There Are No Fair Fights
All peer groups are arbitrary, and all advantage is unearned.
If Mike Tyson, a heavyweight, were to fight Floyd Mayweather, a featherweight, we might say it was an unfair fight because Mike Tyson is so much bigger. And similarly, if we found someone who has the same weight as Mike Tyson, but who had no training in boxing, we might call that an unfair fight as well. We only call it a “fair fight” once we've accounted for all the variables that we care to account for.
But the fact of the matter is, there are always more variables we could have controlled for. The point when we stop trying to control for additional variables doesn't correspond with any universal laws. It just corresponds with whichever variables we’ve decided not to account for - which usually just comes down to which variables are harder to know in advance, or which variables aren't as well understood in terms of their predictive power, or which variables we think are more likely to change throughout a person’s life.
But what this all comes down to is that, when we say someone had an unfair advantage, what we really mean is that the results of the test were spoiled by the introduction of a variable that we weren’t wanting or intending to test.
In other words: fairness is a moving target, based on how much knowledge we have of the testing space. And so the more we know about which variables control success, the more we can look back at previous “fair fights” to see that they were actually not fair at all.
What we call fair is really just a measure of the relative uncertainty we had of the outcome of a fight before it occurs.
Note that this has implications on our interpretation of pride. If all advantage is unfair, then why should anyone ever be proud of winning anything?
It also has implications on lots of other questions, such as how we should consider college admissions, and how we should incorporate trans athletes into sports competitions. If all advantage is unfair, then why would any advantage or disadvantage of trans athletes be worth arguing about?
If we zoom in a little closer at that second question, it's worth thinking about why we have gender specific sports leagues in the first place. And the reason is, because if we didn't have that divide, fewer women would get to participate in sports at a high level. The existence of women's sports leagues provides a space where women can compete successfully against each other, without being outrun and outsized by men.
This is a good thing, because, for one thing, it's good for as many people as possible to have chances to succeed. And even more importantly, it’s important for people to be able to participate in things, regardless of whether they are likely to “succeed” at them or not.
But it’s important to note that this also doesn't just apply to women’s sports. It also applies to any non-professional sports. The existence of all amateur sports allows people of lesser ability (including men) to participate in activities that they would otherwise not be competitive enough to participate in at the highest levels.
The Inevitability of Differing Ability, and Therefore, of Failure
But this doesn't just apply to sports. It applies to every arena of life. Within any given space, there are always people who will never have the chance to succeed. And there are some people who will never have the chance to succeed in any arena, simply because they will be outcompeted by people with unfair advantages over them.
I said many people will never have “the chance” to succeed, but it's more accurate and simple to simply say that many people will never succeed. Many people will never succeed in sports, many people will never succeed in academics, many people will never succeed in their careers, or in their romantic lives, or in their family life. Some people will never really succeed in any way.
So how do we address this problem? Is it even a problem?
I'll start with the second question: yes it is a problem. It is a problem that many people have to suffer the pain of failure. And it’s a problem that many people have to suffer the additional pain that failure often leads to. For example, if you fail to get a job, you might fail to make rent. Failure can be a very slippery slope.
The only thing that matters in this life is people’s well-being: their happiness and sadness, and their prospects for finding happiness, and avoiding pain and sadness in the future.
So it is in fact of singular importance that we find ways for everyone to be able to succeed, or at least to avoid the pain that failure tends to lead to.
So yes, it is a problem that people’s [unfair] disadvantages lead to failure and suffering. So what do we do about it?
Why Do We Care Who Wins at Things?
Let's go back to sports for a moment. And let's revisit the claim I made at the very beginning of this article. Which is that, when we say someone has an “unfair” advantage, what we really mean is that we’re not testing the variables we’re interested in.
When we consider, for example, the Olympics, why do we care who wins, and what the scores were?
I think one reason is because of pride. People feel pride in their country, and they want the athletes from their country to win. And they'll feel even more proud if the athletes from their country can break a world record.
But if all advantage is unfair, then why should they feel proud? The answer is, of course, that they shouldn't feel proud. Pride is, in fact, one of the greatest enemies to logical thinking.
