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Comment by gilbetron | Hacker News Reader

Some people are running a marathon, half way through it is discovered half of them had been given weighted shoes that made them run significantly slower. The organizers and racers agree this is wrong and unfair, and so they make sure everyone has correct shoes for the rest of the race. Yet those half of the racers that had weighted shoes are several miles behind the rest. What would you suggest be done?

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Imagine shoe weight is first randomized among all racers. Then, a second round of additional random weight is given to one half of the runners. Now, the problem is individualist vs collectivist.

From a collectivist view, adding a time penalty that corresponds to which half the runner was in looks good.

From an individualist view, they note some runners who didn’t receive extra weight still got a debilitating amount of weight from the first distribution. They note that some of the extra-weight runners are actually positioned well at the front. Accordingly, their mind reels at the idea of a time penalty applied based on which half the runner was in. “How is it first group runner’s fault that someone else added weight to the second group?” they wonder.

I do understand the individualist objections, but I also don’t accept that doing nothing is the most fair approach.

Okay, let's play the silly analogies game.

Some people from group A enjoy running and can run fast, therefore join marathons and are good at it.

Some people from group B enjoy playing table tennis and have great reflexes, therefore join table tennis tournaments and are good at it.

Some other people realise that marathons have way more A people than B people, and since marathons are prestigious they force equal ratio of A/B people in marathons, effectively reducing the overall quality of marathons and keeping A people (who would thrive) out of them.

Everyone is unhappy, except the ones who forced the outcome and the ones who got into the prestigious sport without deserving it.

Getting ‘into’ the sport is not the measure of merit. It’s an imperfect filter meant to manage the finite space available and to select people who are even actually able to finish the race.

I can’t count how many Ivy League classmates I knew who thought simply being admitted was the end game that proved they were superior. Cheating was rampant. 5.0 weighted GPA perfect SAT Eagle Scouts dropped out.

People angry at the morality of an imperfect collectivist fix in favor of an imperfect collectivist filter are on grounds of curious firmness.

What if some people that would usually be in the group that enjoy playing table tennis realize they actually want to run a marathon and they find out that most marathon gear is only built to help group A run better? What if there were shops that sold marathon gear but there is limited supply and since 9 out of 10 customers are group A people then those few group B that would like to buy the gear cannot because it's always sold out? What if I specifically started selling gear saying that 50% of it was reserved for group B to help them participate in marathon and that I cannot sell it to group A people? That's clearly discrimination, isn't it? And yet...

The problem is that there's so many variables in this equation that it can't simply be resolved in a simple "racism bad" or "discrimination bad" and "if they really wanted to they could but in reality they don't want to". It's a bit more complicated than that.

Bad analogy. That’s like suggesting we give racers in the next race an advantage because of what happened in the current race, which creates obvious unfair outcomes.

The marathon is infinitely long and we rank people on their positions every 5 miles.

That's not what they are suggesting. That's what you came up with as a solution for the problem which they presented. You're arguing against your own conclusion.

The implication is obvious from the context of the discussion. Don’t be disingenuous.

The implication might be obvious because that might be the most immediate solution to an evident problem. Just because the analogy works and you don't like the (obvious) solution it doesn't mean we should throw out the baby with the bathwater in the process.

There is no next race, it’s an ongoing relay.

Different people living different lives is closer in analogy to different runners running different races, imo.

You give weighted shoes to other people in another location a few years down the line, right?

Or you move the affected runners up to a position they would have been in.

Oh, I thought you were making an analogy.

Bad analogy. It’s already established that there are innate differences between males and females even shortly after birth, and that translates to different behavioral outcomes and career preferences.

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