veil of ignorance

The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice
by Fredrik Deboer
Published 3 Aug 2020

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) “no excuses” education reform norm referencing North American Free Trade Agreement Nurture Assumption, The (Harris) nurture versus nature debate Obama, Barack on education as anti-poverty program on education as economic leveler on education gaps Education Secretary Arne Duncan and end of No Child Left Behind on equal opportunity and goal of more college-educated youth 2012 State of the Union address universal pre-K initiative Obamacare (Affordable Care Act) Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria Office, The (television program) Office Space (film) opportunity, equality of and behavioral genetics and blank-slate philosophy of education and Dewey, John impossibility of and income inequality and liberalism and mobility and morality Obama, Barack on and poverty and progressivism and racism outcomes, equality of outcomes, plasticity of Palmer, Brian parenting and behavioral traits competitive parenting helicopter parenting and home environment and public policy under socialism and twin studies and universal childcare People’s Policy Project performance and achievement gaps pharmacy education phrenology Pinker, Steven The Blank Slate plasticity of outcomes Plomin, Robert positive liberty posters, aspirational and motivational postsecondary education degree creep and inequality master’s degrees and master’s programs PhDs professional degrees poverty and achievement gaps “controlling for poverty” “culture of poverty” and early childhood and equality of opportunity and mobility and selection effects and universal basic income and universal childcare premature birth professional degrees Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) progressivism and discomfort with inherent ability and education as economic leveler and educational funding and equality of opportunity and Medicare for All on negative and positive liberty and social inequality and social mobility and student loan debt forgiveness and universal childcare and veil of ignorance ProPublica pseudoscience and behavioral genetics eugenics phrenology pseudoscientific racism public schools, blame placed on Purdue University “race realism” race science racial achievement gaps racism Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) and aspirations to winning and behavioral genetics durability of and equality of opportunity pseudoscientific racism and “race realism” scientific racism structural racism and veil of ignorance Rand Education Rawls, John Reeves, Richard reform. See education reform movement reforms, realistic elimination of charter schools loosening standards lowering legal dropout age reduced focus on college education universal childcare and afterschool programs Regents Examination (New York) relative learning and blank-slate philosophy of education definition of and education gaps and education journalism and Flynn effect relative learning compared with and value of college degrees Republican Party and education policy and health care policy revolutionary socialism Roosevelt, Theodore Rove, Karl Rumsfeld, Donald San Diego Metropolitan Career and Technical High School Sanders, Bernie SAT and College Learning Assessment (CLA) and gender lack of research control for as norm-referenced and socioeconomics and test prep industry school choice school reform.

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And they are unknowingly contributing to a destructive series of misunderstandings that have profound negative consequences not only for our schools but our entire system for determining who will thrive and who will struggle. But if we are willing to think clearly and follow the facts where they lead, a better world is possible—most of all for those at the bottom of the performance spectrum. SEVEN Before the Veil of Ignorance To build a vision for a better future, it’s necessary to unpack a lot of our current philosophical baggage. Because beneath the placid surface of liberal capitalism lie inherent contradictions that threaten to break the entire thing apart. The liberal ideal of equality of opportunity has become a commonplace, an assumed part of contemporary intellectual and political life, albeit one always subject to basic questions about what exactly society owes to every citizen in terms of their ability to secure the good life.

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The liberal ideal of equality of opportunity has become a commonplace, an assumed part of contemporary intellectual and political life, albeit one always subject to basic questions about what exactly society owes to every citizen in terms of their ability to secure the good life. Few ideas have had as much resonance in that debate as the concept of the veil of ignorance. The idea, developed by the eminent liberal philosopher John Rawls, asks us to imagine that we are ignorant of all of our individual demographics and attributes—that we might consider the world from a vantage point lacking basic information about ourselves and our place within it. How might we reconsider our views on how society should function, Rawls asks, if we had no idea about the characteristics that assign us our place in that society?

Anarchy State and Utopia
by Robert Nozick
Published 15 Mar 1974

It seems clear that our criticism goes deeper than this (and I hope it is clear to the reader); but it is difficult to formulate the requisite criterion of depth. Lest this appear lame, let us add that as Rawls states the root idea underlying the veil of ignorance, that feature which is the most prominent in excluding agreement to an entitlement conception, it is to prevent someone from tailoring principles to his own advantage, from designing principles to favor his particular condition. But not only does the veil of ignorance do this; it ensures that no shadow of entitlement considerations will enter the rational calculations of ignorant, nonmoral individuals constrained to decide in a situation reflecting some formal conditions of morality. bf Perhaps, in a Rawls-like construction, some condition weaker than the veil of ignorance could serve to exclude the special tailoring of principles, or perhaps some other “structural-looking” feature of the choice situation could be formulated to mirror entitlementconsiderations.

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bf Someone might think entitlement principles count as specially tailored in a morally objectionable way, and so he might reject my claim that the veil of ignorance accomplishes more than its stated purpose. Since to specially tailor principles is to tailor them unfairly for one’s own advantage, and since the question of the fairness of the entitlement principle is precisely the issue, it is dif ficult to decide which begs the question: my criticism of the strength of the veil of ignorance, or the defense against this criticism which I imagine in this note. bg The difference principle thus creates two conflicts of interest: between those at the top and those at bottom; and between those in the middle and those at bottom, for if those at bottom were gone the difference principle might apply to improve the position of those in the middle, who would become the new bottom group whose position is to be maximized.

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In this hypothetical situation of choice, which Rawls calls “the original position,” they choose the first principles of a conception of justice that is to regulate all subsequent criticism and reform of their institutions. While making this choice, no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, or his natural assets and abilities, his strength, intelligence, and so forth. The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance. This ensures that no one is advantaged or disadvantaged in the choice of principles by the outcome of natural chance or the contingency of social circumstances. Since all are similarly situated and no one is able to design principles to favor his particular condition, the principles of justice are the result of a fair agreement or bargain.21 What would persons in the original position agree to?

The Broken Ladder
by Keith Payne
Published 8 May 2017

Likewise, those with the worst prospects would opt for a more equal distribution. So, instead of expressing what they believe to be fair and just, people would opt for what benefits them. Although no one can eliminate the biasing influences of his own position entirely, Rawls thought that the exercise of peering through the veil of ignorance would enable us to see more objectively than we otherwise could. The veil of ignorance is only a thought experiment, of course, but a study by psychologist Michael Norton and behavioral economist Dan Ariely went a step further to apply it to actual data. They divided the population into five equal quintiles, from the poorest 20 percent to the richest 20 percent, and then asked a subject group of more than five thousand Americans to estimate what portion of the country’s total wealth was owned by each segment.

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In other words, they placed participants behind Rawls’s veil of ignorance and let them choose. A striking 92 percent of Americans chose the Swedish model. Even more surprising was the amount of consensus in that choice. Both men and women selected Sweden by more than a 90 percent margin. People who made six-figure salaries selected Sweden almost as often (89 percent) as those who made less than $50,000 (92 percent). There was even consensus across political lines, as the Swedish chart was chosen overwhelmingly by both Republicans (90 percent) and Democrats (94 percent). Forty years after Rawls proposed the concept of the veil of ignorance, people behaved just as he predicted any reasonable person would.

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If he has a strong work ethic, he just happened to win the lottery for hardworking traits. And if one boy was strong enough to survive a terrible disease and a weaker boy succumbed, that was merely a brutal fact of life. Rawls saw nothing just or morally praiseworthy in that. The most famous part of Rawls’s theory of justice was a thought experiment called “the veil of ignorance.” Imagine that you have awakened from a deep sleep on an interstellar space flight, and you remember nothing about yourself. You don’t know if you are rich or poor. You don’t know if you are strong or weak, smart or dim-witted. As your spacecraft nears a new planet, you have to choose in which of many societies you would like to live.

The Unknowers: How Strategic Ignorance Rules the World
by Linsey McGoey
Published 14 Sep 2019

Finally, there’s a small core of thinkers with political science and economic game theory who have specifically used the word ‘ignorance’ to understand the utility of unknowing, including Rawls’ concept of the ‘veil of ignorance’ and political scientist Anthony Downs’ notion of ‘rational ignorance,’ both of which were developed in the mid-20th century. The veil of ignorance is a thought experiment Rawls developed to consider whether most people would prefer more egalitarian societies if they had the choice. When arguing from behind a Rawlsian ‘veil of ignorance’ people are asked to consider if they would condone practices like slavery if it is impossible for them to ever know whether they or their children would ever be enslaved or not.

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Many natural scientists, by and large, do now admit and celebrate this fact, emphasizing that science is always ignorant at some level, and also that shared human ignorance is what helps to drive science forward.10 And yet the importance of this insight hasn’t really pierced political theory. Philosophers will point to American political philosopher John Rawls’ notion of a ‘veil of ignorance’ (I introduce the concept in the next chapter) as evidence that the unknown can be a fruitful academic tool for understanding why some people have less physical liberty or economic freedom than others. Rawls’ idea is an important one, but the point I am making is different. I argue that ignorance is not simply useful as an analytical device in academic thought experiments, but also that it can be a useful moral device – indeed perhaps the most powerful device – for asserting the fundamentality of human equality.

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I mention this because I’m staking a claim to originality and offering another thinker the last word. My suggestion is that her name should be attached to a truth about rational ignorance that she discovered long before me. Political scientists do this all the time: Downs’ principle of ignorance or Rawls’ principle of the veil of ignorance. It’s usually the names of men. But I think there is a historical rationale, a scholarly rationale, and quite unexpectedly, a somewhat serendipitous poetic justice to using Audre Lorde’s name to denote a historical principle that can stand next to Tocqueville’s godly principle for explaining revolutionary change.

The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality
by Kathryn Paige Harden
Published 20 Sep 2021

The most famous version of this thought experiment was proposed by the philosopher John Rawls, who imagined something called “the veil of ignorance.” Behind the veil of ignorance,31 no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength, and the like. Nor, again, does anyone know his conception of the good, the particulars of his rational plan of life, or even the special features of his psychology such as his aversion to risk or liability to optimism or pessimism. The point of the veil of ignorance is to imagine a hypothetical situation in which everyone is on an equal footing and so can come to a fair agreement about the principles of justice: if you didn’t know who you were going to be, and neither did anyone else, and you had to decide on the basic structure of society while radically ignorant about the particulars of your own self-interest, what would be the rules for deciding who gets to do what and who gets to have what?

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The point of the veil of ignorance is to imagine a hypothetical situation in which everyone is on an equal footing and so can come to a fair agreement about the principles of justice: if you didn’t know who you were going to be, and neither did anyone else, and you had to decide on the basic structure of society while radically ignorant about the particulars of your own self-interest, what would be the rules for deciding who gets to do what and who gets to have what? Rawls argued that two principles would emerge from the fair agreement of people behind the veil of ignorance: Each person has an equal right to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties which is compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for all; Social and economic inequalities are to be (a) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity, and (b) they must be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society.

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Take the power of the genetic lottery seriously, and you might be faced with the realization that many of the things you pride yourself on, your high vocabulary and your quick processing speed, your orderliness and your “grit,” the fact that you always did well in school, are the consequence of a series of lucky breaks for which you can take no credit. Now, take the Rawlsian thought experiment about the veil of ignorance seriously, and consider: What sort of society would you want if you didn’t know what the outcome of the genetic lottery was going to be? Conclusion As I write the last chapter of this book, my university and my children’s school have shut down, in an attempt to slow the transmission of the COVID-19 virus.

Universal Basic Income and the Reshaping of Democracy: Towards a Citizens’ Stipend in a New Political Order
by Burkhard Wehner
Published 10 Jan 2019

This aspect of the debate may at first sight seem purely theoretical, but it is a compelling argument. Rawls suggests that basic decisions about distributional justice should be made under a fictitious temporary “veil of ignorance” about ones’ personal circumstances. In such a fictitious condition, current interests and conflicts of interest would not affect the outcome of the decision-making process. Under the veil of ignorance, everyone would fear finding him- or herself among the least advantaged of a society after the veil of ignorance is lifted. Everyone would therefore want to make provisions that the least advantaged will be as well off as possible. In this theoretical condition, conflicts of interest and associated political phenomena such as party disputes, populist agitation, and ideological polemics are of no importance in social politics.

Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy
by Philippe van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght
Published 20 Mar 2017

Its aim is to offer a conception of distributive justice that is better than Rawls’s 113 BASIC INCOME at making Â�people’s share of resources both ambition-Â�sensitive (that is, sensitive to preferences for which they can be held responsible) and endowment-Â� insensitive (that is, inÂ�deÂ�penÂ�dent of circumstances for which they cannot be held responsible).43 For this purpose, he distinguishes impersonal, or external, resources (that is, our material wealth), from personal, or internal, resources (that is, our abilities). As regards personal resources, Dworkin proposes an insurance scheme Â�behind a hyÂ�poÂ�thetÂ�iÂ�cal veil of ignorance that can be described as follows. Suppose that we each know the frequency of all talents and handicaps among the members of our society but that a veil of ignorance makes us believe that the probabilities of having any of them are the same for each of us. Suppose further that this veil does not prevent us from knowing our own preferences, including our risk aversion. We should then be able to specify how much we would insure for each posÂ�siÂ�ble risk, bearing in mind that the premiums to be paid if lucky Â�will have to cover the indemnities to be received if unlucky, each weighted by the probabilities of the situations that would trigger them.

