What is fairness?

[coberst]

What is fairness?

 

All’s fair in love and war.

 

Is everything that is legal also fair?

 

What is fairness? Why is fairness important?

 

Who wants a fair-minded journalist?

 

What is a fair-minded thinker?

 

One of the things we learn when we study CT (Critical Thinking) is that we must be critical of our self. We must question and understand what we “believe” in order to begin the process of becoming a fair-minded thinker, the very heart of CT.

 

Critical Thinking should be taught in high school, in my opinion. This is a very important learning experience that every high school graduate should have. Since it is not generally taught in high school everyone would be wise to learn it on their own initiative. It is not difficult and any normal person can easily learn this subject. This is not something one learns through social osmosis and it is a mistake to think that it just “comes naturally”. Learning this subject matter is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for developing good critical thinking skills.

 

What means do we have to discover, to criticize, and to modify our biases, our prejudices, and our ideologies that guide our everyday performance in the world?

 

I think that an analysis of our speaking is a guide to the manner in which our unconscious is structured. Our speaking—the words we use can indicate the nature of the ideas that we have. Speech is a guide to the structure of our ideology, which is the product of our past experiences and understanding, which in many cases is the result of many unconscious developments.

 

We use such metaphorical expressions as: Tomorrow is a big day. I’m feeling up today. We’ve been close for years, but we’re beginning to drift apart. It is smooth sailing from here on in. It has been uphill all the way. Get off my back. We are moving ahead. He’s a dirty old man. That was a disgusting thing to do. I’m not myself today. He is afraid to reveal his inner self. You need to be kind to your self.

 

All of us use metaphors constantly and we all recognize the meaning of these metaphors when others speak them. This leads me to the inference that our everyday speech is a means for insight into our understanding of what we really believe. Most of these metaphors can be a guide to what our unconscious has stored up in our brain regarding the nature of reality. These metaphors can guide us into an understanding of where we are and perhaps why we are there (notice all the metaphors I use in trying to convey my conceptions). Metaphors provide insight to the self.

[Nitack]

Your question, even with your elaborate premise and primer on critical thinking and self-evaluation, is to subjective to answer. Fair is entirely dependent on your point of view.

 

To liberal bleeding heart democrats, fairness is the redistribution of wealth from those with more to those with less. To me, and most libertarians out there, it is not fair to redistribute wealth from those who have earned it to those who have not. Notice how in my example "fairness" was dependent on the perceived reason behind the action on weather or not it was fair.

 

Perhaps my example was the point you were trying to make though. Just as we can not objectively understand "reality" because we are inside "reality" and therefore have a biased view, we can not truly have an objective opinion on almost anything because we always bring our own view to the table with us.

[Thunderbird]

Your question, even with your elaborate premise and primer on critical thinking and self-evaluation, is to subjective to answer. Fair is entirely dependent on your point of view.

 

To liberal bleeding heart democrats, fairness is the redistribution of wealth from those with more to those with less. To me, and most libertarians out there, it is not fair to redistribute wealth from those who have earned it to those who have not. Notice how in my example "fairness" was dependent on the perceived reason behind the action on weather or not it was fair.

 

Perhaps my example was the point you were trying to make though. Just as we can not objectively understand "reality" because we are inside "reality" and therefore have a biased view, we can not truly have an objective opinion on almost anything because we always bring our own view to the table with us.

This is why systems models are becoming more and more utilized by economist, social scientist, psychologist, and so on.

A person can chose to look at the big picture, or they can simply look at things in isolation. Whats good for the whole system, is good for everyone.

[coberst]

Nitack

 

Most, if not all, judgments we must make are subjective to a degree. In the case of values it seems to me that a person must have a value that might be considered "an uncaused value" and further values relate to that uncaused value, that sui generis value.

 

What is correct thinking? I would say that correct thinking is that quality of thinking which will best help each of us to reach our goals.

 

How do we establish our goals, i.e. our values? To establish proximate goals we must have an ultimate goal.