So if we don't accept pride as a reason for keeping score at the Olympics, what other reasons might we have?
The only other reason I can think of is that it's interesting to know what factors lead to good performances. If certain countries consistently produce athletes that win at certain events (e.g. Jamaica and sprinting), it's interesting to try to figure out why.
It's also interesting to mix and match variables, and see what the best performances are, given different filters. For instance, it's interesting to know the fastest that a cis man has ever run 100 meters. It's also interesting to know the fastest that a cis woman has ever run 100 meters. It's also interesting to know the fastest that a woman from the United States has ever run it. It's also interesting to know the top three best times. Or the top three best times from a given country. It's also interesting to know the heights, weights, testosterone levels, and training methodologies of all of these people.
But you know what would also be interesting to know? The fastest that a trans woman ever ran the 100 meters. Or a trans man. And it would be interesting to know how old they were when they transitioned, and how recently, as well as some of the details about their transition, like what hormones and dosages they were taking.
The fact of the matter is, that it's all interesting to know. In the fact that it's all interesting to know means that it's also all interesting to test. Which is to say, there are really no variables that can spoil the test. All of the tests should be run. Humans, and their individual lives, are different in way too many ways to test all the variables anyway, so you might as well just test everything and try to sort through the data later, rather than preventing some people from even running, and therefore never knowing their test results.
But the reason why we don't do this, the reason why we don't allow trans athletes to compete, is because of pride. Because if, for example, a trans woman were to win the gold medal in the 100 meters, we would worry about the pride of the athletes and countries involved. We would worry that the trans athlete who won would have an undeservedly inflated sense of pride (because we assume she may have had some advantage over the cis athletes), and we would worry that the cis athletes she was competing against would have an undeservedly deflated sense of pride, since they lost the race, against a woman who we assume had an unfair advantage over them.
But the fact of the matter is that all this is stupid, because pride is stupid. And pride is stupid because all advantage is unfair. Anytime anyone ever wins anything, it's because they had some advantage that the other person didn't have and couldn't have.
Because the fact of the matter is, that none of us really controls anything. We don’t control where we come from, how smart we are, who our parents are, what opportunities we are given, or what traumas happen to us.
We don’t even really control how much grit or drive we have. Because, after all, the fuel for both grit and drive is hope. And because whether we respond to problems with hope or despair depends on what our life has taught us is the more appropriate response. And at an even deeper level, grit and drive are still just results of our brain and DNA, which we don’t control.
So in the end, everything we have, everything we are, and everything we’ve achieved, are all the result of things we don’t control. They are all the result of our relative, unfair, unearned advantages that life has bestowed upon us.
Seeking Happiness without Seeking Pride
So we come again to the question, what do we do about all of this?
And it goes back to what I said earlier, that the only important thing in life is trying to ensure that people feel happy and hopeful, rather than sad and despondent.
And the thing is, peoples’ worthiness of feeling happy, rather than sad, has nothing to do with their ability to succeed at anything. It has nothing to do with their advantages or disadvantages. Nobody deserves to feel sad and hopeless. And, more generally and specifically, nobody is more or less deserving of feeling happy or sad than any other person. Every person has equal worth.
Now that said, some people, because of their unfair advantages, will have a higher likelihood offeeling happy throughout their lives. We know this because some people do, in fact, live and die feeling happier than other people who live and die feeling sadder.
We will probably never be able to make everyone equally happy. But a precondition to making everyone equally happy, is figuring out how to make everyone happy at all. And, realistically, we probably won't achieve that either.
But my goal with this article is ultimately just to define the goal: that we should try our best to help everyone avoid sadness and pain and despair. And that we should pursue this goal without considering any other factors other than people’s happiness.
But a big barrier to doing this is our persistent, stubborn attachment to pride, and our failure to recognize that no one should ever feel proud. Because no one ever does anything to deserve to feel proud, because nobody controls anything. Which is why there is no such thing as a “fair advantage. Because indeed, all advantage is unearned. There are no fair fights.