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In the real world, each person has such an endowment and, depending on what it happens to be and on the choices she would have made Â�under the veil of ignorance, she will Â� end up 44 with a premium to be paid or an indemnity to be received. As regards impersonal resources, Dworkin initially seemed to propose a distinct device. But in the final formulation of his approach, he proposes to subsume all resources Â�under his insurance scheme. Â�Behind the veil of ignorance that hides their Â�family situation, Â�people are also supposed to be able to insure against being “born to parents who can give or Â�will leave them relatively Â�little.”↜ 45 What emerges is a fascinating construct that involves a frightening amount of intellectual gymnastics and moreover requires information that is unavoidably unavailable (and, even if it Â�were available to some Â�people, could not be expected to be truthfully revealed).

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Â�Behind the veil of ignorance that hides their Â�family situation, Â�people are also supposed to be able to insure against being “born to parents who can give or Â�will leave them relatively Â�little.”↜ 45 What emerges is a fascinating construct that involves a frightening amount of intellectual gymnastics and moreover requires information that is unavoidably unavailable (and, even if it Â�were available to some Â�people, could not be expected to be truthfully revealed). Dworkin is aware of Â�these difficulties and therefore falls back on “what level of insurance of difÂ�ferÂ�ent kinds we can safely assume that most reasonable Â�people would have bought” Â�behind the veil of ignorance.46 The resulting rough approximation, Dworkin conjectures, Â�will be a tax-Â�funded scheme covering a number of specific risks, namely “ordinary handicaps” such as blindness or deafness, but also the lack of sufficient skills to earn some minimum level of income.47 And the 114 Eth ically Jus ti fia ble?

Big Data and the Welfare State: How the Information Revolution Threatens Social Solidarity
by Torben Iversen and Philipp Rehm
Published 18 May 2022

At the other extreme, with complete information, poi ¼ pi , the range equals the difference between those with the lowest and those with the highest risk. A very simple way of expressing this general insight is that class conflict increases with information. Behind the veil of ignorance, everyone can agree that a robust level of public insurance is a good thing; without the veil of ignorance, there is disagreement about the level of public insurance (and potentially also its public nature). Even if markets are not feasible, information shapes politics. Symmetric and High Information The final, and undoubtedly important, case is where information is plentiful and can be shared between buyer and provider.

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At the other extreme, with complete information, poi ¼ pi , the range equals the difference between those with the lowest and those with the highest risk. A very simple way of expressing this general insight is that class conflict increases with information. Behind the veil of ignorance, everyone can agree that a robust level of public insurance is a good thing; without the veil of ignorance, there is disagreement about the level of public insurance (and potentially also its public nature). Even if markets are not feasible, information shapes politics. Symmetric and High Information The final, and undoubtedly important, case is where information is plentiful and can be shared between buyer and provider.

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At the other extreme, with complete information, poi ¼ pi , the range equals the difference between those with the lowest and those with the highest risk. A very simple way of expressing this general insight is that class conflict increases with information. Behind the veil of ignorance, everyone can agree that a robust level of public insurance is a good thing; without the veil of ignorance, there is disagreement about the level of public insurance (and potentially also its public nature). Even if markets are not feasible, information shapes politics. Symmetric and High Information The final, and undoubtedly important, case is where information is plentiful and can be shared between buyer and provider.

The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts
by Shane Parrish
Published 22 Nov 2019

It makes you aware of your process, so that even if the results are good, you can recognize when this was all down to luck and that maybe you should work on your decision-making process to reduce the role of chance. An example of this is the famous “veil of ignorance” proposed by philosopher John Rawls in his influential Theory of Justice. In order to figure out the most fair and equitable way to structure society, he proposed that the designers of said society operate behind a veil of ignorance. This means that they could not know who they would be in the society they were creating. If they designed the society without knowing their economic status, their ethnic background, talents and interests, or even their gender, they would have to put in place a structure that was as fair as possible in order to guarantee the best possible outcome for themselves.5 Our initial intuition of what is fair is likely to be challenged during the “veil of ignorance” thought experiment.

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If they designed the society without knowing their economic status, their ethnic background, talents and interests, or even their gender, they would have to put in place a structure that was as fair as possible in order to guarantee the best possible outcome for themselves.5 Our initial intuition of what is fair is likely to be challenged during the “veil of ignorance” thought experiment. When confronted with the question of how best to organize society, we have this general feeling that it should be fair. But what exactly does this mean? We can use this thought experiment to test the likely outcomes of different rules and structures to come up with an aggregate of “most fair.”

Libertarian Idea
by Jan Narveson
Published 15 Dec 1988

Interest in contractarianism was virtually revived in recent times by the work of John Rawls in his celebrated and muchdiscussed magnum opus, A Theory of Justice. In the Rawlsian version the “social contract” is an idealization. It “takes place” in very remarkable circumstances: the contractors are behind, as he puts it, a “veil of ignorance”, 132 which prevents them from knowing anything about themselves in particular. They know only generalities about people but have no idea which person they themselves are (or, as we may put it, which person they themselves will “turn out to be” after, so to say, the veil is lifted). This unusual condition is imposed in order to represent what Rawls takes to be a constraint on moral principles, namely, that they must be totally impartial as between one person and another.2 There is a crucial question about what is intended in imposing such requirements, though.

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Namely, the question would be why the real person should pay any attention to what the idealized “person” has, from its Olympian perch, “decided”. Doesn‟t the behind-the-veil person look uncomfortably like Plato‟s philosopher king, say? And if not, why not? Actually, there are two ways of understanding the “veil of ignorance” idea: what we might call the “theoretically dispensable” and the “theoretically indispensable” versions. In the former understanding, the veil idea is only a metaphor for a real-world condition that it really is reasonable to impose— indeed, perhaps no more than the condition that our principles, whatever they are, must be impartial, in some suitable sense of that term.

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Pence3 argues that the veil is redundant, since if unanimity and equal bargaining power are imposed on the social contract, we will get the same result. The question is, though: in what sense of „impartial‟ may impartiality be “imposed”? For people are not impartial. But the “people” behind the veil of ignorance are—they can‟t help but be, for they have no selves to be partial to! In the dispensable version of the veil, it is only a metaphor or dramatic device reminding us that we can‟t have a genuine principle of justice that says some such thing as “Everything for Sam, and the rest of you clods will just have to toe Sam‟s line.”

The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts
by Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind
Published 24 Aug 2015

In fact, they know no ‘particular information’ about themselves—they do not know their age, their gender, their race, or even what generation they belong to. When we imagine ourselves in this hypothetical situation of unknowing cluelessness, we are behind what Rawls calls the ‘veil of ignorance’. And only when we are behind this ‘veil’ can we be genuinely impartial. We ask our readers, especially professionals, to place themselves behind a veil of ignorance and ponder how we should share practical expertise in a technology-based Internet society. We are not asking readers to consider the future of the professions. That would immediately limit the imagination—inviting views on how the professions should evolve suggests that the professions must have a central role to play.

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The first route leads us to a type of commons where our collective knowledge and experience, in so far as is feasible, is nurtured and shared without commercial gain, while the second takes us to an online marketplace in which practical expertise is invariably bought and sold. From behind the veil of ignorance, which route would readers take? We oversimplify, of course. The options are unlikely to be so stark. And hybrid possibilities could be fashioned. But having to choose one over the other is a revealing discipline, because the spirit of each option is very different, and, as we plan and build our technology-based Internet society, we should be clear and principled in the choices we make. Our sense is that, from behind a veil of ignorance, most people would choose to liberate rather than enclose. By and large, it would be better to live in a society in which most medical help, spiritual guidance, legal advice, the latest news, business assistance, accounting insight, and architectural know-how is widely available, at low or no cost.

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That would immediately limit the imagination—inviting views on how the professions should evolve suggests that the professions must have a central role to play. In contrast, this book suggests that increasingly capable, non-thinking machines will displace much of the work of human professionals. Our question, instead, is whether, from behind the veil of ignorance, we should prefer these systems and machines to be held in common for many or controlled by a few, whether we should prefer practical expertise to be made available at little cost or at greater expense, whether it should be liberated or enclosed. This question is, of course, one for the long term, and we can frame it another way.

Hard Times: The Divisive Toll of the Economic Slump
by Tom Clark and Anthony Heath
Published 23 Jun 2014

As the slump wore on, increasing numbers snitched on one another to the dole office for tiny transgressions, such as busking with a harmonica while drawing relief.1 Likewise, at much the same time in England's industrial North, Orwell reported on ‘much spying and tale-bearing’, with one man he knew ‘seen feeding his neighbour's chickens while the neighbour was away’ and subsequently being reported to the authorities for having ‘a job feeding chickens’.2 The response to hardship can go either way. Let us consider, first, why a mood of solidarity could rise as the economy sinks. In a famous thought experiment, the philosopher John Rawls provided a theoretical underpinning for egalitarian institutions, with his ‘veil of ignorance’.3 This device imagines prospective citizens debating the best way to run society from behind a ‘veil’ that blocks their knowledge of the rank that they will occupy within that society. If nobody knows whether they will be born a prince or a pauper, the argument runs, then everybody will surely agree on fair rules that afford the pauper decent protection – just in case it happens to be them.

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Citizens in the better-protected communities, who dwell at a safe distance from the path of maximal destruction, may calculate that self-interest lies in supporting immediate tax cuts over Michael Foot's quaint old promise – highlighted at the top of the last chapter – of a community that ‘shows some compassion’ in hard times. In such circumstances, instead of a veil of ignorance, the fortunate acquire a veil of complacency. Indeed, the situation gives politicians an opportunity to score points by turning the more fortunate against the hapless – a tactic we have recently seen on both sides of the Atlantic. Just as a fresh tranche of the Coalition's deep social security cuts was starting to bite in April 2013, George Osborne leapt on the case of Mick Philpott, a jobless man who had just been convicted of killing six of his children in a house fire.

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Seeking election on a platform that sought to knock down such shared economic shelters as remain in America – by simultaneously swinging an axe at death duties for the rich and expenditure programmes for the poor18 – Romney was caught unawares by a secret recording of a private fundraising dinner, at which he explained that he was happy to write off very nearly half of the electorate: There are 47 percent … who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it … Our message of low taxes doesn't connect … so my job is … not to worry about those people.19 Right-wing politicians, then, have sensed that the same gale of hard times, which as we have already seen has exerted a divisive social effect, has also polarised opinion; they discern electoral possibilities in rallying the haves against the have-nots. But we should recall that Romney lost. Perhaps, the hopeful progressive will suggest, his calculation was simply awry? At a time when the economy is beset with so much anxiety, shouldn't the ranks of the scared be sufficiently swollen for the logic of the veil of ignorance to be restored? Certainly, that has sometimes happened in hard times past – and in the much more recent past than the 1930s. When recession hit the US at the start of the 1980s, the immediate impulse was, on balance, for collectivism in social policy. That is not how we remember things, partly because after the inflationary 1970s came a period of conservative ascendency in macroeconomics – high interest rates and consequent unemployment came to be regarded as an acceptable levy to pay for price stability, a big break from the post-war years.

Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models
by Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann
Published 17 Jun 2019

Or, when considering policies regarding refugees, you must consider the possibility that you could have been one of those seeking refuge. The veil of ignorance encourages you to empathize with people across a variety of circumstances, so that you can make better moral judgments. Suppose that, like many companies in recent years, you are considering ending a policy that has allowed your employees to work remotely because you believe that your teams perform better face-to-face. As a manager, it may be easy to imagine changing the policy from your perspective, especially if you personally do not highly value remote working. The veil of ignorance, though, pushes you to imagine the change from the original position, where you could be any employee.

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For example, if someone runs a red light, you often assume that person is inherently reckless; you do not consider that she might be rushing to the hospital for an emergency. On the other hand, you will immediately rationalize your own actions when you drive like a maniac (“I’m in a hurry”). Another tactical model to help you have greater empathy is the veil of ignorance, put forth by philosopher John Rawls. It holds that when thinking about how society should be organized, we should do so by imagining ourselves ignorant of our particular place in the world, as if there were a veil preventing us from knowing who we are. Rawls refers to this as the “original position.”

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The veil of ignorance, though, pushes you to imagine the change from the original position, where you could be any employee. What if you were an employee caring for an elderly family member? What if you were a single parent? You may find that the new policy is warranted even after considering its repercussions holistically, but putting on the veil of ignorance helps you appreciate the challenges this might pose for your staff and might even help you come up with creative alternatives. Speaking of privilege, we (the authors) often say we are lucky to have won the birth lottery. Not only were we not born into slavery, but we were also not born into almost any disadvantaged group.

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions
by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths
Published 4 Apr 2016

And do the two really have to be mutually exclusive? Rawls offered a way of approaching this set of questions that he called the “veil of ignorance.” Imagine, he said, that you were about to be born, but didn’t know as whom: male or female, rich or poor, urban or rural, sick or healthy. And before learning your status, you had to choose what kind of society you’d live in. What would you want? By evaluating various social arrangements from behind the veil of ignorance, argued Rawls, we’d more readily come to a consensus about what an ideal one would look like. What Rawls’s thought experiment does not take into account, however, is the computational cost of making sense of a society from behind such a veil.

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The study of derandomization shows that it’s possible to turn efficient randomized algorithms into efficient deterministic algorithms—provided you can find a function that is sufficiently complex that its output looks random but sufficiently simple that it can be computed efficiently. For (detailed) details, see Impagliazzo and Wigderson, “P = BPP if E Requires Exponential Circuits,” and Impagliazzo and Wigderson, “Randomness vs. Time.” he called the “veil of ignorance”: The veil of ignorance is introduced in Rawls, A Theory of Justice. Rawls’s philosophical critics: Most prominent among Rawls’s critics was economist John Harsanyi; see, e.g., Harsanyi, “Can the Maximin Principle Serve as a Basis for Morality? A Critique of John Rawls’s Theory.” the civilization of Omelas: Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.”