 

I think that we must find a ‘value North Star’?

 

It appears to me that we sapiens need a ‘value North Star’ upon which to fix our voyage. We need a reference point upon which we can focus our attention when trying to determine what of value we can and should do in life.

 

Religion, or God, serves as the ‘value North Star’ for some people; for others it is nationalism; for others, that fix is to own as much good stuff as possible; to others it is power; for some it is family; and I guess there are many other such ultimate values.

 

I have tried to examine my inner voices to determine just what my value North Star is and does it need to be changed. I have determined that, by some turn of events, perhaps completely willy-nilly, my value North Star is life on this planet. My guidance for fixing value is ultimately dependent upon its aiding or hindering life on this planet.

 

I often speculate that human life is a hindrance to maximizing the ‘good life’, of all life, on this planet. I often speculate that if all life on this planet were given a vote in this matter that they would throw sapiens overboard.

[Nitack]

I often speculate that human life is a hindrance to maximizing the ‘good life’, of all life, on this planet. I often speculate that if all life on this planet were given a vote in this matter that they would throw sapiens overboard.

 

That is possibly the most profound thing I have read in quite a while, and it is so true. Kudos for an excellent point.

[nutronjon]

What is fairness?

 

All’s fair in love and war.

 

Is everything that is legal also fair?

 

What is fairness? Why is fairness important?

 

Who wants a fair-minded journalist?

 

What is a fair-minded thinker?

 

One of the things we learn when we study CT (Critical Thinking) is that we must be critical of our self. We must question and understand what we “believe” in order to begin the process of becoming a fair-minded thinker, the very heart of CT.

 

Critical Thinking should be taught in high school, in my opinion. This is a very important learning experience that every high school graduate should have. Since it is not generally taught in high school everyone would be wise to learn it on their own initiative. It is not difficult and any normal person can easily learn this subject. This is not something one learns through social osmosis and it is a mistake to think that it just “comes naturally”. Learning this subject matter is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for developing good critical thinking skills.

 

What means do we have to discover, to criticize, and to modify our biases, our prejudices, and our ideologies that guide our everyday performance in the world?

 

I think that an analysis of our speaking is a guide to the manner in which our unconscious is structured. Our speaking—the words we use can indicate the nature of the ideas that we have. Speech is a guide to the structure of our ideology, which is the product of our past experiences and understanding, which in many cases is the result of many unconscious developments.

 

We use such metaphorical expressions as: Tomorrow is a big day. I’m feeling up today. We’ve been close for years, but we’re beginning to drift apart. It is smooth sailing from here on in. It has been uphill all the way. Get off my back. We are moving ahead. He’s a dirty old man. That was a disgusting thing to do. I’m not myself today. He is afraid to reveal his inner self. You need to be kind to your self.

 

All of us use metaphors constantly and we all recognize the meaning of these metaphors when others speak them. This leads me to the inference that our everyday speech is a means for insight into our understanding of what we really believe. Most of these metaphors can be a guide to what our unconscious has stored up in our brain regarding the nature of reality. These metaphors can guide us into an understanding of where we are and perhaps why we are there (notice all the metaphors I use in trying to convey my conceptions). Metaphors provide insight to the self.

 

 

When we used the Conceptual method of education, everyone learned critical thinking. I have text books that stress to the teacher, do not focus on the technological correctness of a child's answers, but on the child's understanding of the concept. Children were asked open ended questions, as opposed to questions with right or wrong answers. We created a very different culture with that education, than with today's education for technology using the Behaviorist Method, which can also be used for training dogs.

 

Past education was also filled with lessons in virtues. Children were not just learning the 3 R's, reading, writing and arithametic. In that reading was education for good moral judgment, built on stories of heros. And my school teacher grandmother would say, we teach children math to teach them how to think. Diagramming sentences is important for the same reason. Learning history and the meaning of being a good citizen, were almost the same thing.

