> It's "fair" if you're referring to equal opportunity, not equal outcomes.
Fairness and equality are different. Imagine 2 people of different heights who can't see over a wall - equality is giving them both a ladder of exactly the same height even if that means just the tallest person can now see over the wall, while fairness is giving them each potentially different height ladders so they can both see over the wall.
The PoW equivalent (not factoring in premine) would be to give the first person the tallest ladder, and each successive person vanishingly small ladders, which doesn't really come under fair or equal. PoW with premine puts you in front of the wall so you don't need a ladder, plus it gives you a pile of ladders which you can sell to the people behind the wall, and maybe even some bricks so you can arbitrarily make the wall higher if you want.
Regarding your first paragraph, from Oxford Dictionary, "fairness" means "impartial and just treatment or behavior without favoritism or discrimination."
The above poster was right — it's fair if you're referring to equal opportunity, not equal outcomes.
I've seen this whole ladder analogy commonly used in radical socialist, communist, CRT-type Instagram accounts, used to reframe discrimination in a positive light.
> "impartial and just treatment or behavior without favoritism or discrimination."
That doesn't imply simplistically equal treatment. If the definition was "equal treatment" that's what it would say instead of "impartial and just".
Impartial and just and no favoritism or discrimination isn't meant to literally complain "hey, you're discriminating in favor of car crash survivors getting physical therapy, that's not fair, everyone should get the same physical therapy".
The definition probably would be better to use the term "prejudice" instead of "discrimination". There's no reality in which people see fairness in absolute lack of discrimination. It's fair to discriminate based on something like medical diagnosis or any other sort of fair judgment of situations.
The false dichotomy of opportunity vs outcomes is stupid. We can't make true equality of either, and we can care about both. And just saying that you see extremists use an analogy is not a reason to reject an analogy. Extremists also wear pants or sleep at night. Anyway, an absolutist no-discrimination view is about as extreme as we can find.
Which version of the OED includes the phrase "without favouritism or discrimination" in the definition of "fairness"? The one I have access to, oed.com (OED Third Edition, December 2013; most recently modified version published online September 2021) doesn't include the phrase "without favouritism or discrimination" - its full definition of "fairness" (meaning 6) is "Honesty; impartiality, equitableness, justness; fair dealing. In quot. c1450: sound judgement, good sense."
I'm not an expert on "radical socialist, communist, CRT-type Instagram accounts", but I'd have thought they would be more into equality rather than fairness, e.g. everyone gets the same pay irrespective of how much effort they put in or the quality of results.
> Which version of the OED includes the phrase "without favouritism or discrimination" in the definition of "fairness"?
It sounds like your definition is more of a list of synonyms — I was using the current Oxford dictionary available on iOS and Google.
> I'm not an expert on "radical socialist, communist, CRT-type Instagram accounts", but I'd have thought they would be more into equality rather than fairness, e.g. everyone gets the same pay irrespective of how much effort they put in or the quality of results.
Yes, exactly that, and that's what your comment above was doing, no? You reframed fairness as meaning equality of outcome, and framed equality as meaning equality of opportunity. (Equality of outcome = same end-height, equality of opportunity = same ladder height)
Fairness and equality are different. Imagine 2 people of different heights who can't see over a wall - equality is giving them both a ladder of exactly the same height even if that means just the tallest person can now see over the wall, while fairness is giving them each potentially different height ladders so they can both see over the wall.
The PoW equivalent (not factoring in premine) would be to give the first person the tallest ladder, and each successive person vanishingly small ladders, which doesn't really come under fair or equal. PoW with premine puts you in front of the wall so you don't need a ladder, plus it gives you a pile of ladders which you can sell to the people behind the wall, and maybe even some bricks so you can arbitrarily make the wall higher if you want.