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.… Okay, so would the proposed insurance revision be “good” or “bad” for the nation? We can barely hope to evaluate a single injured shin this way, let alone the lives of hundreds of millions. Rawls’s philosophical critics have argued at length about how exactly we are supposed to leverage the information obtained from the veil of ignorance. Should we be trying, for instance, to maximize mean happiness, median happiness, total happiness, or something else? Each of these approaches, famously, leaves itself open to pernicious dystopias—such as the civilization of Omelas imagined by writer Ursula K. Le Guin, in which prosperity and harmony abound but a single child is forced to live in abject misery.

Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
by Nick Bostrom
Published 3 Jun 2014

One could imagine a slightly more complicated oracle or genie that accepts questions or commands only if they are issued by a designated authority, though this would still leave open the possibility of that authority becoming corrupted or being blackmailed by a third party. 10. John Rawls, a leading political philosopher of the twentieth century, famously employed the expository device of a veil of ignorance as a way of characterizing the kinds of preference that should be taken into account in the formulation of a social contract. Rawls suggested that we should imagine we were choosing a social contract from behind a veil of ignorance that prevents us from knowing which person we will be and which social role we will occupy, the idea being that in such a situation we would have to think about which society would be generally fairest and most desirable without regard to our egoistic interests and self-serving biases that might otherwise make us prefer a social order in which we ourselves enjoy unjust privileges.

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What is more, if a sovereign’s motivation is defined using “indirect normativity” (a concept to be described in Chapter 13) then it could be used to achieve some abstractly defined outcome, such as “whatever is maximally fair and morally right”—without anybody knowing in advance what exactly this will entail. This would create a situation analogous to a Rawlsian “veil of ignorance.”10 Such a setup might facilitate the attainment of consensus, help prevent conflict, and promote a more equitable outcome. Another point, which counts against some types of oracles and genies, is that there are risks involved in designing a superintelligence to have a final goal that does not fully match the outcome that we ultimately seek to attain.

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Table 11 Features of different system castes Oracle A question-answering system • Boxing methods fully applicable Variations: Domain-limited oracles (e.g. mathematics); output-restricted oracles (e.g. only yes/no/undecided answers, or probabilities); oracles that refuse to answer questions if they predict the consequences of answering would meet pre-specified “disaster criteria”; multiple oracles for peer review • Domesticity fully applicable • Reduced need for AI to understand human intentions and interests (compared to genies and sovereigns) • Use of yes/no questions can obviate need for a metric of the “usefulness” or “informativeness” of answers • Source of great power (might give operator a decisive strategic advantage) • Limited protection against foolish use by operator • Untrustworthy oracles could be used to provide answers that are hard to find but easy to verify • Weak verification of answers may be possible through the use of multiple oracles Genie A command-executing system • Boxing methods partially applicable (for spatially limited genies) Variations: Genies using different “extrapolation distances” or degrees of following the spirit rather than letter of the command; domain-limited genies; genies-with-preview; genies that refuse to obey commands if they predict the consequences of obeying would meet pre-specified “disaster criteria” • Domesticity partially applicable • Genie could offer a preview of salient aspects of expected outcomes • Genie could implement change in stages, with opportunity for review at each stage • Source of great power (might give operator a decisive strategic advantage) • Limited protection against foolish use by operator • Greater need for AI to understand human interests and intentions (compared to oracles) Sovereign A system designed for open-ended autonomous operation • Boxing methods inapplicable • Most other capability control methods also inapplicable (except, possibly, social integration or anthropic capture) Variations: Many possible motivation systems; possibility of using preview and “sponsor ratification” (to be discussed in Chapter 13) • Domesticity mostly inapplicable • Great need for AI to understand true human interests and intentions • Necessity of getting it right on the first try (though, to a possibly lesser extent, this is true for all castes) • Potentially a source of great power for sponsor, including decisive strategic advantage • Once activated, not vulnerable to hijacking by operator, and might be designed with some protection against foolish use • Can be used to implement “veil of ignorance” outcomes (cf. Chapter 13) Tool A system not designed to exhibit goal-directed behavior • Boxing methods may be applicable, depending on the implementation • Powerful search processes would likely be involved in the development and operation of a machine superintelligence • Powerful search to find a solution meeting some formal criterion can produce solutions that meet the criterion in an unintended and dangerous way • Powerful search might involve secondary, internal search and planning processes that might find dangerous ways of executing the primary search process * * * Further research would be needed to determine which type of system would be safest.

Culture and Prosperity: The Truth About Markets - Why Some Nations Are Rich but Most Remain Poor
by John Kay
Published 24 May 2004

The first of the fundamental theorems of welfare economics-every competitive equilibrium is Pareto efficient-could have been written for Nozick. The economic policy suggested is the creation of a framework that will permit competitive equilibrium to be achieved. No more, no less. Rawls invites us to stand behind a "veil of ignorance" and order states of the world without knowing our role in them. The world economic system encompasses the different economic lives of Heidi and Ivan, Ravi and Sicelo, but we are not aware which of these people we ourselves will be. Rawls invokes what he calls the maximin principle-since we fear we may be Sicelo, we favor policies that will make Sicelo as well-off as possible.

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Rawls invokes what he calls the maximin principle-since we fear we may be Sicelo, we favor policies that will make Sicelo as well-off as possible. The Rawlsian approach not only justifies substantial redistribution, but requires it. If the first fundamental theorem of welfare economics was written for Nozick, the second was written for Rawls. We stand behind the veil of ignorance, in search of a just mechanism for allocating scarce resources between competing ends. We are bound to choose a Pareto efficient outcome. The choice between Pareto efficient outcomes will be determined by the maximin principle. The second fundamental theorem of welfare economics-any Pareto efficient outcome can be achieved by an appropriate allocation of resources-tells us that all we need do is get the initial distribution right.

…

The second fundamental theorem of welfare economics-any Pareto efficient outcome can be achieved by an appropriate allocation of resources-tells us that all we need do is get the initial distribution right. Competitive equilibrium will take care of the rest. A free market economy, with income redistribution, meets the requirements of Rawls's Theory of]ustice. Fukuyama, searching for the end of history, meets Rawls Culture and Prosperity { 203} emerging from behind the veil of ignorance. We find them both in the United States at the turn of the millennium. Nozick and the first fundamental theorem argue for the justice and efficiency of the American business model. A competitive market equilibrium is just simply by virtue of being a competitive market equilibrium. And Rawls and the second fundamental theorem argue for a more moderate version of political economy-redistributive market liberalism-to which I will return in chapter 28.

Financing Basic Income: Addressing the Cost Objection
by Richard Pereira
Published 5 Jul 2017

Therefore there is strong support for the concept, however there is a belief about the public cost of basic income that may not be supported by evidence and which may stem from popular perceptions or current political discourse. Interestingly, Canadians supported higher levels of basic income than lower levels, that is, $10,000 per adult (57% support), $20,000 (65% support) and a $30,000 annual basic income received 67% support. 6 Appendix 2 Marginal Personal Income Tax Rates: American Precedents, Veils of Ignorance The UBI cost objection does not deal sufficiently with tax leakage (tax havens, transfer pricing, etc.) in the existing system at prevailing income tax rates, as discussed earlier in this book. The cost objection argument states that income tax increases on labour are required to fund basic income, and that they would be too onerous and politically unacceptable.

…

People did tolerate much higher marginal income tax rates and a much more progressive tax rate structure than the cost objectors claim is required in their analysis. Such high marginal tax rates were synonymous with a prosperous economy. And this among possibly the most tax-averse public in the world. Employing John Rawls’ concept of a “veil of ignorance” Dan Ariely (Professor of Psychology and Behavioural Economics, Duke University) and Mike Norton surveyed Americans in a unique study and found an overwhelming preference among both Democrat and Republican supporters for the wealth distribution profile in Sweden (93.5% of Democrats and 90.2% of Republicans) with no appreciable difference based on gender and income level of those surveyed.

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters
Published 15 Sep 2014

They both believed that people could get along with each other peacefully, so unlike the ancients, they were optimistic. But unlike Spencer or Marx, Rawls and Nozick were indefinite optimists: they didn’t have any specific vision of the future. Their indefiniteness took different forms. Rawls begins A Theory of Justice with the famous “veil of ignorance”: fair political reasoning is supposed to be impossible for anyone with knowledge of the world as it concretely exists. Instead of trying to change our actual world of unique people and real technologies, Rawls fantasized about an “inherently stable” society with lots of fairness but little dynamism.

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Suez Canal tablet computing technological advance technology, prf.1, 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 American fear of complementarity and globalization and proprietary technology companies terrorism Tesla Motors, 10.1, 13.1, 13.2 Thailand Theory of Justice, A (Rawls) Timberlake, Justin Time magazine Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolstoy, Leo Tom Sawyer (char.) Toyota Tumblr 27 Club Twitter, 5.1, 6.1 Uber Unabomber VCs, rules of “veil of ignorance” venture capital power law in venture fund, J-curve of successful, 7.1 vertical progress viral marketing Virgin Atlantic Airways Virgin Group Virgin Records Wagner Wall Street Journal Warby Parker Watson web browsers Western Union White, Phil Wiles, Andrew Wilson, Andrew Winehouse, Amy World Wide Web Xanadu X.com Yahoo!

Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion
by Paul Bloom

We see this sort of advice spelled out by Bertrand Russell, who says that when we read the newspaper, we ought to substitute the names of countries, including our own, to get a more fair sense of what’s going on. Take “Israel” and replace it with “Bolivia,” replace “United States” with “Argentina,” and so on. (Perhaps even better would be to use arbitrary symbols: X, Y, and Z.) This is an excellent way to remove bias. As Scarry puts it, “The veil of ignorance fosters equality not by giving the millions of other people an imaginative weight equal to one’s own—a staggering mental labor—but by the much more efficient strategy of simply erasing for the moment one’s own dense array of attributes.” Scarry’s idea, then, is to depersonalize things, to bring everyone down rather than bringing everyone up.

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Nussbaum and Joshua Cohen (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 102. 107 philosophers such as Martha Nussbaum Martha C. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of the Emotions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003). George Eliot argued Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Penguin Books, 2011), 589. 109 “The veil of ignorance” Scarry, “The Difficulty”, 106. “You just have to want” Louis C.K., cited by Bekka Williams, “Just Want a Shitty Body,” in Louis C.K. and Philosophy, ed. Mark Ralkowski (Chicago, IL: Open Court). 110 Simon Baron-Cohen presents Simon Baron-Cohen, “Forum: Against Empathy,” Boston Review, August 2014. 112 “the dismal science” Tim Harcourt, “No Longer a Dismal Science,” The Spectator, March 9, 2013, http://www.spectator.co.uk/2013/03/no-longer-a-dismal-science.

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See Smith, Adam therapists, 144–45, 147–49 Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman), 214 Thomas, Clarence, 125 threshold effect, 231 torture, 29, 30, 38, 123, 177, 188 transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), 61 “transformative experiences,” 147–48 Treesh, Frederick, 181 tribalism, 7–8, 69, 94–95, 160, 202–3 trigger warnings, 23–25, 27 Trump, Donald, 192–93 Tumber, Catherine, 104–6 Tumor Man, 218–19, 220 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe), 48–49, 92 unconscious, the, 5, 216 understanding, 70–73, 131, 157–58 universities, trigger warnings, 23–25, 27 unmitigated communion, 134–37, 140 Updike, John, 17 utilitarianism, 97, 159, 160–62 vasopressin, 195 veil of ignorance, 109 violence and cruelty, 177–212 aggression and empathy, 83–84, 193–95 bad acts and empathy, 187–95 bad people and lack of empathy, 195–201 at Dachau, 177–78 dehumanization, 201–8 evolutionary theories of, 179 fictional portrayals of, 180–81 morality inciting, 184–87 moralization gap, 181–84 myth of pure evil, 181, 184–85 single-factor theories of, 178–79 Virak, Ou, 100 visual illusions, 228 Wage, Matt, 104–6 “warm glow” givers, 99 welfare, 235–36 Wells, H.

The Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Life
by Steven E. Landsburg
Published 1 May 2012

There is a second approach to the problem, first introduced by the economist John Harsanyi but associated primarily with the name of the philosopher John Rawls, who made it the basis for his monumental work on the theory of justice. In Rawls's or Harsanyi's vision, we must imagine ourselves behind a veil of ignorance where even our own identities are concealed from us. Behind the veil, we know that we are destined to someone's life, but all earthly lives are equally probable. According to Rawls, the just society is the one we would choose to be born into if forced to choose from behind the veil. Rawlsians argue that if we were stripped of all knowledge of individual circumstances, we would all agree on how the world should be.

