May 292011
In some of the darker days of my existence, certain well-meaning people would try to comfort me with a sentiment like the following:
You should be happy. You have so many advantages. You are better off than 99% of all people who have ever lived, and probably better off than 90% of all people alive today.
So perhaps nine out of ten people are worse off than I am in important respects.
This fact is supposed to make me feel…better?
3 Responses to “The fallacy of relative position”
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That is exactly how I feel.
It’s the whole one-way fallacy (not sure if it has a name, that’s what I call it): refusing to consider that the reverse conclusion might be true. Their way of thinking is: “you think your life is bad, but your life is better than 90% of the world, therefore you should feel lucky” and they simply refuse to see the reverse conclusion, “you think your life is bad, but your life is better than 90% of the world, therefore life sucks.”
I’ve reflected on the idiocy of that statement a number of times. I never quite understood why or how the suffering of billions of other people should make me feel better about my own suffering. If anything it always made me feel worse.
You have a great blog keep it up!