise on justice (at least, not yet). Each individual participant must become the higher level entity, using math and rationality, but also intuition, to do justice.
[...] SIMULATORS - The simulation hypothesis – the idea that we are living in a computer simulation – posits non-supernatural beings on a higher level of reality. They are literally on a higher level looking “down” on us: omniscient in the sense of access to information as the simulation progresses. But no claims are made about their benevolence, power to intervene, or attention. Theoretically, they have all the information the would need to do justice, but they may not be paying attention, and they may not care.
[...] SOCIAL MEDIA - Misha Gurevich acknowledges [...] “higher level” beings support the structures of justice [...] we have a new all-seeing god, he says: we call it the media. If we act unjustly, we may rightly fear being shamed by the all-seeing eye of social media; if we are wronged, social media may help us get revenge or raise funds to become whole again.
[...] THE JUSTICE MESS - [...] I think that being able to look down, as if from a higher level, is a large part of the motivation for understanding things, similar to climbing a mountain. It feels powerful and high-status to look down and see others as they can’t see you. But in practice, without supernatural entities, the view from above is necessarily incomplete, messy, and vague.
MORE: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/02/08/ju...fantasies/