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Ill, viii Breast implants, 171-173 Breslow, Ronald, 120-122 Brinker, Bob, 194 Brinkley, David, 141-142 Buonomo, Bonnie, ix Bush, George H.W., 34, 43, 51, 52, 148, 181, 227-228 Butchers, in Chicago, 173 Buying jobs, 23-24 Capital punishment, 7-8 Cartels, theory of, 170-173 Celebrity endorsements, 11, 13-15 Civil Rights legislation, 143 Clean Air Act, 34, 35 Clinton, William J., 43 Coase, Ronald, 85, 234 Coase Theorem, 85-90 Congressional pay raises, 66-67 Conrad, Joseph, 29, 234 Consequentialist philosophy, 55 Conservation laws, 120-122 Consumer price index, 128-129 Consumers' surplus, 61 and drug use, 99-100 237 238 INDEX Cost minimization, by competitive market, 77-80, 198 Cost-benefit analysis, 95-105 of criminal law, 96-97 of drug use, 95-101 of interest rates, 103, 124 of taxes, 95-96 of theft, 97-98 Cost-benefit criterion, defenses . of, 104-105 Coupons, discount, 161-162, 165 Cries and Whispers, 29 Criminal law, 149-151, 152-153 cost-benefit analysis of, 96-97 Crocker, Keith, 233 Dairy Queen, 22 "David Brinkley Show," 141-142 Death penalty, 7-8 Debreu, Gerard, 76 Defense preparedness, 138-139 Democracy, problems with, 53 Dennis, Richard J., 95-103 Descartes, Rene*, 204 Disappointment, theory of, 175-176 Discount coupons, at supermarkets, 161-162,165 Disneyland, 162 Diversification, 191 Dollar-cost averaging, 192-194 Donaldson, Sam, 141 Draft, military, 65-66 Dutch auction, 176-178 Earthquake insurance, 11 Eastwood, Clint, 33 Econometrics, 7-8, 212-213 Economics of toothbrushing, 9 Eddington, Sir Arthur, 203 Education price of, 162, 170 value of, 75 Efficiency criterion for judging personal conduct, 71-72 for judging public policy, 60-72 Efficient markets hypothesis, 195 Ehrlich, Isaac, 7, 8, 233 Einstein, Albert, 203 Endangered species, 81, 226 English auction, 176-178 Ex post facto prosecution, 151-152 Executive compensation, 26-28 Fables, 34-36, 37-39 Fairness, 49 Family leave legislation, 125 Feinstone, Lauren J., viii, 196 Fixed resources, 33-40 Frequent flyer programs, 162 Friedman, David, 19, 60, 70, 197, 199, 233, 234 Friedman, Milton, 183, 219, 235 Fundamental Theorems of Welfare Economics 77, 80 Gambling, 18 Gasoline prices, 3, 123-124 leaded vs. unleaded, 162-163, 165-166 Generational transfers, 134-135 Gifts, 18-19 Glassman, James K., 125 Glum Losers auction, 176 Goliath myth, 112 Goodfriend, Marvin, viii, 234 Gore, Albert, 234 Government debt, 106-115 as a burden, 114-115 as a form of lending, 113-114 interest on, 110 Greene, Bob, 32 Gross national product (GNP), 135-136 Guns, 143 Index 239 Hansen, Bruce, viii, 234 Harsanyi, John, 57, 58 Health care prices, 162, 164-165 Health care programs, 50-51 Herman, Rebecca, 230 Hirshleifer, Jack, 235 Honesty, as best policy, 180 Hoover, Herbert, 50 Hotel room prices, 17-18, 167 Housing prices, and the indifference principle 31, 34-35 Illiteracy, 141-142 Income disparities, 132-134 Inflation, 67-68 and government debt, 110-111 Information, asymmetric, 21-23 Innovations, 143-144 Insurance employer-provided, 23 via scattering, 16-17 sorting customers, 20-22 and the veil of ignorance, 57 Interest on national debt, 126 Interest rates cost-benefit analysis of, 103, 124 desirability of lowering, 51 determination of, 181-187 and money supply, 182-183 as price of current consumption, 182 real vs. nominal, 181-182 Investment strategy, under random walk, 189-191 Invisible Hand, 73-77 Jacoby, Hanan, viii, 234 Jefferson, Thomas, 50, 223 Jensen, Michael, 26 Jewish Community Center, 223 Kahn, James A., viii, 146,234,235 Kennedy, John F., 18 Keynes, John Maynard, 68, 183 Kotlikoff, Laurence, 111 Landers, Ann, 123 Leaf blowers, 81-82 Learner, Edward, 8, 233 Leone, Richard C, 122-123 Locay, Luis, 166 Logic of efficiency, 60-72, 102 Logic puzzles, 28 Lott, John, 164 Lotteries, 11 Lucas, Robert E., Jr., 214, 215, 219, 235 Lunches, free, 40,121 Majoritarianism, 52 Marriage market, 168-170 "Married With Children," 142 McAfee, R.

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Bridgman, 83-85 Styrofoam, 144-145 Supermarkets, discount coupons, 161-162,165 Surrogate motherhood, 125 Swift, Jonathan, 153 T-shirts, 13, 17 Taos Pueblo, New Mexico, 166 Tariffs, 62 Taxes, 60-62 and cost-benefit analysis, 95-96 ex post facto, 151-152 who should pay, 142-143 Taxi prices, 166 Theft, cost-benefit analysis of, 97-98 Thomson, William, 58 Tipping, in restaurants, 19 Tipping busboys, 32-33 Tivoli Coffee Shop, ix Trash disposal, 144-145 Truman, Harry, 187 Unemployment statistics, 129-131 Unsafe at Any Speed, 3 Veil of ignorance, 57-58 Volunteer army, 65-66 Voting as a riddle, 11, 18 Voting procedures, 52-54 Weil, Andre', 18 Wheat prices, 164 Whiteman, Charles, 235 Will, George F., 126, 141 Winner's curse, 175, 179-180 Wonks, 44 Yakoboski, Paul, 233 Yeats, William Butler, 11 

Power, for All: How It Really Works and Why It's Everyone's Business
by Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro
Published 30 Aug 2021

You are behind what is called a “veil of ignorance.” You could be a farmer, a physician, or unemployed. Young or old, rich or poor, male, female, or nonbinary, highly educated or not, disabled or not. Would you design a democracy or an autocracy? Provide universal access to health care or limit such access to those who can afford to pay? Guarantee a quality education for every child or exclude many? This thought experiment, posed by the political philosopher John Rawls, raises critical questions about the just distribution of power. Through the veil of ignorance, the experiment forces us to consider everyone’s well-being and access to opportunities without being biased by our own social status—which is why Rawls believed it would lead to fairer societies.1 Philosophers have been debating what constitutes a just distribution of power for millennia,2 and many people are tempted to think that the philosopher’s study is precisely where the topic belongs.

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Senate Judiciary Committee, 157 Vaillant, George, 49 valued resources, 41–64 achievement, 50–51, 58, 194 affiliation, 48–50, 58, 194, 220–21n36 as fulfilling basic human needs, 57 autonomy, 52–54, 58, 73, 161, 194 material possessions, 45–47, 58 morality, 54–57, 58, 164, 192, 194 needs assessment, 61–63 observation of, 58–61, 194 social status, 46–48, 58, 194, 220n32 See also safety, self-esteem veil of ignorance, 193 Versace, Donatella, 65–66, 68, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89 Versace, Gianni, 65, 66, 85 Vietnam War, 14, 15, 16 virtue, 54–57 Voting Rights Act, 14 vTaiwan, 191 Wagner, Richard, x Weber, Max, 261n1 Weinstein, Harvey, 137 West, Cornel, 185 White, Micah, 118–19 Whittaker, Meredith, 154–55, 157 William, Prince (Duke of Cambridge), 30 Wilson, Edward O., 55, 56 withdrawal strategy, 8, 9, 12–13 Women & Power (Beard), 101 women’s rights, 86, 125 worker-owner cooperatives, 180–81 workers’ rights, 11–12, 110–12, 157–58, 160, 177–82, 187–88 World Economic Forum, 29 World War II, 20, 56–57, 109, 114 World Wide Web, 147–48 Wrong, Dennis H., 201, 261n7, 261n15 Wyche, Vanessa E., 172 #YoTambien, 137 Yourcenar, Marguerite, 41 Yousafzai, Malala, 56 YouTube, 152, 153 Zhang, Evelyn, 86 Zuboff, Shoshana, 152 Simon & Schuster 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 www.SimonandSchuster.com Copyright © 2021 by Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro Charts on pages 71 & 72 republished with permission of John Wiley & Sons, from “Social Networks and the Liability of Newness for Managers” in Trends in Organizational Behavior, David Krackhardt, 1996; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.

Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life
by Daniel C. Dennett
Published 15 Jan 1995

The key innovation in Rawls' scenario, designed to ensure that undue selfishness among the participants in this exercise in reflection cancels itself out, is what he calls the "veil of ignorance." Everyone gets to vote on a favored design of society, but when you decide which society you would be happy to live in and give your allegiance to, you vote without knowing what your particular role or niche in it will be. You may be a senator or a surgeon or a street-sweeper or a soldier; you don't get to find out until after you have voted. Choosing from behind the veil of ignorance ensures that people will give due consideration to the likely effects, the costs and benefits, for all the citizenry, including those worst off.

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(Cancer can be seen as a selfish — and vehicle-destructive — rebellion made possible by a revision that does permit differential reproduction.) The philosopher and logician Brian Skyrms has recently pointed out (1993, 1994a, 1994b) that the precondition for normal cooperation in the strongly shared fate of somatic-line cells is analogous to the cooperation Bawls tried to engineer behind the veil of ignorance. He calls this, aptly, the "Darwinian Veil of Ignorance." Your sex cells (sperm or ova) are formed by a process unlike that of normal cell division or mitosis. Your sex cells are formed by a different process, called meiosis, which randomly constructs half a genome-candidate (to join forces with a half from your mate) by Choosing first a bit from "column A" (the genes you got from your mother) and then a bit from "column B" (the genes you got from your father) until a full complement of genes — but just one copy of each — is constructed and installed in a sex cell, ready to try its fate in the great mating lottery.

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The question of whether they are going to have germ-line progeny that might have a flood of descendants flowing on into the future or be relegated to the sterile backwaters of somatic-line slavery for the good of the body politic or corporation (think of the etymology) is unknown and unknowable, so there is nothing to be gained by selfish competition among their "fellow" genes. That, at any rate, is the usual arrangement. There are special occasions, however, on which the Darwinian Veil of Ignorance is briefly lifted. We have already noted them; they are the cases of "meiotic drive" or "genomic imprinting" (Haig and Grafen 1991, Haig 1992) we considered in chapter {460} 9, in which circumstances do permit a "selfish" competition between genes to arise — and arise it does, leading to escalating arms races.

Living With the Himalayan Masters
by Swami Rama
Published 1 Jan 1978

This awareness implies a tranquil integration of the material and the spiritual. According to Aurobindo, “The supra-physical can only be really mastered in its fullness when we keep our feet firmly on the physical.” This awareness is developed through two methods. The first is the integration of meditation with action. Through meditation one tears the veil of ignorance; he thus realizes his true self, which is the very self of all. Through selfless and loving actions one relates creatively with others. The second method of awareness of the Divine lies in the knowledge of the ascending and descending forces of consciousness. These powerful movements gradually expand the spiritual outlook and help one to rise to higher levels of consciousness.

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In one direction it is called music, in another dance, in a third painting, and in a fourth poetry. There is one more form of this sound, which is called soundless sound. Insiders alone become aware of that sound which is called anahata nada (inner sound). This flows through the vocal cords and is called music. Kabir says, “O sadhu, lift the veil of ignorance and you’ll be one with the Beloved. Light the lamp of love in the inner chamber of your being and you will meet the Beloved. There you hear the finest of all music—anahata nada.” In the path of devotion yogis learn to hear this soundless sound, the voice of the silence, the perennial music going on in every human heart.

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But the lifestyle and atmosphere in which the sages live, though non-materialistic, is more realistic as far as the object of life is concerned. The world of means also has some value in life, but without awareness of the absolute Reality everything is in vain. Ordinary men regard certain aspects of life as mysterious or mystical, but such mysteries are easily solved when the veil of ignorance is removed. The technique of dying is not known to the modern scientists, but in yoga science such techniques are described and imparted to those who are prepared to practice them. The mystery of death and birth are revealed to a fortunate few. The known part of life is a line which is stretched between these two points, birth and death.

Willful: How We Choose What We Do
by Richard Robb
Published 12 Nov 2019

But if the fat man is a shot putter about to compete in the Olympics, don’t push, since the cost of breaking his arm likely exceeds the sum cost of breaking the arms of five random people. In the actual trolley problem, though, he can’t be compensated for blocking the trolley since he’ll be dead. I don’t think we can resort to a “veil of ignorance” solution, either. If I didn’t know ex ante whether I’d be the fat man or one of the five people on the tracks and I had a one-sixth chance of each, of course I would choose “push.” But that doesn’t help with the trolley problem. It is already resolved who will be the fat man and that’s the individual you’d have to kill.

