H. P. Grice's conversational maximin

maximin rule Ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of action, philosophy of social science A strategy for choosing under uncertainty, according to which we should consider the worst possible outcome for each choice and adopt the one that has the least bad consequences. According to Rawls, because the rational agents in the original position are ignorant of their own initial positions in the society they are devising, they will reasonably employ the maximin rule for choosing principles of justice. The rationality of this strategy under conditions of ignorance is the basis for Rawls’s difference principle, according to which a just society would make the situation of its worst-off group as good as possible. While the maximin rule seeks to maximize the minimum gain, a related strategy governed by the minimax rule enjoins rational agents to minimize their maximum loss. The two rules are generally taken to be equivalent. “The maximin rule tells us to rank alternatives by their worst possible outcomes: we are to adopt the alternatives the worst outcome of which is superior to the worst outcome of the others.” Rawls, A Theory of Justice