Outlier

In my opinion, I think equality is definitely the most defensible intrinsic good. In the example in class, we were asked to choose between a world (A) where one person's well-being stood out while the others remained low, and a world (B) where everyone was equal.

When the numbers started to decrease, it seemed like the second world was at some kind of disadvantage. I however, disagree. The way I see it is that the second world maintained its well-being very uniformly. While the well-being units decreased, everyone still had the highest amount. Therefore, there was really no disadvantage since no one would know of what was missing since everyone had the same thing. World A on the other hand, has a larger impact when the numbers shift around. The disadvantages are a lot clearer, because of the presence of the outlier. No matter how low the units get for World B, I feel like it can be normally distributed somehow the same way exams are curved. An A paper in one semester of a class might have been a B paper in another. I feel like with the presence of one person standing by so much, to the point that it is an outlier, it should not be included in the data set for calculating the total units of well-being.

Having said that, I do not think that there can be perfectly equal amounts of well-being, so I believe that have numbers closest to the average should be counted as equal.