Who Were the Sea Peoples?

Here I wondered about Rawls's use of maximin reasoning: why, despite not knowing my own preferences, wouldn't I just do expected utility maximization? Guided by David Gordon, Kevin Vallier, and Danny Shahar, I have discovered that Rawls's protects himself against my objection. But after reading section 26 of A Theory of Justice , I am perhaps even more perplexed: it seems to me that the way Rawls's fends off this criticism is that he denies the agents choosing behind the veil of ignorance any knowledge of possible political regimes. So Rawls has set things up this way. You are an eating contest. He says to you, "How would you like to choose your meal?" You respond, "Hmm, I can't remember what I like to eat..." He says, "That's right: we wiped out your memory of your tastes on the way in." "Hmm... OK, then, what can you tell me about what is available?" "Absolutely nothing." Yes, I suppose at that ...

Rawls's maximin principle does not seem at all obvious to me. (As stated in A Theory of Justice , this principle holds that rational actors choosing from behind the veil of ignorance will choose social arrangements that maximize the welfare of the least well off.) Imagine I have a choice between two societies, Society One, in which I have 99 chances to be very wealthy, and one chance of being quite poor, versus Society Two, where I have one chance of being very wealthy, and 99 chances of being somewhat less poor than the unfortunate loser in Society One. Why in the world would anyone choose Society Two from behind the veil of ignorance? Rawls posits that people are risk averse: fine, I accept that. But risk aversion is surely a matter of degree: is anyone really that risk averse that they would choose to avoid the minimal risk they face of being the worst off in Society One at the cost of giving up the huge potential upside of that choice? Or consider a somewhat more realisti...