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See also purposeful choice rationalization, 15, 43–44, 55, 159–162, 178, 194–195 readiness potential, 161 real estate, 80 redistribution, 109 reference points, 168 regret, 127–128, 129 religious faith, 49–50, 116 remorse, 128–129 repeat dealing, 105 repentance, 128 reputation, 105–106, 134, 183 retirement, 19, 41, 185, 206 Ricardo, David: personal investments, 71, 205 theory of comparative advantage, 185 risk: above-market returns linked to, 70 aversion to, 17, 51, 96, 168, 199 diversification and, 64 in efficient market hypothesis, 69, 70 in human-life valuation, 139 low asset prices linked to, 96 modeling of, 69, 76 rivalry, 201 Rockefeller, John D., 211–212n12 Rotten Kid Theorem, 108–110, 125 Russell, Bertrand, 62 salience, 29 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 128–129 satisficing, 42–43 Saul of Tarsus, 63 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 5, 161, 209n5 Schwartz, Barry, 172 scientific knowledge, 61 scientific method, 49–50, 53 search costs, 9 Searle, John, 141–142 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 16 selfish altruism, 104, 105–106, 109, 123, 125, 135 Seligman, Martin, 202 Sen, Amartya, 169 Shafir, Eldar, 174 Shane (film), 169 Sharpe, William, 65 short-term trading, 78 Siddhartha Gautama, 63 Simon, Herbert, 42 Singer, Peter, 110 Smith, Adam, 73, 82, 112, 171 Smith, Al, 211–212n12 Smith, Barbara Herrnstein, 47 social cost, 28–29, 133 social norms, 104, 106–108, 123 social relations, 28 rational choice explanations of, 104 Sodom and Gomorrah, 117–118 “soft selling,” 170 sovereign wealth funds, 74 speed limits, 138–140 spite, 126–127 spontaneity, 19–20, 202 altruistic, 28–29, 114–115, 119, 203 in spite, 127 stable preferences, 33, 115, 147, 207, 208 status symbols, 31 staying in the game, 179–181 stock-picking, 64–66 Strangers Drowning (MacFarquhar), 214n6 strategic competition, 125 structured credit, 15, 93 Strulovici, Bruno H., 217n1 Sturges, Preston, 7 subprime mortgages, 96–97 substitution effect, 187 survivor bias, 180 Taylor, Michael, 133 terrorism, 126 Thaler, Richard, 33–34 Thanet Offshore Wind, 83–90 Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Nietzsche), 43 tit-for-tat, in repeated games, 105 transaction costs, 64, 70, 78 transitivity of preferences, 158–159 Treatise of Human Nature (Hume), 209n5 “tricky profit,” 18–21 trolley problem, 133, 135–137 tulipmania, 212n1 Tversky, Amos, 168, 174 Twain, Mark, 60 ultimatum game, 107–108, 207 uncertainty, about future, 25, 153, 181–185 unique events, 70–71, 72–73, 74, 94 United Kingdom, 181 Energy Ministry of, 88 unemployment, 186 unemployment benefits, 188 university endowments, 74 University of Chicago, 8–9 unobserved care, 108, 112–113, 124, 125–126 utilitarianism, 135–136, 197–198 utility, 5–6, 18, 153–154, 196 vaccination, 58–59 values, 190–191 Van Gogh, Vincent, 79 Veblen, Thorstein, 167 veil of ignorance, 136 vengeance, 125, 126 venture capital, 27, 91–92, 100 Vestas Wind Systems, 84–88 video games, 180 Viner, Jacob, 219n2 Vogt, John, 117 wages, 154, 186, 187–188 waiting in line, 179 walk-a-thons, 178 “warm glow effect,” 114 wealth effect, 187 Wellington (Arthur Wellesley), Duke of, 71 Whitman, Walt, 50 The Will to Power (Nietzsche), 209n5 Williams, Bernard, 7 wind energy, 82–90 work-sports, 191–192 The World as Will and Idea (Schopenhauer), 209n5 Yavapai Indians, 133 Zarnowski, Frank, 191 Zeckhauser, Richard, 70–72 zero risk bias, 24

Why Liberalism Failed
by Patrick J. Deneen
Published 9 Jan 2018

Even as liberalism’s architects were forthright about their ambition to displace the old aristocracy, they were not silent about their hopes of creating a new aristocracy. Widespread abhorrence of the old aristocracy blinded many who acquiesced in liberalism’s ambitions, even as it positively appealed to those who believed they would join the new aristocracy. Liberalism begins as a version of the Rawlsian Original Position, offering a veil of ignorance beyond which it is promised that there will be certain winners and losers. Rather than encouraging the embrace of relative economic and social equality, as Rawls supposed, this scenario was embraced by those of liberal dispositions precisely because they anticipated being its winners. Those inclined to deracination, rootlessness, materialism, risk taking, dislocating social change, and inequality in effect assured their own success, even as they appealed to the system’s likely losers by emphasizing the injustice of aristocratic orders.

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P., (i)n3 social contract, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) social media, (i), (ii) Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, (i) state of nature, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii) STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Stoicism, (i) subsistence economy, (i) suburbia, (i) Summa Theologiae (Aquinas), (i) surveillance, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Technological Society, The (Ellul), (i) technology, (i), (ii), (iii) Technopoly (Postman), (i) Thomas, Richard, (i) Tocqueville, Alexis de, (i), (ii), (iii); American civic engagement viewed by, (i), (ii); individualism and statism linked by, (i), (ii); presentism viewed by, (i); types of liberty distinguished by, (i) totalitarianism, (i) transhumanism, (i) Trump, Donald J., (i), (ii), (iii) Tuchman, Barbara, (i) Turkle, Sherry, (i) Turner, Frederick Jackson, (i) universities, (i), (ii) University of Texas, (i), (ii) Uses of the University, The (Kerr), (i) utilitarianism, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Vargas Llosa, Mario, (i) veil of ignorance, (i) Vico, Giambattista, (i) virtue, (i), (ii); self-interest substituting for, (i); as set of limits, (i) voluntarism, (i) Vonnegut, Kurt, (i) Walker, Scott, (i) Weimar Republic, (i) Whiggism, (i) Wilson, Woodrow, (i) Winthrop, John, (i)n10 women’s movement, (i) Zakaria, Fareed, (i)

Head, Hand, Heart: Why Intelligence Is Over-Rewarded, Manual Workers Matter, and Caregivers Deserve More Respect
by David Goodhart
Published 7 Sep 2020

And, in any case, even a relatively open cognitive meritocracy still leaves a significant minority, if not a majority, in knowledge-based societies feeling excluded or with noncognitive aptitudes that do not command sufficient respect and reward. What is to be done? One way of considering the issue is through listening in to a cross-generational debate within the Young family. The Cognitive Veil of Ignorance Toby Young, the British journalist and educationalist quoted earlier, has recently taken an intense interest in these debates on a different side to his father, the late socialist intellectual Michael Young, author of both the radical 1945 Labour Party manifesto and then twelve years later the anti-meritocracy satire The Rise of the Meritocracy.

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And that means there is no comparative measure, no single scale of human worth… Indeed, because each of us faces a distinct challenge, what matters in the end is not how we rank against others at all. We do not need to find something we are best at; what is important is simply that we do our best.”39 The egalitarian political philosopher John Rawls invented the idea of the veil of ignorance, asking people to imagine the social arrangements they would be most likely to favor if, behind the veil, they did not know what their position or status in society was going to be. This idea has often been applied to income distribution, class, race, and gender. But it should apply to cognitive ability too.

…

Head (cognitive) work, 218–25 “ecumenical niceness” (Murray), 180, 279–80 nature of, 21 “playing God,” 280, 280n political cognitive domination and, 180–86 of postindustrial societies, 36 value divide and, 32, 36, 279–84 Vance, J. D., Hillbilly Elegy, 190 Veblen, Thorstein, 205 veil of ignorance (Rawls), 87 Victoria, Queen of United Kingdom, 41 Vignoles, Anna, 263, 269 vocational training: academic training combined with, 99 college/university education vs., 97–98, 107 in France, 117–18 further education (FE) colleges (UK), 105–6, 108–10, 115 in Germany, 24, 35, 47, 117–19 polytechnics/“new universities” (UK), 98, 100–102, 105–8, 115, 119, 263 in the UK, 15, 40, 42, 46–47, 50, 97–98, 100–102, 105–8, 198, 265 in the US, 49, 50, 114, 115 see also apprenticeships Volkswagen Group, 192 volunteer work, 129, 239, 246, 247, 294 Vonnegut, Kurt, Bluebeard, 142 Wages for Housework movement, 229 Wales, Robin, 283–84 Walmart, x Warren, Elizabeth, 14 Watt, James, 42 WebMD network, 261 Wechsler, David, 65 Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, 65 Wessely, Simon, 221–22 WhatsApp, xiii, 290 Wille, Anchrit, Diploma Democracy (with Bovens), 95, 155–58, 169, 177–78 Willetts, David, 98, 113 The Pinch, 79–80 Williams, Joan C., White Working Class, 18 Williams, Joanna, 227–28, 229, 296 Willis Commission, 147–48 Willmott, Peter, Family and Kinship in East London (with M.

A Pelican Introduction: Basic Income
by Guy Standing
Published 3 May 2017

Following a long debate between Rawls and his critic John Harsanyi, who felt that most people would opt for a utilitarian approach that would maximize average income, psychologists came up with an ingenious and since much-replicated way of asking people directly, in what has been dubbed ‘experimental ethics’. In an important series of experiments conducted initially in Canada, Poland and the US, groups of people with different backgrounds and values were asked to prioritize one principle of income distribution from four possible rules, behind a ‘veil of ignorance’ on where they themselves would be in the spectrum of income distribution.13 The rules were: Maximizing the floor income, expressed as ‘The most just distribution of income is that which maximizes the floor or lowest income in society.’ Maximizing the average income. Maximizing the average with a floor constraint.

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While such exercises are not infallible, they do suggest that this is a promising route to take. Tax Justice A classic liberal position is that the structure of taxation and benefits in society should be ‘fair’. People disagree on what that means in practice. But most would accept that, behind a ‘veil of ignorance’ of where they themselves would be in the distribution of outcomes in society, those on low incomes should not be taxed more than those on high incomes. Yet this ‘justice as fairness’ requirement is abused in all countries. One reason is that governments have shifted social security systems towards means-tested social assistance.

How to Fix the Future: Staying Human in the Digital Age
by Andrew Keen
Published 1 Mar 2018

The daughter of a policeman—“We started out poor,” she tells me—Poh studied politics, economics, and philosophy at both Oxford and Cambridge universities as a state-sponsored scholar before entering government service. She speaks about her “responsibility” to the community, citing what she describes as the “social justice” ideas of the American philosopher John Rawls. She is inspired by Rawls’s thought experiment of a “veil of ignorance,” which, she says, convinced her of a moral responsibility to look after the less fortunate members of society. Thus her support for Singapore’s national broadband network, with what she calls its “comprehensive” fiber-to-home service for all citizens. And thus her pride in introducing the “Home Access” initiative for the lowest-income households in Singapore—a program that for just over $4 a month gives these households not only high-speed internet access but also a free smartphone.

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See also education universal income concept, 41, 260–268 Universal Sharing Networks, 171 Unsafe at Any Speed (Nader), 182–188, 191, 250 US Association of National Advertisers (ANA), 178–179 US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 49 Utopia (More) on education, 283 inspiration for, 101–102 on law, 249 “More’s Law,” 22, 289 overview, 16–23 privacy and, 84 Singapore’s initiatives compared to, 108 on unemployment, 36 view of work in, 258–260, 262–264 Utopia for Realists (Bregman), 265 “veil of ignorance,” 115 venture capital. See also individual venture capital firms competitive innovation and, 182–183 social responsibility and, 199 Vestager, Margrethe on EU’s regulatory role compared to US, 150 internet competition issues investigated by, 126–134, 139–141, 151–152 on internet privacy issues, 142–146 on privacy issues, 129–130, 144, 155–159 on social media accountability, 152–155 Viik, Linnar, 81–83 von Bismarck, Otto, 39–40 Waldman, Steven, 208–209, 212 Waldorf schools, 282–286 Wales, Jimmy, 58 Warren, Elizabeth, 250, 254 Warren, Samuel, 11–12 Waters, Alice, 224 wealth, distribution of, 70–71 WeChat, 120 Weigend, Andrea, 91 Wenger, Albert, 266–267, 271 WhatsApp, 140 White Ops, 178–179 Whole Foods Market, 50 Wiener, Norbert, 10 Wikipedia, 58 Wilde, Oscar, 19 Williams, Evan, 58, 281–282 Win the Future (WTF), 213 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 25, 26 Wojcicki, Anne, 273 Wojcicki, Esther, 272–275, 284 Wolfram, Stephen, 24–27 Wolfram Research, 24–27 worker and consumer choice, 226–257 advertising and streaming services, 233–235 artists on copyright issues, 237–245 artists on streaming services, 226–233 content of social media, 236–237 as tool to fix the future, 32–33, 43–44 workers of “gig economy,” 245–257 workers of “gig economy,” 245–257 World After Capital (Wenger), 267 World Development Report 2016 (World Bank), 71–72, 77 World Press Freedom Index (Reporters Without Borders), 105 Wozniak, Steve, 10 WPP, 234, 236 Xi Jinping, 120 Y Combinator, 199, 260 Yee, Amos, 105, 118–119 YouTube, 228–234, 238–239, 243, 245, 273 Zara, Christopher, 231 Zero to One (Thiel), 139 Zuckerberg, Mark.

Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History
by Kurt Andersen
Published 14 Sep 2020

But then came the ultra-individualistic frenzy of the 1960s, and during the 1970s and ’80s, liberty assumed its powerfully politicized form and eclipsed equality and solidarity among our aspirational values. Greed is good meant that selfishness lost its stigma. And that was when we were in trouble. The best test of a morally legitimate social contract is a thought experiment that the philosopher John Rawls named the Veil of Ignorance in 1971, just as modern American ultra-individualism exploded. The idea is to imagine you know nothing of your actual personal circumstances—wealth, abilities, education, race, ethnicity, gender, age; all those salient facts are veiled from you. Would you agree to sign your country’s social contract and take your chances for better or worse in the social and political and economic system it governs?

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It would almost be as if the American Dream tagline of the fictional town in A Prairie Home Companion, “all the children above average,” came true for the whole country economically. I’ve referred to America’s evolving social contracts—the versions we had until the early 1900s, the new, improved version we had until 1980, and the current Raw Deal version. And I mentioned the Veil of Ignorance ethical standard—the idea that any social contract of any society is legitimate only if people would agree to it knowing nothing of their personal attributes or family situation, that regardless of their possible handicaps or advantages under that contract, they’d be willing to take the luck of the draw as a random resident.

