Timeline for Why are equality and fairness valued so highly?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 1, 2016 at 22:54 | answer | added | Valentin Tihomirov | timeline score: 1 | |
| Mar 30, 2016 at 6:04 | answer | added | Mozibur Ullah | timeline score: 2 | |
| Mar 30, 2016 at 3:13 | answer | added | Alexander S King | timeline score: 4 | |
| Mar 30, 2016 at 2:50 | comment | added | Dave | Another complication in quantifying utility is that, at least for some things, it looks like we compare ourselves against our neighbors, e.g. there are studies that seem to indicate that we'll feel worse off if all of our neighbors are doing relatively better than if we are doing slightly better than they are. | |
| Mar 30, 2016 at 0:17 | comment | added | Christopher King | @jobermark Also, medians are well defined. Why not maximize the median instead? | |
| Mar 30, 2016 at 0:13 | comment | added | Christopher King | @jobermark why do you want to maximize the minima? | |
| Mar 29, 2016 at 23:05 | history | edited | DBK |
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| Mar 29, 2016 at 22:11 | comment | added | user9166 | @PyRulez Actually, utility curves never sum correctly, so it is only safe to maximize minima -- the average is not well-defined. | |
| Mar 29, 2016 at 22:00 | comment | added | user9166 | Utility fails as a model because it lacks a dynamics. In the scenario with one hundred 'ones', none of them need not fear violence on a scale that will send more than a couple of them down to zero. In the scenario with forty-nine 'twos' and one 'hundred', the odds are, someone will threaten the hundred, and he will spend his resources reducing most of the other forty-eight into zeroes so they stop being a threat. There is no consistent way to balance stable discomfort with fear of disaster. You can introduce 'meta-utilities' but then it becomes a matter of personalities... | |
| Mar 29, 2016 at 21:52 | history | edited | Alexander S King | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Mar 29, 2016 at 21:10 | comment | added | Christopher King | @JosephWeissman Why? With veil of ignorance, I would much prefer society 1 to society 2 in the example above. Won't I be trying to maximize the average utility, not the minimum? | |
| Mar 29, 2016 at 20:37 | comment | added | Joseph Weissman♦ | Rawl's arguments about a veil of ignorance seem relevant here, at least to gain some intuition about the spirit behind such arguments -- if you got to organize a political economy, but didn't know which social strata you'd be born into, it'd be in your interest for there to be as much equality as possible | |
| Mar 29, 2016 at 20:18 | history | asked | Christopher King | CC BY-SA 3.0 |