Article on unfairness

[Anakin McFly]

My friend shared this article on Facebook a while ago:
http://oliveremberton.com/2014/the-prob ... -fairness/

in which it said that people should stop whining about unfair things like Justin Bieber getting famous or other people getting promoted when you'd worked really hard for it etc, because life is a competition and our ideas of fairness are inherently self-centred.

So I wrote a really short (just one paragraph, omg) comment mentioning that it's usually not what people are thinking about when they talk about injustice, because they usually mean discrimination and rape victims getting stoned to death and other things like that. Then I got accused of "pontification" and that if I cared so much I should get off my keyboard and join Doctors without Borders or the Peace Corps.

wtf I wasn't even being preachy or anything. I am usually pissed off at keyboard warriors, but I wasn't even warrioring. And why do people assume that people involved in social work never read blogs? I know lots of social workers and activists who do, and leave comments as well.

tl;dr I'm right and they're wrong

...okay wow from that person's posting history, she's apparently against feminism because she thinks both men and women have it bad in the world and no one has it worse
can I just ignore her opinion then

[aels]

Yes, you can and should ignore her because it sounds like she is wrong about everything. I try not to get hung up on notions of fairness for two reasons:

1) It depresses me. Yeah, its not fair that I'm disabled. I didn't ask for it and I don't deserve it and it's not fair that I'm disabled and all the shitty people I know aren't. But it does me no good to think 'This isn't fair' because it achieves nothing but giving me a sense of bitterness.

2) It makes us unkinder as people. Believing in fairness - the just-world hypothesis - is a line of thinking that leads to us believing that poor people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and that rape victims need to dress less slutty because bad things only happen to bad people and anyone who is successful automatically got there on merit. It completely ignores institutional factors and just sheer luck.

brb joining Doctors without Borders because I'm sure that what Libya needs right now is the presence of me.

[Anakin McFly]

I think #2 is a misconception though - it's not 'believing in fairness' as in 'believing the world is fair', but as in believing the world should be fair and being sad that it's currently not.

[Derived Absurdity]

Wow that article was complete repulsive shit. You're right, it was just one giant strawman.

[Dr_Liszt]

I just read the title and wanted to throw up.

[Anakin McFly]

muahahahaha

*hands out anti-nausea pills*

[Blade Azaezel]

I think fairness can make us unkinder, but not necessarily in the way aels described...though that can happen. For example, I work harder and am better at my job (honest) than certain colleagues, yet they're paid more than I am because, at one point, their knowledge and experience outweighed mine. I find it unfair that I can't/won't get a raise despite now surpassing them and I hate them for it if life was fair, we'd all get the same amount, or I'd be earning more.

[Derived Absurdity]

I had a visceral lesson on life's inherent unfairness while playing Mario Kart. For example, why is it that I can spend the vast majority of the race in first place, yet I can get a blue shell right before the finish line, and then the guy who was behind me all the time races ahead of me and wins the entire thing? Shouldn't the fact that I was playing better than him for most of the race be considered a significant factor for the game in determining who "wins", and not just the fact that he happened to pass me at that one arbitrary point? Just by random chance? Shouldn't the person who "wins" be the one who does the best in general? But no. Just one instance of unlucky timing and I lose it all. And he wins. Through no action of his own.

And then I realized, wait a minute, this goes for all races. All races are judged this way. NASCAR. The Olympics. All of them. They might not have blue shells, but they all work on the same general principle. All that hard work can be undone. By one unlucky instance of random chance. If that guy had waited just one more second to throw the shell, I would have won. Instead I got second. And years from now, that will be all that anyone remembers. No one will remember I was ahead for most of the race. It will be forgotten, forever. Because the game doesn't record that.

That was when I understood the full implications of living in an intrinsically unfair universe.

[BruceSmith78]

To be fair (no pun intended), years from now nobody's gonna remember who got 1st place in your game of Mario Kart either.

[Dr_Liszt]

I had a visceral lesson on life's inherent unfairness while playing Mario Kart. For example, why is it that I can spend the vast majority of the race in first place, yet I can get a blue shell right before the finish line, and then the guy who was behind me all the time races ahead of me and wins the entire thing? Shouldn't the fact that I was playing better than him for most of the race be considered a significant factor for the game in determining who "wins", and not just the fact that he happened to pass me at that one arbitrary point? Just by random chance? Shouldn't the person who "wins" be the one who does the best in general? But no. Just one instance of unlucky timing and I lose it all. And he wins. Through no action of his own.

And then I realized, wait a minute, this goes for all races. All races are judged this way. NASCAR. The Olympics. All of them. They might not have blue shells, but they all work on the same general principle. All that hard work can be undone. By one unlucky instance of random chance. If that guy had waited just one more second to throw the shell, I would have won. Instead I got second. And years from now, that will be all that anyone remembers. No one will remember I was ahead for most of the race. It will be forgotten, forever. Because the game doesn't record that.

That was when I understood the full implications of living in an intrinsically unfair universe.

Ask any racer. Any real racer. It don't matter if you win by an inch or a mile. Winning's winning.

[Gendo]

I had a visceral lesson on life's inherent unfairness while playing Mario Kart. For example, why is it that I can spend the vast majority of the race in first place, yet I can get a blue shell right before the finish line, and then the guy who was behind me all the time races ahead of me and wins the entire thing? Shouldn't the fact that I was playing better than him for most of the race be considered a significant factor for the game in determining who "wins", and not just the fact that he happened to pass me at that one arbitrary point? Just by random chance? Shouldn't the person who "wins" be the one who does the best in general? But no. Just one instance of unlucky timing and I lose it all. And he wins. Through no action of his own.

And then I realized, wait a minute, this goes for all races. All races are judged this way. NASCAR. The Olympics. All of them. They might not have blue shells, but they all work on the same general principle. All that hard work can be undone. By one unlucky instance of random chance. If that guy had waited just one more second to throw the shell, I would have won. Instead I got second. And years from now, that will be all that anyone remembers. No one will remember I was ahead for most of the race. It will be forgotten, forever. Because the game doesn't record that.

That was when I understood the full implications of living in an intrinsically unfair universe.

This is actually interesting. Of course in NASCAR there is a big portion of skill that goes into knowing when to pass the guy in first place; being in the lead the entire time is not what you want at all. But I now wonder if a race could work with different rules, that it doesn't matter who crosses the finish line first, but who spends that most amount of time in first place? It would completely change the strategy; it could make for a new, interesting type of racing.

Actually boxing is like a mix between both things. If no one gets KO'd within the time limit, then the winner is determined by who did better overall throughout the whole match. But it's also possible for someone to get KO'd right before the end and lose even if he'd been doing better in general throughout the fight.

[Pope Bucky]

I plan on dying just before asking Jesus to be my savior.

It's not fair.

[Pope Bucky]

Maybe I should die just after asking. Now, that isn't fair.

[phe_de]

This is actually interesting. Of course in NASCAR there is a big portion of skill that goes into knowing when to pass the guy in first place; being in the lead the entire time is not what you want at all. But I now wonder if a race could work with different rules, that it doesn't matter who crosses the finish line first, but who spends that most amount of time in first place? It would completely change the strategy; it could make for a new, interesting type of racing.

In the bicycle race "Tour de France" we already have sort of this. The winner is the one who uses the least time; he gets the yellow jersey.
But there are also awards for sprinters, mountain climbers, and I believe also for most combativity, which could have something to do with racing in front. And winning a stage also is awarded.

Maybe this is the reasoning behind giving out so many Grammy Awards.
But some people still believe they are not fair...