This was history with meaning, so those who had this education understood the reasoning for why did things as we did them and our unquic democratic relationship with our institutions. Of course this has been destroyed with education for a technological society with unknown values, and the culture of the US today is the flip side of the one we had.

 

I really think the past education was very important to things like surviving a war without post trauma syndrome, and mental health in general. With proper mental training, we can prevent mental dis-ease. When we based our decisions on principles, rather than our feelings, they are much better decisions, for ourselves and society in general.

[nutronjon]

Nitack

 

Most, if not all, judgments we must make are subjective to a degree. In the case of values it seems to me that a person must have a value that might be considered "an uncaused value" and further values relate to that uncaused value, that sui generis value.

 

What is correct thinking? I would say that correct thinking is that quality of thinking which will best help each of us to reach our goals.

 

How do we establish our goals, i.e. our values? To establish proximate goals we must have an ultimate goal.

 

I think that we must find a ‘value North Star’?

 

It appears to me that we sapiens need a ‘value North Star’ upon which to fix our voyage. We need a reference point upon which we can focus our attention when trying to determine what of value we can and should do in life.

 

Religion, or God, serves as the ‘value North Star’ for some people; for others it is nationalism; for others, that fix is to own as much good stuff as possible; to others it is power; for some it is family; and I guess there are many other such ultimate values.

 

I have tried to examine my inner voices to determine just what my value North Star is and does it need to be changed. I have determined that, by some turn of events, perhaps completely willy-nilly, my value North Star is life on this planet. My guidance for fixing value is ultimately dependent upon its aiding or hindering life on this planet.

 

I often speculate that human life is a hindrance to maximizing the ‘good life’, of all life, on this planet. I often speculate that if all life on this planet were given a vote in this matter that they would throw sapiens overboard.

 

For me that is having a metaphorical understanding of God, rather than a religious one, and I think this is very important to our national well being.

 

Of course, in the past we had shared principles and values, because public education was manifested for that purpose. Vocation training did not become a part of public education until 1917. Communities of any size were mandated to provide free public education long before that. Originally we didn't leave it up to parents to teach their how to be good citizens. It was the other way around. The US was being flooded with immigrants and social chaos was threatening our non authoritarian democratic republic. It was decided by teaching the children a set of American values, the parents would learn and this would make our country strong and united. This education internalized authority and a sense responsibility.

 

Education for technology, externalized authority, because a technological society relies on experts, not self, and leads us to a police state.

[nutronjon]

That is possibly the most profound thing I have read in quite a while, and it is so true. Kudos for an excellent point.

 

This to me is truly a sad sentiment, considering we are capable of reasoning and could turn our planet into an Eden, mutually sharing the gifts of the earth for the benefit of all.

 

In away, I see the difference kind of like the difference between barbarians and civillized people. The aboriginal people occupying the vast territory stretching from Vermont to Ohia, being the perhaps among the most civilized people on earth, although they were not technologically advanced. While the barbarians loved technology and ignored culture. When the US stopped using education to transmit its culture and left moral to the church, that left many in sort of a barbaric statement of mind, and we see examples of this both in gang wars, and at the top of our society, in the form of government and business corruption.

[TheBigDog]

I don't believe in fairness, in fact I think it is overrated. To me fairness is like Pi or the Golden Ratio; it cannot be expressed with absolute precision. You can try to approach being fair, but usually you only find the closer you think you are getting the more people you begin to piss off. That is why I am a capitalist, fairness is in opportunity not in results. Not all opportunities are equal, and not all effort is equal, and not all luck is equal, and not people are equal in their application of their natural skills and abilities. The randomness of chaos theory precludes fairness at the micro level. Fairness can be approximated on the macro level, but only statistically.

 

As I tell my kids, I am not trying to be fair, I am trying to make one of them cry. It is so much easier than being fair. But I try to make them all cry the same amount if I can.

 

Bill

[Donk]

Is it fair that one man, without wealth or personal connections, should have to struggle for a living, while a less able man born into a rich, well-connected family should have things handed to him on a plate? Socialism says that it isn't at all fair ... yet I've seen many socialists working the system as hard as they can to make sure that their children get preferment over others.

