[FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"

Fri Aug 27 15:20:55 EDT 2021

So, of the privileges you enjoy and list, how many would have to go away before you life would be no longer “decent”?

To be honest, Idon’t know what I am fishing for here, but for some reason the answer to that question seems important to me. I guess, I am thinking that the notion of a decent life, like that of a essential worker, hides some caste implications within it.  That some of us are of a nature that they SHOULD be satisfied with less than would satisfy me. 

N

Nick Thompson

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2021 3:06 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"

Nick,

Thanks for asking how I would characterize the life I'm leading. My life is just great, I'm satisfied with my life. My need for food, safety, love and self-esteem are to a large degree met. Actually, I would rate myself on the self-actualization level on Moslow's hierarchy. 

It's not about me, there are many people in South Africa who's basic physiological needs like food and safety are not met.

Pieter 

On Fri, 27 Aug 2021 at 20:28, <thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com> > wrote:

Pieter, 

If, in your ideal world, their lives are “decent, ” how would you characterize the life that you are leading.  The way you talk sounds a bit like the way we talk about “essential” workers here.  

N 

Nick Thompson

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> > On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2021 1:49 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"

Dave wrote  Why this obsession with "equality?"

I totally agree. But in South Africa we have a large portion of the population that do not have food on the table every day and I simply don't think it's right.

So, my view is that instead of obsessing with "equality", we should obsess that those on the bottom of the economic ladder should at least have decent lives.

Pieter

On Fri, 27 Aug 2021 at 19:11, <thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com> > wrote:

Dave, 

I think of mathematical abstractions as aspirations. 

Thanks for meeting me on my own ground, here.  You will recall that my original project was to try and discover what the metaphysical foundations might be for my  strong negative  response to the idea that castes are tolerable.  What MUST I assume in order to think as I do.   I have for many years suspected that the fundamental difference between comfortable BHL’s like me and comfortable conservatives is that we liberals see our comfort as arising from good luck, and they see their comfort as arising from their merit.   Now, all metaphysics is non-sense, except insofar as it explains and encourages an approach to other people that is … um …. Good.  I think than mine encourages me to approach people less wealthy than I,  not as people deserving of their fate but as people who have, in some sense, made me a gift.   Thus if there is kharma, it should be that the fortunate “should” pay for the correction of any absence of randomness that intergenerational transfers might inflict on the children of the poor.   

I lay this out in this naïve way because I thought it might provoke a strong (and perhaps equally naïve) reaction from Sarbajit which would make it immediately clear what different places we are coming from.  Sarbajit may not answer, in which case I am left having revealed my naivete metaphysics to you bozos with all the consequences that must follow.   

Now remember, nobody ever claimed that all [persons] are created equal.  I think that we all will agree that all persons are created equal [ in] and that  they are endowed … with certain unalienable rights …” “– i.e., they should be equal before the law.  Our differences lie between these two poles.  I take the “and” seriously, and think that, above and beyond the legal rights implied by the “endowment” conveyed by the second clause, they have an obligation of humbleness and gratitude to all those what have their good fortune possible, and that, at the very minimum that obligation should be expressed in an overtly redistributive tax policy.    

But even if you don’t accept the further implications of severing the two clauses in the way that I do, the notion of equality before the law demands much more of the rich than they currently pay.  For instance, when J. P. Morgan IX runs over the faithful k-9 companion of the homeless Max Morgan and Max decides to sue, J.P. can pay the requested amount, including Max’s court costs and be done with it.  If he decides to contest, then both parties should pay into the court costs in proportion to their wealth and the lawyers should be assigned at random.  

To the extent that the list is laced with libertarians, I don’t expect much sympathy from the list for any of this.  If one thing unites libertarians, I would wager, it is the idea that people get what they deserve, or at least, that they have the right to hang on to whatever they get.  

So, Dave:  What is your naïve metaphysics?  

Nick 

Nick Thompson

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> > On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2021 11:17 AM
To: friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"

OK, curmudgeon and misanthrope that I am, I still must ask:

Why this obsession with "equality?"

Outside of the abstraction of math, no one thing is equal, in any sense, to another, let alone all members of a set of things being equal to each other.

Narrowing our attention to human beings. it has already been noted that the dimensions of potential inequality are myriad. It would be impossible to "equalize" all dimensions simultaneously, so pick one, income for example, and equalize on that dimension.

To what end? What outcome would you expect to see? Why would it not be the case that every possible outcome would result in persistent "inequalities" because all the other dimensions of difference would swamp your 'independent variable' of income?