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On average, people gave a larger share to those in the bottom half and a smaller share to the top fifth than either actually has, and Republicans were nearly as egalitarian as Democrats. Then everybody was shown pie charts of the distributions of money in two hypothetical countries—which were actually the United States and Sweden—and were asked in which country they’d prefer to live. “In considering this question,” the veil-of-ignorance instruction stipulated, “imagine that if you joined this nation you would be randomly assigned to a place in the distribution, so you could end up anywhere in this distribution, from the very richest to the very poorest.” Unsurprisingly, 92 percent of Americans chose to become citizens of the unnamed Sweden.

The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good
by Robert H. Frank
Published 3 Sep 2011

I note in passing that this exercise is in at least one important respect very different from the famous thought experiment proposed by the moral philosopher John Rawls.1 Rawls asked readers to imagine themselves behind a veil of ignorance that shielded them from knowing what their own talents and temperaments were. He argued that distribution rules chosen from behind such a veil would be presumptively fair, since people wouldn’t know which particular rules would work to their advantage. Rawls argued that rules chosen under these circumstances would permit an increase in income inequality only if it served to raise the income of society’s poorest member. Although others have argued that most people behind a veil of ignorance 202 CHAPTER TWELVE would permit more inequality than that, there is broad agreement that the Rawlsian thought experiment provides a strong rationale for taking aggressive steps to limit inequality.

Two Nations, Indivisible: A History of Inequality in America: A History of Inequality in America
by Jamie Bronstein
Published 29 Oct 2016

Rawls called this rule the “difference principle.” He justified his theory of distribution with a thought experiment about what he called the “original position.” In the original position, a person has no information about their talents, needs, or sources of privilege. They are “behind the veil of ignorance.” Rawls claimed that a person behind the veil of ignorance will always choose the system of distribution that benefits the least fortunate, just in case they end up being one of the least fortunate.90 He considered this to be proof of the ethical superiority of the difference principle. Rawls’s Theory of Justice has been almost unparalleled in its impact on modern political philosophy, with both critics and proponents being required to grapple with its contents.91 For example, Columbia University professor Charles Frankel chastised Rawls for seeking equal outcomes rather than equal opportunity.

The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World
by Adrian Wooldridge
Published 2 Jun 2021

A Theory of Justice was a landmark in political thinking: professional philosophers approach the text in much the same spirit that medieval scholastics approached the works of Thomas Aquinas, and philosophy students learn about Rawls’s ‘veil of ignorance’ alongside Plato’s Ring of Gyges, which allowed its wearer to become invisible, as one of the great intellectual breakthroughs in philosophical reasoning. This is as it should be: the veil of ignorance is a powerful conceit that forces you to think about the world in fresh ways. In many ways, it is a strikingly radical book. Rawls broke with the old-fashioned American faith in both hard work and individual achievement.

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Rawls, a professor of philosophy at Harvard University and one of the most influential intellectuals of his time, wanted to ban ‘merit’ from any calculus of distributive justice. He argued that inequalities in wealth or authority were justifiable only in so far as they benefited everyone in society and, in particular, the ‘least amongst them’, a principle established by using the ‘veil of ignorance’, behind which people are supposed to think about the design of a fair society without knowledge of their own particular talents, class or sex. Rawls argued that even a system of ‘fair’ equality of opportunity – one which adequately compensated for class differences – would not make for a just society.

Free Money for All: A Basic Income Guarantee Solution for the Twenty-First Century
by Mark Walker
Published 29 Nov 2015

By a similar token, whether we are entitled to a dividend from state capital cannot be simply decided by some appeal to a natural distinction between private and public funds. Rawls says that conventional distinction between private and public funds is to be decided by using the device of a “veil of ignorance.” We imagine trying to decide on the fundamental principles governing the operation of society, ignorant of where we actually stand in society. Rawls said that the difference principle is what would be chosen behind the veil of ignorance. That is, wealth is to be redistributed so long as redistribution helps the least well-off. But as we have seen, Rawls faced the perennial surfer objection and so had to modify his theory.

Information: A Very Short Introduction
by Luciano Floridi
Published 25 Feb 2010

For the (sometimes explicit and conscious) withdrawal of information can often make a significant difference. A may need to lack (or preclude herself from accessing) some information in order to achieve morally desirable goals, such as protecting anonymity, enhancing fair treatment, or implementing unbiased evaluation. Rawls' `veil of ignorance' famously exploits precisely this aspect of information-as-a-resource, in order to develop an impartial approach to justice in terms of fairness. Being informed is not always a blessing and might even be morally wrong or dangerous. Whether the (quantitative and qualitative) presence or the (total) absence of information-as-a-resource is in question, there is a perfectly reasonable sense in which information ethics may be described as the study of the moral issues arising from `the triple A': availability, accessibility, and accuracy of informational resources, independently of their format, kind, and physical support.

The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values
by Sam Harris
Published 5 Oct 2010

Rawls called this novel starting point “the original position,” from which each person must judge the fairness of every law and social arrangement from behind a “veil of ignorance.” In other words, we can design any society we like as long as we do not presume to know, in advance, whether we will be black or white, male or female, young or old, healthy or sick, of high or low intelligence, beautiful or ugly, etc. As a method for judging questions of fairness, this thought experiment is undeniably brilliant. But is it really an alternative to thinking about the actual consequences of our behavior? How would we feel if, after structuring our ideal society from behind a veil of ignorance, we were told by an omniscient being that we had made a few choices that, though eminently fair, would lead to the unnecessary misery of millions, while parameters that were ever-so-slightly less fair would entail no such suffering?

System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot
by Rob Reich , Mehran Sahami and Jeremy M. Weinstein
Published 6 Sep 2021

To capture this mindset, he suggested that decisions impacting society should be made from behind a “veil of ignorance,” where decision makers would have no knowledge of their own personal situation or socioeconomic status. Thus, they would have no motivation to make decisions to benefit their own personal interests (of which they would have no knowledge). Rather, their only goal would be to make decisions that would benefit society overall, paying particular attention to the people who might be most adversely affected by the decision, since they might be one of them without knowing it. When it comes to algorithms, Rawls’s veil of ignorance and emphasis on a fair procedure can be useful.

Battling Eight Giants: Basic Income Now
by Guy Standing
Published 19 Mar 2020

There is growing evidence that a basic income has popular support and the potential for much more, contrary to jaundiced views by prominent figures who have not studied the subject.2 Two types of evidence are worth mentioning. Some years ago, a team of social psychologists conducted experiments in deliberative democracy covering large samples in three countries, in which people were asked to decide which of four options of fair distribution policy should have precedence. They had to choose from behind a ‘veil of ignorance’, that is, not knowing where they themselves would be in the distribution system.3 In initial votes, the majority in all cases chose the income floor, or basic income, option. But the most instructive outcome was that when the groups were requested to   Why Basic Income Beats the Alternatives 55 discuss the issues and vote again, many more voted for the income floor option.

The Wake-Up Call: Why the Pandemic Has Exposed the Weakness of the West, and How to Fix It
by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge
Published 1 Sep 2020

But to seek that which cannot be provided, especially to do so with the passionate but misinformed conviction that it can be, is to create the conditions of frustration and ruin.”1 The West has generally failed to make the distinction about what government can do and what it can’t. What does modern political theory tell us? The journalist John Authers has cleverly divided competing responses to the crisis into three broad philosophical camps: Rawlsians, libertarians, and communitarians.2 The first group apply John Rawls’s “veil of ignorance” test in A Theory of Justice (1971): what sort of society would you want if you didn’t know whether you were going to end up rich or poor? In the battle with Covid, such thinking justifies free health care and job furlough schemes. Libertarians, who follow Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974), come at the problem from the other end.

Giving the Devil His Due: Reflections of a Scientific Humanist
by Michael Shermer
Published 8 Apr 2020

I can’t act as if my interests are special just because I’m me and you’re not, any more than I can persuade you that the spot I am standing on is a special place in the universe just because I happen to be standing on it.9 Then there is the principle of the interchangeability of perspectives, which is at the core of the oldest moral principle discovered multiple times around the world: the Golden Rule. Pinker notes that it also forms the basis of Spinoza’s Viewpoint of Eternity, the Social Contract of Hobbes, Rousseau and Locke; Kant’s Categorical Imperative; and Rawls’s Veil of Ignorance. It also underlies Peter Singer’s theory of the Expanding Circle – the optimistic proposal that our moral sense, though shaped by evolution to overvalue self, kin and clan, can propel us on a path of moral progress, as our reasoning forces us to generalize it to larger and larger circles of sentient beings.10 Professor Ellis asserts that my attempt to base moral values in science fails, but, in fact, as I document in The Moral Arc (and more briefly in my manifesto), the moral progress we have witnessed over the centuries – the abolition of slavery, torture, and the death penalty; the expansion of rights to blacks, women, children, workers, and now even animals – has its origin in the scientific and reason-based concept that the world is governed by laws and principles that we can understand and apply, whether it is solar systems, eco systems, political systems, economic systems, or social and moral systems.

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Science and Religion in Modern Society, 86 The Mind of the Market (Shermer), 61, 203, 284 The Moral Arc (Shermer), 26, 72, 78, 136, 140, 155, 185, 221, 229, 236, 240, 264 The Onion, 34 The Science of Good and Evil (Shermer), 34, 87, 264 The Transcendental Temptation (Kurtz), 269–275 Theistic Evolutionists, 51 Theology and Science, 221, 236 Thermodynamics Second Law of, 109, 237–238, 309–310 Thomas, Keith, 223 thought crime, 38 thought police, 71 Tooby, John, 238 top-down government fatal conceit of, 215–217 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 139 Totalitarian Liberalism (Totalitarian Left), 75 Treaty of Rome, 249–250 Treesh, Frederick, 35 tribalism, 243–246 trigger warnings, 66–67 Trump, Donald, 33 truth scientific search for, 26–27 Thomas Jefferson on, 27 Tupey, Marian, 130 UFO cults cognitive dissonance effects, 95–96 United States increasing political division, 136–139 political system, 26 views of the founding fathers, 26 United States Constitution First Amendment, 23, 53, 71 Second Amendment, 71, 171 Thirteenth Amendment, 2, 83 Fourteenth Amendment, 83 Eighteenth Amendment, 227 Nineteenth Amendment, 227 Twenty-first Amendment, 227 universe arguments for divine providence, 110–111 auto-ex-nihilo theory, 124–125 Big Bang, 121 boom-and-bust cycles, 121 brane universes, 123 creation by God ex nihilo (out of nothing), 115–117 Darwinian universes, 122 explanations for, 120–125 explanations for nothing, 113–120 grand unified theory, 121 inconstant constants, 120 M-theory, 124–125 many-worlds multiverse, 122–123 multiple creations cosmology, 122 natural vs supernatural explanations of something, 117–119 nothing is unstable, something is stable, 119–120 quantum foam universe creations, 124 question of why it exists at all, 111 sense of awe out of nothing, 125–126 string universes, 123 views on its purpose and meaning, 103–108 why it takes the form it does, 111–113 universities avoidance of controversial or sensitive subjects, 25 disinvitation of controversial speakers, 25 University of California, Berkeley reactions to controversial speakers, 21 Unjust World Theory, 255–256 Urban, Hugh, 93 Valla, Lorenzo, 224–225 van Wolde, Ellen, 115 Veenhoven, Ruut, 211 veil of ignorance (Rawls), 240 Venker, Suzanne, 71 venture capitalists success rates for business start-ups, 263 victimhood culture, 73 viewpoint diversity lack of tolerance on college campuses, 75–76 ways to increase in colleges, 76–78 viewpoint of eternity (Spinoza), 240 Vinge, Joan, 153 virtue signaling, 75 Voltaire, 270, 280 von Däniken, Erich, 315 von Mises, Ludwig, 90 Waco siege, 29, 178 Wall Street Journal, 71 Wallace, Alfred Russel, 45 Wasserman, Steve, 277 Waterman, Robert, 264 Webb, John, 120 Weber, Mark, 78 Weber, Max, 302 Webster, Daniel, 2 Weinstein, Bret, 303 Weiss, Bari, 177 Wells, Jonathan, 55 whistleblowers, 2 white supremacism, 30–31 Why Darwin Matters (Shermer), 44, 56, 282 Why People Believe Weird Things (Shermer), 24, 44, 87, 134 Wikileaks, 2 Willink, Jocko, 308 Wilson, Doug, 281 Wilson, Edward O., 289 witch theory of causality, 223 witch trials and executions, 221–223impact of the scientific and philosophical revolution, 223 Witt, Ulrich, 198 Wolfman, Scott, 161 Wolpe, David, Rabbi, 104 Wright, Lawrence, 93 Wright, Robert, 239–240 xenophobia, 244 Yiannopoulos, Milo, 13 Young-Earth Creationists, 51 YouTube censorship issue, 33–34 Zubrin, Robert, 153–154

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
by Jonathan Haidt
Published 13 Mar 2012

Hitler was a vegetarian too, but nobody would argue that endorsing vegetarianism makes one a Nazi. 14. Pinker 2002, p. 106. 15. Rawls remains one of the most cited political philosophers. He is famous for his thought experiment in Rawls 1971 asking people to imagine the society they would design if they had to do so from behind a “veil of ignorance” so that they would not know what position they would eventually occupy in that society. Rationalists tend to love Rawls. 16. Wilson’s exact words bear repeating, for they were prophetic: “Ethical philosophers intuit the deontological canons of morality by consulting the emotive centers of their own hypothalamic-limbic system.