 

As Nitack says, nobody can have an objective view. Libertarians lean heavily towards loyalty to self only. Other people spread their loyalties further: to immediate family, extended family, tribe, region, nation, humanity as a whole. All of those views lead to a different meaning of fairness.

 

If you believe that the whole human race is equally deserving, you won't mind some of your taxes being spent on educating an african child out of poverty. (Though you might get a bit upset to find that 90% of the cash has been siphoned off en route to that child's school - that's just not fair!)

 

Colberst makes a case for going further than that, with loyalty to the entire biosphere. I suspect, though, that faced with a button which would cause the whole of humanity to evaporate leaving the planet undamaged, Colberst would not push it. :confused:

[coberst]

Colberst makes a case for going further than that, with loyalty to the entire biosphere. I suspect, though, that faced with a button which would cause the whole of humanity to evaporate leaving the planet undamaged, Colberst would not push it. :evil:

 

 

It is my understanding that human females are born with all of their eggs already in their body. I have often speculated that some form of radiation might some day make every human female egg sterile.

 

If I had the power to sterilize all human female eggs and thus in 100 years clear the planet of humans I very well might do so. At least I would give it careful consideration.

 

I suspect that within the next 200 years we humans will most likely bring an end to our species and possibly the end to all life on this planet.

 

I think that the only way to prevent this is for our species to become much more intellectually sophisticated than it now is and I see little evidence that this will occur. The problems we face today are enormous and while we have the brain power to prevent this we may well not have the necessary character traits to do so. I suspect our species is a dead end species.

[Overdog]

There are some interesting studies suggesting fairness is not entirely a social construct.

 

Monkeys Show Sense Of Fairness, Study Says

 

Serotonin may affect our sense of fairness, scientists report

 

Biological sense of fairness - Google Scholar

[HydrogenBond]

One way to look at fairness is "no cheating". A fair fight does not have to end in a draw. It only has to start with reasonable standards that apply equally to both and nobody is allowed to cheat to win. It is called good sportsmanship with gracious winners and good losers. Cheating can happen in many ways. One opponent can kick the other in the jewels. Another way to cheat is for the buddies of one of the competitors to step and push the opponent off balance. Or you can fix the fight. That is the worse sides of capitalism, socialism, discrimination-nepotism, respectively.

 

To make the fight more fair, when fairness is the rule, is each opponent needs to know how to chose their battles. Even if both play by the rules and don't cheat, Mike Tyson and Pee Wee Herman will appear to be an unfair fight with an unfair result. It is a fair fight if both chose to compete, even if the outcome may not seem fair. If Mike Tyson is required to fight with his legs tied together and use on only arm, it is not a fair fight, since it involves a type of cheating, even if the outcome is more fair. There are two elements of fairness in a fair fight. The ideal is chosen the proper fight so the rules are the same for all, no cheating, and the result will be fair.

 

Relative to culture, not everyone is innately designed at birth to make money. There are Mike Tyson's and Pee Wee Herman's of the money world. The trick of fairness is to open the definition of worth to include more aspects of human ability so almost everyone has a chance to compete in some type of fair fight with a fair outcome. What we are trying to do is have one weight division with a fair result.

 

At one time, character was the gold standard since it was something one only needed their brain and will power to achieve. It does not take resources to do, thereby making it available to all. There were only two weight divisions high and low character. Once worth got shifted to money, being resource intensive, it make it more difficult to have a fair fight with a fair outcome for all. The rich and poor are not enough weight divisions, you need more divisions to sooth the psychological angle.

 

But like in boxing there are champions at each weight division. There is more prestige at the heavy weight division but there is also honor as the fly weight division champ. It comes down to a state of mind of being able to pick your fair fight so the same rules apply, there is no cheating, and the result is a fair result. If one doesn't know how to pick their fight it will always be unfair in one of the two aspect of a fair fight with a fair outcome.

