Talk:Original position

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[edit] Veil of ignorance

The concept of veil of ignorance was referred to, and simply explained, in an episode of the TV drama The West Wing. In season 4, episode 17, teleplay by Aaron Sorkin, the White House deputy communications director Will Bailey uses the concept to illustrate the philosophy behind the Democrats' tax policy. The policy proposes to increase income tax rates for top-earners by one per cent. One of a group of White House interns asks why those people should pay more tax when they have had to work hard to achieve their position. Bailey replies: "In answer to your question about why the [doctor] should accept a greater tax burden in spite of the fact that his success is well-earned, it's called the veil of ignorance. Imagine before you're born: you don't know anything about who you'll be, your abilities or your position - now design a tax system". An intern queries, "Veil of ignorance?", to which Bailey replies, "John Rawls". PHJ 14:18, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

An easy way to illustrate the veil of ignorance is to imagine you are about to be born into society. You have no knowledge of, or control over, your social position, ie whether you will be prince or peasant, rich or poor, ugly or beautiful, clever or dull. Now: how would you prefer to see society structured? If Rawls is right, in your ignorance you would prefer his basic position and for a rule that says that everyone (and in particular the talented) can strive for advancement provided the people at the bottom of the heap are not thereby made worse off. - Pepper 150.203.227.130 12:59, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Excellent summary! Thanks! Piepants 18:09, 15 August 2006 (UTC)Piepants

Another way to describe the construct is to think of game theory in which every player's choice of available strategies is the same. This sameness is constructed by having Rawls assume that his hypothetical world has players who don't know their actual available choices, hence they believe that their choice set of strategies are symmetric with respect to all players. That is, not only does each person know that he doesn't know so must assume the sameness, they also each know that the other players also know that they know this and so on in infinite regress. Rawls also assumes that each person does not know his/her own tatstes or needs or desires so that their utility or shall I say, anticpated utility function can all be assumed the same. Each player assumes that all the otheers have their own utility. Hopefully with a symmetric set up, we will get a symmetric Nash equilibrium solution. However, it is entirely possible that all players are risk lovers, so Rawls (sub silento) makes the unstated assumption that they are all risk averse or how else would they all select a maximin rule? John wesley 18:16, 15 August 2006 (UTC)