Contrast Who Will Bell the Cat?, where attempts to make a change that would benefit most at the cost of a few are stalled by the fact that no one wants to be "the few." When this fallacy is weaponized, the result is usually a The Window or the Stairs situation. May also result in a Karmic Transformation sometimes forms the 'twist' of a Karmic Twist Ending. If someone pulled the gambit version on him, it was probably a Magnificent Bastard skilled in Gambit Speed Chess. ("Oh, Bob wants to make a more generous division now? Too bad.")Ī character whose thinking falls into the Original Position Fallacy may start out as a Hell Seeker, end up as a Boomerang Bigot, Dirty Coward, or any combination thereof. This trope is also one of the places where Off the Table doesn't shift sympathy away from the person who refuses to re-extend the offer. Call it an "Original Position Gambit" if you will.
Of course, it is also possible that the mayor who did know the outcome and could assign the menu options steered Bob into making a choice that was worse for him, perhaps to damn him by his own words. (Some uses of this trope begin in Act 2, where Bob is now in the thick of a miserable situation and laments that he used to want this to happen.) But in many cases it's too late for regrets: Bob has his vegetables, and now he must eat them. If he is fortunate, the plot will hand him a second chance to approach the question presumably with a bit more compassion this time. The main upshot of this trope is to show that blind self-interest is a bad thing Bob shouldn't have been so quick to give "someone else" a steak-less dinner when he thought his meal would be fine. Unfortunately, he wasn't willing to give away half of 'his' share, and the result was a missed steak. Bob might have suggested giving out half portions of steak so that all the guests could have some meat. you don't know whether you'll be on the good or the bad side of the change).
He would have been wiser to remember the thought experiment from which this trope takes its name: John Rawls' "original position", which says that the only fair laws are those passed from behind the hypothetical "veil of ignorance" (i.e.
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