[Mercedes Benzene]

I don't believe in the concept of fairness. Fairness is really just a preference, and as such, differs from person to person. "Fairness" is trivially tossed around, but it means something different to everyone, depending on personal opinion and circumstance.

People often say "It's not fair" or things of that nature, and I think the movie "Labyrinth" sums up the concept succinctly.

 

Sarah: "That's not fair!"

Jareth: "You say that so often. I wonder what your basis for comparison is?"

[coberst]

It appears that we tend to conceptualize well-being as equivalent to wealth. Furthermore it appears that we consider that moral action is something of value and immoral action is something of negative value. We also believe that one must pay his or her debts; we have an accounting system that keeps records of our moral debits and credits.

 

The metaphors that we live by in the matter of morality, and thus in matters of fairness are the combination of:

WELL-BEING IS WEALTH and MORALITY DEMANDS BALANCE and MORAL BALANCE IS FAIRNESS

 

Under such an umbrella of morality we will find that we are carefully attuned to such matters as: reciprocation, revenge, restitution, altruism, turning the other cheek, Karma, right, good, moral strength, moral authority, moral order, moral bounds, and constraints on freedom, moral purity, and morality as health, moral empathy, and moral nurturance.

[Overdog]

"A clear conscience is usually the sign of bad memory." - Steven Wright

 

There are many points of view with respect to the development of a Conscience which guides behavior. Conscience develops through various stages from childhood to adulthood, assuming it isn't interrupted somewhere along the way...

 

Conscience

 

And of course there are many points of view related to Conscience...

 

Conscience - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

I like this one...

Conscience as society-forming instincts

The human animal has a set of instincts and drives which enable us to form societies: groups of humans without these drives, or in whom they are insufficiently strong, cannot form cohesive societies and do not reproduce their kind as successfully as those that do. They either cannot survive in nature, or are defeated in conflict with other, more cohesive groups.

 

Behavior destructive to a person's society (either to its structures, or to the persons it comprises) is bad or "evil." Evil or wrong acts provoke either fear or disgust/contempt. Thus, one who threatens people with a chainsaw and one whose sexual practices we ourselves find revolting might both be labeled "bad."

 

Conscience is what we call those drives that prompt us to avoid provoking fear or contempt in others. We experience the operation of conscience as guilt and shame. We feel guilt when we perceive that others might rightly fear us, and shame when we perceive that others might rightly find us disgusting or contemptible. To avoid these negative and unpleasant feelings, we modify our behavior: thus "conscience" prompts us to behave "rightly."[citation needed]

 

Guilt and shame differ from society to society, and person to person. This both in the content of what acts might provoke these feelings, and the general degree of how strongly these feelings are felt. Indeed, an individual can feel guilt or shame retrospectively for past acts, as one's ideas about right behavior change. A person's circumstances will also alter their ideas of what is "bad." Persons in nations, religious groups, gangs, or other types of groups will - if their group and another are engaged in physical conflict - view members of the other group as "bad," and view members of that gang harming members of their own as wrong acts.

 

A requirement of conscience, then, is the capacity to see ourselves from the point of view of another person. Persons unable to do this (psycopaths, sociopaths, narcissists) therefore often act in ways which are "evil."

 

Another requirement is that we see ourselves and some "other" as being in a social relationship. Persons trying to resolve conflict between groups try (and sometimes succeed) to create a feeling that a social relationship exists, that the groups in conflict all belong to some larger encompassing group. Thus, nationalism is invoked to quell tribal conflict, and the notion of a Brotherhood of Man is invoked to quell national conflicts. There are even appeals to relationships between ourselves and the animals in society (pets, working animals, even animals grown for food), or between ourselves and nature as a whole. The goal is that once people perceive a social relationship, their conscience will begin to operate with respect to that former "other", and they will change their actions.

 

Conscience, then, and ideas of right and wrong, are a result of the kind of animals we are. We even see this in nonhuman animals