I’ve always thought there should be a version where the hare gets eaten by a fox halfway through the race, while the tortoise plods along safely inside its armored mobile home.
On the meta-level, I’m not sure “quickness beats persistence” is a helpful lesson to teach. At the scale of things many LessWrongers would hope to help accomplish, both qualities are prerequisites, and it would be a mistake to believe that you don’t have to worry about the latter just because you’re one of the millions of people who are 99.9th percentile at the former.
On the base level, a non-bullshit version of this fable would look more like “There once was a hare being passed by a tortoise. Neither of them could talk. The end.”
“Fairness” depends entirely on what you condition on. Conditional on the hare being better at racing, you could say it’s fair that the hare wins. But why does the hare get to be better at racing in the first place?
Debates about what is and isn’t fair are best framed as debates over what to condition on, because that’s where most of the disagreement lies. (As is the case here, I suppose).
Winston Rowntree, Non-Bullshit Fables
I’ve always thought there should be a version where the hare gets eaten by a fox halfway through the race, while the tortoise plods along safely inside its armored mobile home.
http://abstrusegoose.com/494
Link.
On the meta-level, I’m not sure “quickness beats persistence” is a helpful lesson to teach. At the scale of things many LessWrongers would hope to help accomplish, both qualities are prerequisites, and it would be a mistake to believe that you don’t have to worry about the latter just because you’re one of the millions of people who are 99.9th percentile at the former.
On the base level, a non-bullshit version of this fable would look more like “There once was a hare being passed by a tortoise. Neither of them could talk. The end.”
Now that you mention it, a fable, by definition, requires bullshit.
“Moral: life is inarguably a depressingly unfair endeavor.”
FTFY:
What’s unfair about that quote? The faster one did win. This would exemplify your moral.
“Fairness” depends entirely on what you condition on. Conditional on the hare being better at racing, you could say it’s fair that the hare wins. But why does the hare get to be better at racing in the first place?
Debates about what is and isn’t fair are best framed as debates over what to condition on, because that’s where most of the disagreement lies. (As is the case here, I suppose).
The quote is the next line from the quote source.
Huh, okay.
On a similar note, there’s http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/463/transcript—search for “Act Two”.
http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3t0l49/
Sorry, saw it earlier today and couldn’t resist.