Veil of Ignorance

One-line definition: John Rawls’s thought experiment: design a just society as if you don’t know what race, gender, or station you’ll be born into.

How sources describe it

• In the Great Softening research, Kyle invokes it as a test of American fairness: “What country would you live in if you didn’t know what race or gender you were going to be?” — paired with “Where does someone born in poverty have a better economic opportunity?”
• The Fairness Principle — How the Veil of Ignorance Helps Test Fairness (Shane Parrish, recommended by Charlie Munger) — the canonical explainer: a fairness test drawn from John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice, the everyday version of Empathy, and kin to the Tragedy of the Commons.

Where it shows up

• The Hardening Of The Great Softening - Research — used to interrogate the floor vs. ceiling tradeoff of the American Dream.

Related concepts

• John Rawls — originator of the thought experiment and the “original position” it formalizes.
• The American Dream — Stop Calling it Capitalism — applies the veil to the floor-vs.-ceiling tradeoff in American opportunity.
• The Hardening Of The Great Softening - Research — where Kyle deploys the veil as a test of American fairness.