What do you consider to be the fair treatment of yourself and others?

If you’re like most people then your thoughts and ideas about what is fair are biased, but that’s okay, so are mine and everyone else’s.

So, what’s the problem with being biased?

Well, the biggest issue is that being biased leads to unfairness.

So, how to solve for bias?

The truth is that solving for bias is probably impossible until and unless you can get everyone to agree on the definition of what’s fair. However, there is a simple but fun thought experiment that you can work through occasionally, that can help you check your ideas of what fairness might look like.

The experiment is called the Veil of Ignorance. The “veil of ignorance” is a method of determining the morality of issues. It asks a decision-maker to make a choice about a social or moral issue and assumes that they have enough information to know the consequences of their possible decisions for everyone but would not know, or would not take into account, which person they are.

Or in simpler terms.

If you could reshape society from scratch, what would it look like?

How would you distribute wealth and power?

Would you make everyone equal or not?

How would you define fairness and equality?

And here’s where it gets interesting. What if you had to make those decisions without knowing who you would be in this new society?

While I know that in reality, this is impossible to do, what if just for today you assume that you and everyone you encounter are equal in every sense of the word. They are you and you are them. And you treat them with the same amount of love, compassion, equality, and as fairly as you like to be treated.

Doing so just for today will not change society, but it might just change the life of one person you meet today.

P.S. Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it, please share it with one person you love.