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These assertions seem to be based on little more than introspection about their own rather unusual personalities or value systems. For example, when some of Rawls’s (1971) assumptions were tested—e.g., that most people would care more about raising the worst-off than about raising the average if they had to design a society from behind a “veil of ignorance,” so that they don’t know what position they’d occupy in the society—they were found to be false (Frohlich, Oppenheimer, and Eavey 1987). 6. His exact words were: “My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing” (James 1950/1890, p. 333). Susan Fiske (1993) applied James’s functionalism to social cognition, abbreviating his dictum as “thinking is for doing.”

Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It
by Richard V. Reeves
Published 22 May 2017

If affluent parents are reasonably certain their children will stay up in the higher reaches of the income distribution, they have less reason to support institutions and policies that favor the less fortunate. After all, their children won’t need them.26 In his famous thought experiment, the philosopher John Rawls suggested that a just society would be the one that was agreed upon by people unaware of which rung they would occupy, from behind what he called a “veil of ignorance.” Behind this veil, “no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength, and the like.”27 Rawls’s elegant, contract-based approach to social justice was arguably the biggest philosophical advance of the twentieth century and prepared the ground for a flowering of egalitarian thought.

How to Be Right: In a World Gone Wrong
by James O'Brien
Published 2 Nov 2018

He would not have had my education or enjoyed the emotional and material security that came from being raised by two comfortably off, deeply loving parents in a happy home. I hope my politics is selfless, but when I think about it this way I wonder whether there’s a degree of secondhand selfishness involved. The philosopher John Rawls’ famous ‘veil of ignorance’ posits the idea that a just system can only be constructed by people completely ignorant of their position within it. In other words, you’re not going to endorse a system of law (or, by extension, of tax or government) that unfairly discriminates against a section of society you could conceivably be in yourself.

The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey
by Michael Huemer
Published 29 Oct 2012

Rawls devises a hypothetical scenario, the ‘original position’, in which individuals form an agreement on the basic principles to govern their society.15 These individuals are assumed to be motivated solely by self-interest, but they have temporarily been deprived of all knowledge of their position in society and indeed of any other personal information about themselves, including their race, sex, religion, social class, and so on.16 This condition, known as the ‘veil of ignorance’, prevents the parties from tailoring the chosen political principles to their own advantage; being ignorant of what one’s position in society will be, one must endeavor to devise principles that are fair to everyone. Rawls goes on to argue that people in this original position would choose two particular principles of justice to govern their society.17 He concludes that people should in fact adopt those principles.

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A being with no philosophical intuitions would not therefore achieve a particularly unassailable philosophical position; it would simply be unable to evaluate philosophical positions. Consider now one disagreement of particular interest, the disagreement between anarchists and statists about the necessity of government.27 There is no reason for thinking that this disagreement would evaporate behind the veil of ignorance, because Rawls has given no reason for thinking that those who in fact hold either of these views do so only because they are relying on knowledge of their particular position in society. Anarchists do not disagree with statists because anarchists have some peculiar social position or combination of personal traits that somehow would enable them to prosper in the absence of government while the rest of society fell apart.

The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity
by Toby Ord
Published 24 Mar 2020

And it means that the criticism they receive is mainly directed at writing style, characterization and so forth, rather than as constructive attempts to refine and develop their visions of the future. 9 The difficulty of anticipating the results may actually make it easier to start the process—for it acts as a veil of ignorance. If we were fairly sure of which future the Long Reflection would ultimately endorse, we’d be tempted to judge this by the lights of our current ethical understanding. Those whose current views are far from where we would end up may then be tempted to obstruct the process. But from a position where we are uncertain of the destination, we can all see the benefits in choosing a future based on further reflection, rather than simply having a struggle between our current views. And this veil of ignorance may even overcome the problems of people having irrationally high confidence in their current views.

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
by Steven Pinker
Published 13 Feb 2018

By one reckoning, the proportions and per capita rates I have been plotting are the morally relevant measure of progress, because they fit with John Rawls’s thought experiment for defining a just society: specify a world in which you would agree to be incarnated as a random citizen from behind a veil of ignorance as to that citizen’s circumstances.24 A world with a higher percentage of long-lived, healthy, well-fed, well-off people is a world in which one would prefer to play the lottery of birth. But by another reckoning, absolute numbers matter, too. Every additional long-lived, healthy, well-fed, well-off person is a sentient being capable of happiness, and the world is a better place for having more of them.

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* * * Spinoza’s dictum is one of a family of principles that have sought a secular foundation for morality in impartiality—in the realization that there’s nothing magic about the pronouns I and me that could justify privileging my interests over yours or anyone else’s.5 If I object to being raped, maimed, starved, or killed, I can’t very well rape, maim, starve, or kill you. Impartiality underlies many attempts to construct morality on rational grounds: Spinoza’s viewpoint of eternity, Hobbes’s social contract, Kant’s categorical imperative, Rawls’s veil of ignorance, Nagel’s view from nowhere, Locke and Jefferson’s self-evident truth that all people are created equal, and of course the Golden Rule and its precious-metallic variants, rediscovered in hundreds of moral traditions.6 (The Silver Rule is “Don’t do to others what you don’t want done to yourself”; the Platinum Rule, “Do to others what they would have you do to them.”

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This is also equivalent to the frequently cited $1.25 cutoff, stated in 2005 international dollars: Ferreira, Jolliffe, & Prydz 2015. 23. M. Roser, “No Matter What Extreme Poverty Line You Choose, the Share of People Below That Poverty Line Has Declined Globally,” Our World in Data blog, 2017, https://ourworldindata.org/no-matter-what-global-poverty-line. 24. Veil of ignorance: Rawls 1976. 25. Millennium Development Goals: United Nations 2015a. 26. Deaton 2013, p. 37. 27. Lucas 1988, p. 5. 28. The goal is defined as $1.25 a day, which is the World Bank international poverty line in 2005 international dollars; see Ferreira, Jolliffe, & Prydz 2015. 29.

Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future
by Johan Norberg
Published 31 Aug 2016

But nobody would claim that unemployment is rising in a society where the unemployment rate has halved from ten to five per cent, only because its population has slightly more than doubled over the same period. It would be appropriate here to consider the philosopher John Rawls’s thought experiment about the ‘veil of ignorance’: if you had to choose a society to live in but did not know what your social or economic position would be, you would probably choose the society with the lowest proportion (not the lowest numbers) of poor, because this is the best judgement of the life of an average citizen.20 In fact, it doesn’t matter what we focus on when it comes to recent poverty data.

The Joy of Tax
by Richard Murphy
Published 30 Sep 2015

That, I suspect, is not what many of those who find flat taxes superficially attractive on the basis of their so-called ability to simplify the tax system might want but, as seems to be so commonplace with regard to tax, what is said about flat taxes and what is actually the case are almost the opposite of each other. The veil of ignorance The crash of 2008 had enormous consequences for our economy, and will continue to do so for a long time to come. One reason for that is the amount of nonsense that has been spoken by so many politicians from so many parties on the way to tackle these issues, especially since 2010. From that year onwards most politicians in most countries impacted by the crash of 2008 have seemed to think that the biggest problem they face is the size of their government’s deficit.

Respectable: The Experience of Class
by Lynsey Hanley
Published 20 Apr 2016

I had to choose between rooms. The years that followed would be a slow process of guidance on the part of friends and teachers, and mimesis on mine, after which I snatched the baton and ran for my life. But that first day at college was the point at which everything began to change, because it was the day on which my veil of ignorance – my belief that meritocracy was a reality – started to lift. What lies in the second room has the potential to unlock every subsequent door with which you’re confronted in life, at the same time as closing off – in a crucial, saddening way – the door back to the first. The more time you spend in this second room, the way you use words – the order you put them in, the number of clauses and qualifiers you include in a sentence, even the sounds of the words themselves – begins to change.

Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be
by Diane Coyle
Published 11 Oct 2021

We have in mind a concept of social welfare. Surely it is right to aim for the perspective of the impartial observer, to try to make an objective assessment of the welfare effects of a policy intervention. This is a constant theme of liberal theories of justice, such as John Rawls’s (1971) famous ‘veil of ignorance’ or Adam Smith’s ‘impartial spectator’. At the same time, we know that economists and policy advisers are only human, responding to incentives and maximising our own utility. This is exactly why public choice theory and the New Public Management (Lapuente and Van de Walle 2020) came to emphasise the personal incentives and interests of decision-makers.

Thinking in Bets
by Annie Duke
Published 6 Feb 2018

Harvard Business Review, September 2007, 18–19. Konnikova, Maria. The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It . . . Every Time. New York: Penguin, 2016. Konnikova, Maria. Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes. New York: Penguin, 2013. Kriss, Peter, George Loewenstein, Xianghong Wang, and Roberto Weber. “Behind the Veil of Ignorance: Self-Serving Bias in Climate Change Negotiations.” Judgment and Decision Making 6, no. 7 (October 2011): 602–15. Krusemark, Elizabeth, W. Keith Campbell, and Brett Clementz. “Attributions, Deception, and Event Related Potentials: An Investigation of the Self-Serving Bias.” Psychophysiology 45, no. 4 (July 2008): 511–15.

From Gutenberg to Google: electronic representations of literary texts
by Peter L. Shillingsburg
Published 15 Jan 2006

If ignorance cannot be banned from literary or any other kind of study, we must confront that notion and learn to live with it as a basic condition. Ignorance in literary studies 195 Put that a different way: If we believe that scholarship is devoted to discovering truth and to beating back the dark veil of ignorance, we must also believe that truth can be ascertained and established. If that were so, those who possess the certainty of truth would be right to impose their views on those who have failed to possess the truth. In that view of things, ignorance is a deplorable but temporary condition. Put starkly, a world in which truth could be established requires the separation of that which is right from that which is wrong, that which is verified from that which does not pass the test of verification, that which can be relied upon from that which is proven unreliable.

The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class
by Guy Standing
Published 27 Feb 2011

Thin democracy, the commodification of politics, and the power of public relations and elite money risk strengthening a tyranny of the majority and an unhealthy denigration of nonconformity. As a counter-movement, the precariat needs mechanisms to generate deliberative democracy. This promotes values of universalism and altruism, since it encourages people to think along ‘veil of ignorance’ lines and to depart from the standpoint influenced by their position along the social and economic spectrum. However, deliberative democracy requires active participation, which cannot be done by distracted people fed a diet of sound bites and platitudes. It requires debate, eye contact, body language, listening and reflection.

Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution
by Francis Fukuyama
Published 1 Jan 2002

The same is true of contemporary Kantians like John Rawls, whose theory of justice explicitly sidesteps any discussion of human nature and seeks to establish a set of minimal moral rules that would apply to any group of rational agents, based on the so-called original position. That is, we are to select rules of just distribution from behind a “veil of ignorance,” where we don’t know what our actual position in society is. As critics of Rawls have pointed out, the original position itself, and the political implications Rawls draws from it, contains numerous assertions about human nature, in particular his assumption that human beings are risk-averse.23 He assumes they would choose a strictly egalitarian distribution of resources for fear of ending up on the bottom of the social ladder.

I, Warbot: The Dawn of Artificially Intelligent Conflict
by Kenneth Payne
Published 16 Jun 2021

Robert Trivers suggested that reciprocal altruism provides that social glue—if I can trust you to do me a favour in turn, I might be prepared to help you out now, even if that comes at a personal cost, or risk to me.6 Of course, trust isn’t a given—people have to earn a good reputation, hence it pays to be generous. After all, ‘what goes around, comes around’ as the English idiomatically say, which is just another way of expressing the golden rule. There’s a related idea in the writings of twentieth century ethicist John Rawls.7 He thought we should treat others as though we were living behind a veil of ignorance. We make our moral choices, knowing what the consequences would be in all respects except one: we are ignorant about which person we ourselves are once the choices are made. When the veil is lifted, we find out—so we have a self-interest in being as fair as we can to all. And there’s another echo of the golden rule in the classical liberalism of John Stuart Mill, whose liberal vision allowed people to do whatever they wanted, without censure from others, except insofar as their behaviour made other people worse off.8 What all these visions have in common is the idea of some rule for how to behave.

Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization
by Branko Milanovic
Published 10 Apr 2016

For indeed the claim that redistribution within the nation-state may create a moral hazard problem because the poor may choose not to work is found wanting by Rawls in his Theory of Justice, but then in The Law of Peoples he invokes approvingly an almost identical claim to dismiss the argument for redistribution among nations. There is an unresolved tension between Rawls’s Theory of Justice, where, within a nation-state, the arguments against equality of opportunity are rejected through the ingenious invention of the veil of ignorance, and his Law of Peoples, where very similar arguments against equality of opportunity among global citizens are considered valid. To quote Rawls from Theory of Justice (1971, 100–101): “the principle [is] that undeserved inequalities call for redress, and since inequalities of birth and natural endowments are undeserved, these inequalities are to be compensated for.”

Reset
by Ronald J. Deibert
Published 14 Aug 2020

One computer software diagnostic company did an experiment to prove the point108: it put an offer to give away $100 at the very end of its terms of service, to see how many would read that far. Four months and three thousand downloads later, one user finally did. Add to the mix the boilerplate contract language used in terms of service, which most laypeople are poorly equipped to understand, and the veil of ignorance around contractual obligations becomes thicker. As contract law experts Brett Frischmann and Evan Selinger put it, “Almost no one is discussing the negative impact the electronic contracting environment has on our habits and dispositions, and more generally, on who we are as human beings … [boilerplate contracts] condition us to devalue our own autonomy.”109 The concept of “consent” is trivialized when users simply click “I agree” and then move on without so much as a second thought.