No two human beings are created equal, let alone all "men." (sic) But the unfounded conviction that this must be 'true' demands the invention of myth to explain why it is not. And those myths are, in my opinion, harmful and divisive.

I agree with Pieter (and probably everyone else on this list) that the current state of income inequality is evil and untenable. But, I would disagree with any means of rectifying the situation that is grounded in any kind of myth of individual human "equality."

davew

On Fri, Aug 27, 2021, at 1:34 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

If you just look at the world then "all [persons] are created equal" is just nonsense. What I like to focus on is what can we as a society do, and what can I personally do to move towards making all more equal? It's obviously not practical to expect heaven on earth, but IMO the current state of inequality is just not acceptable, but that's no reason to do nothing. For now I just address the first one, what can we as a society do?

The current state of politics is to a large extent driven by ideology and I would like to see a movement towards a more practical, and humble approach. Like an approach based on the philosophy behind the 2019 economic Nobel prize winners Banerjee, Duflo and Kremer. Their approach to reduce global poverty is experiment-based, taken from science. 

I quote from https://www.forbes.com/sites/camilomaldonado/2019/10/14/nobel-prize-in-economics-won-by-trio-tackling-global-poverty/ :

"Their work, which tackles one of humanities most pressing issues, is based on the idea that to battle poverty, the issues should be broken down into smaller pieces and studied via small field experiments to answer precise questions within the communities who are most affected."

Another quote:

"Poor people are supposed to be either completely desperate or lazy or entrepreneurial but people don’t – we don’t try to … understand the deep root and interconnected root of poverty." - Esther Duflo

I don't mind if anybody wants to understand the deep root and interconnected root of poverty, it's just that I personally, like Esther Duflo, like to focus on what to do about it.

Pieter

On Fri, 27 Aug 2021 at 05:07, <thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com> > wrote:

Dave,

This is, of course, exactly the opposite of my creation myth in which the slate is wiped clean after every generation.  But it would explain a belief system in which well-being was the deserved reward of having lived well in a previous life.  

While I am here, please let me point out that “equal in law” seems a rather constrained understanding “born equal”, given especially that the passage goes on to add equality in law (well rights, actually) as  an additional endowment.  

“… and they are endowed by their Creator by certain rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  

Where is John Dobson when we need him.  Could somebody please forward this note to him.  I don’t have his email address here with me.

Thanks, 

Nick 

Nick Thompson

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> > On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2021 10:17 PM

To: friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> 

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"

Purely from my academic understanding of the subject; the Nick that is, at this moment / in this incarnation, is a product of karma accrued and shed over multiple instances of existence. Hence, what you are now is precisely what you deserve to be. All persons may have been created equal some untold incarnations ago and before they had any opportunity to accrete karma.

davew

On Thu, Aug 26, 2021, at 2:04 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com>  wrote:

Sarbajit,

If I understand the shape of the globe correctly, you are waking up pretty soon, and I would like to pick up the conversation about caste, if you don’t mind.   

I believe the proposition in the subject line.  Given the many ways that proposition can be understood as plainly false, I feel that my belief in it must be defended.

In what sense equal?  Not in genes.  Not in uterine environment. .  Not in early nutrition and cognitive stimulation. Not in social capitol. Not in financial capitol.  Not in access to health care.  Not in exposure to future parasites.  Not in almost anything that I can think of.   So, why is the aphorism not just nonsense.

I find, that if I examine my thinking in this matter, a very primitive metaphysics about the moment of an individual’s creation.  What follows is flagrantly silly, but here it is.   On my account, at the moment of birth a soul is taken out of storage and assigned to a body.  By “person” in the aphorism, I mean the combination of a particular soul with the particular body.  These assignments are at random.  So, for good or ill, no soul deserves the body it gets.   I cannot claim credit for my genes, my good uterine environment, my social capitol, my financial capitol, my bad hip, the draft deferment it provided, my getting a phd at absolute peak of demand for phd’s, my good education, even my FRIAM membership.  They are all consequences of that initial, random assignment.   Now YOU may credit me in some ways, because knowing that all these advantages have been assigned to me may make me useful or pleasing (or the opposite) in many ways, and that may bring me the advantages of your association.  But ==> I <== do not ==>deserve<== those advantages. 

This odd metaphysics leads me to enormous gratitude for the life I have been allowed to live and great sympathy for rigorous taxation of the advantaged, so that so much a soul’s future is not determined by that moment of assignment.

I have no idea what happens to this primitive metaphysics if I try to integrate it with my monism.  The religious scholars among you might recognize as some backass weird perversion of Calvinism. 

Nick Thompson

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> 

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

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