The Glass Half-Empty: Debunking the Myth of Progress in the Twenty-First Century
by Rodrigo Aguilera
Published 10 Mar 2020

What we do know is that economic outcomes between individuals should be central to any notion of what a just society should look like. US political philosopher John Rawls famously described the original position as a thought experiment of how such a just society should be conceived.49 In this original position outside a “veil of ignorance”, no citizen would know what life they would be born into within society. You could just as easily end up being Jeff Bezos as you could one of his warehouse workers. Under the logic of loss aversion, it would appear that it is preferable to avoid being the warehouse worker than hoping to be Bezos, which suggests that people would prefer to live under more egalitarian societies.

How the Mind Works
by Steven Pinker
Published 1 Jan 1997

In a coalition of animals attacking another coalition or an individual, an attacker has some warning if he is being picked out for a counterattack, and can flee before they give chase. For that reason a coalition of animals would be especially prone to unraveling. But humans have invented weapons, from spears and arrows to bullets and bombs, that make fate unknowable until the last second. Behind this veil of ignorance, men can be motivated to fight to the last. Decades before Tooby and Cosmides spelled out this logic, the psychologist Anatol Rapoport illustrated it with a paradox from World War II. (He believed the scenario was true but was unable to verify it.) At a bomber base in the Pacific, a flier had only a twenty-five percent chance of surviving his quota of missions.

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Crowded or malnourished tribes not more warlike: Chagnon, 1992; Keeley, 1996. 511 Women as the spoils of war in the Bible: Hartung, 1992, 1995. 512 Hot and forcing violation: Henry V, act 2, scene 3. 512 Rape and war: Brownmiller, 1975. 513 Reproductive success of war leaders: Betzig, 1986. 513 Logic of war: Tooby & Cosmides, 1988. 513 The Kandinsky fans hate the Klee fans: Tajfel, 1981. Ethnocentrism from a coin flip: Locksley, Ortiz, & Hepburn, 1980. Boys wage war at summer camp: Sherif, 1966. Ethnic conflict: Brown, 1985. 515 Richer groups go to war more: Chagnon, 1992; Keeley, 1996. 516 Fighting under a veil of ignorance: Tooby & Cosmides, 1993. World War II example: Rapoport, 1964, pp. 88–89. 518 Declining homicide rates: Daly & Wilson, 1988. 519 The Dalai Lama: Interview by Claudia Dreifus in New York Times Magazine, November 28, 1993. 8. The Meaning of Life 521 Universality of art, literature, music, humor, religion, philosophy: Brown, 1991;Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1989. 521 Living for music, selling blood to buy movie tickets: Tooby & Cosmides, 1990a. 522 The arts as status-seeking: Wolfe, 1975; Bell, 1992. 522 Art, science, and the elite: Brockman, 1994.

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt
Published 14 Jun 2018

Retrieved from https://www.thefire.org/email-from-erika-christakis-dressing-yourselves-email-to-silliman-college-yale-students-on-halloween-costumes Chapter 11: The Quest for Justice 1. Rawls (1971), p. 3. Rawls was one of the leading political philosophers of the twentieth century, famous for asking what kind of society we would design if we had to do it from behind a “veil of ignorance” as to what role we would occupy in the society. 2. Data from Ghitza & Gelman (2014) is made interactive in Cox, A. (2014, July 7). How birth year influences political views. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/08/upshot/how-the-year-you-were-born-influences-your-politics.html?

Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters
by Steven Pinker
Published 14 Oct 2021

Versions of these rules have been independently discovered in Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Islam, Baháí, and other religions and moral codes.46 These include Spinoza’s observation, “Those who are governed by reason desire nothing for themselves which they do not also desire for the rest of humankind.” And Kant’s Categorical Imperative: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” And John Rawls’s theory of justice: “The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance” (about the particulars of one’s life). For that matter the principle may be seen in the most fundamental statement of morality of all, the one we use to teach the concept to small children: “How would you like it if he did that to you?” None of these statements depends on taste, custom, or religion.

China into Africa: trade, aid, and influence
by Robert I. Rotberg
Published 15 Nov 2008

As Kurlantzick observes, “In its aid, infrastructure building, and business deals, China also demonstrates little respect for transparency and other aspects of good governance.”9 In interviews, Chinese officials have been either unwilling or unable to provide details of loans. Scholars and policymakers are left to speculate on the details of Chinese aid.10 Recently, a Chinese diplomat claimed to the author that Chinese aid is transparent and that details are published in Chinese language sources. This argument suggests that it is a “veil of ignorance” rather than a “lack of transparency” that frustrates Western aid analysts. This chapter examines this proposition by reviewing China’s concessional lending program, which is managed by the China Eximbank. It relies on Chinese language sources from the websites of the Ministry of Commerce, the China Eximbank, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and official news outlets, such as the People’s Daily and Xinhua New Agency.

Making Globalization Work
by Joseph E. Stiglitz
Published 16 Sep 2006

Stiglitz, “The Post Washington Consensus Consensus,” IPD Working Paper Series, Columbia University, 2004, presented at the From the Washington Consensus Towards A New Global Governance Forum, Barcelona, September 24–25, 2004. 15.The ideas of the late great Harvard philosopher John Rawls have been influential. He has urged thinking about social justice “behind a veil of ignorance,” before we know what position into which we would be born. See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971); and Patrick Hayden, John Rawls: Towards a Just World Order (Cardiff, UK: University of Wales Press, 2002). 16.Some of the changes have to do with changing patterns of production, and this may happen again, as the economies of the world become more based on services. 17.See Karl Polyani, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001).

Visions of Inequality: From the French Revolution to the End of the Cold War
by Branko Milanovic
Published 9 Oct 2023

The narrative use of such an empathetic onlooker is highlighted by Sen as a major advantage over dry, “contractarian” theories like Rawls’s, which do not allow any external observer to have a say and thus, according to Sen, exclude the possibility of participants in the contract being judged themselves by an external source. Rawls’s idea that impartiality requires decision-makers to adopt a “veil of ignorance” regarding their own interests, Sen says, “abstains from invoking the scrutiny of (in Smith’s language) ‘the eyes of the rest of mankind.’ ” 35 By contrast, empathy is not much present in The Wealth of Nations, where being guided by self-interest and reason and assuming that others are guided by these, too, is sufficient.

Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization
by Harold James
Published 15 Jan 2023

This is the view of high and well-informed government officials.”40 But a few days earlier, a report by the New York investment and merchant banking firm Dominick and Dominick suggested that retaliation from Canada and Argentina was likely, and argued that a continuation of American prosperity depended on foreign markets: “Already our factories supply 96% of the domestic consumption and our producers must look to foreign markets to absorb the increasing output.”41 In reality, of course, no one could know what the tariff would do to the world economy or U.S. trade, and that veil of ignorance fanned fears and hopes—and made for market volatility. In another example of the escalation of fears and phobias, the collapse of timber prices in the economic downturn was ascribed to a Soviet plot: “a widespread assault upon the economic structure of the United States and other so-called capitalistic countries, by invading them with underpriced goods, is avowedly part of the Russian program.”42 The British economist John Maynard Keynes made the Wall Street crash the centerpiece of his indictment of American capitalism.

Them And Us: Politics, Greed And Inequality - Why We Need A Fair Society
by Will Hutton
Published 30 Sep 2010

The key, therefore, to creating a just society is to do as much as possible to iron out differences due to the accident of birth that predetermines everything. If nobody cared where they were born and by whom they were raised, so they would willingly swap places – the famous Rawlsian thought experiment behind a ‘veil of ignorance’ – society would conform to norms of justice. You do not have to be a Rawlsian, Marxist or Rousseauen ultra to concede the force of the argument. Contemporary conservatives who want to make the individual the mainspring of all action go too far. Nevertheless, there is free will, so it cannot be said that everything is predetermined by economic and social structures.

Capitalism in America: A History
by Adrian Wooldridge and Alan Greenspan
Published 15 Oct 2018

Combination is necessary and its abuses can be minimized.”5 The fact that the price of oil fell so precipitously under his sway proves that there was something in this: Rockefeller used his organizational genius to lower unit costs rather than to bilk the public. The result of declining unit costs was rising output per hour. J. P. Morgan applied the same organizational genius to the world of money. For the most part, economic life at the time took place behind a veil of ignorance.6 The government did not produce any sound figures on, say, employment, imports or exports, or the money supply. Corporations kept their balance sheets from prying eyes, including, for the most part, the prying eyes of shareholders. Most companies didn’t bother to issue reports. Those that did mixed fact with fiction: Horace Greeley commented in the New York Tribune in 1870 that if the Erie Railroad’s annual report was true, then “Alaska has a tropical climate and strawberries in their season.”7 Stock was issued on a whim.

Model Thinker: What You Need to Know to Make Data Work for You
by Scott E. Page
Published 27 Nov 2018

In the symmetric equilibrium, where everyone contributes the same amount (Y = A), then Y = . 5 Utilitarianism weights everyone’s lot equally. Rawls (1971) proposed an alternative: the maxmin principle, in which the ideal social outcome maximizes the utility of the least well-off person. Rawls advocates evaluating outcomes from behind a veil of ignorance so that we do not know whether we will be rich, famous, and endowed with great capacities or hindered by circumstances. 6 We can write individual j’s utility as follows: To solve for the symmetric Nash equilibrium, we assume that every other person contributes an amount A to the public good.

WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us
by Tim O'Reilly
Published 9 Oct 2017

Without the rule of law, capricious power sets the rules, usually to the benefit of a powerful few. What people really mean by “governs least” is that the rules are aligned with their interests. In an economy tuned to the interests of the few, the rules are often unfair to the rest. An economy tuned to the interests of the majority may seem unfair to some, but John Rawls’s “veil of ignorance”—the idea that the best rules for a political or economic order are those that would be chosen by people who had no prior knowledge of their place in that order—is a convincing argument that that government is best that governs for most. That, as it turns out, is also the lesson of technology platforms.

The Economists' Hour: How the False Prophets of Free Markets Fractured Our Society
by Binyamin Appelbaum
Published 4 Sep 2019

Many subscribed to some version of the theory that justice meant fairness, which the philosopher John Rawls had elegantly updated in his 1971 book, A Theory of Justice. Rawls introduced a twist on the Golden Rule, suggesting the test of fairness was to ask what a person would think of a policy if she did not know her own circumstances, a perspective Rawls described as a “veil of ignorance.” He also rejected the idea that one person’s gains could justify another person’s losses. Justice, he wrote, “does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many.” The outrage served Posner’s purpose. Looking back on what followed, Douglas Baird, a longtime professor at Chicago’s law school, said Posner and his allies would write papers asserting that the standard view of some legal issue was 100 percent wrong — for example, that courts adjudicating bankruptcy cases needed to account for the concept that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow — and the rebuttals would insist the conventional approach was only 80 percent wrong.

The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
by Walter Isaacson
Published 9 Mar 2021

Rawls seeks to define the rules that we would agree to if we had gathered to make a compact. In order to make sure things are “fair,” he said that we should imagine what rules we would make if we didn’t know what place we would each end up occupying in society and what natural abilities we would have. He argues that, from behind this “veil of ignorance,” people would decide that inequalities should be permitted only to the extent that they result in benefits for all of society, and specifically for the least advantaged. In his book, this leads Rawls to justify genetic engineering only if it does not increase inequality.3 Nozick, whose book was a response to that of his Harvard colleague Rawls, likewise imagined how we might emerge from the anarchy of a state of nature.

Engineering Security
by Peter Gutmann

Philosopher John Rawls argued in his landmark book “A Theory of Justice” that the principles of justice should be derived from behind a ‘veil of ignorance’ in which the people making the rules don’t know what place they’ll have in the system to which the rules are applied. In other words if you don’t know whether you’re one of the haves or have-nots (where what you have, or don’t, is money, power, looks, and so on) then you won’t end up creating a system that either inadvertently or deliberately benefits one of those classes [21]. The problem with trying to get the ‘veil of ignorance’ approach applied to application design is that not only do many geeks have great difficulty in considering the needs of people who differ from them, but they’re not even aware that such people exist.

Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy
by Francis Fukuyama
Published 29 Sep 2014

And it succeeded spectacularly: much of China’s industrial output in the early reform years came not from the new private sector but from TVE-sponsored businesses.12 In a sense, the Chinese independently discovered the principles of what in the West has gone under the label of New Public Management, an approach that sought to extend marketlike incentives to the public sector. The TVE was not an institution that any orthodox U.S.-based economist would ever have recommended. Operating behind a veil of ignorance in which outside observers knew the characteristics of the system but not the actual country in question, most would have predicted that it would become a sink of corruption and self-dealing. Had Nigeria or Pakistan tried to implement such a system, one can imagine all sorts of ways the TVEs would have been abused.

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
by Steven Pinker
Published 1 Jan 2002

The mere fact that the question makes sense shows that evolutionary success and goodness are not the same thing. Can one really reconcile biological differences with a concept of social justice? Absolutely. In his famous theory of justice, the philosopher John Rawls asks us to imagine a social contract drawn up by self-interested agents negotiating under a veil of ignorance, unaware of the talents or status they will inherit at birth—ghosts ignorant of the machines they will haunt. He argues that a just society is one that these disembodied souls would agree to be born into, knowing that they might be dealt a lousy social or genetic hand.22 If you agree that this is a reasonable conception of justice, and that the agents would insist on a broad social safety net and redistributive taxation (short of eliminating incentives that make everyone better off), then you can justify compensatory social policies even if you think differences in social status are 100 percent genetic.