Only if we make it so. — Banno

This.

... a social system that is on average fair and just? — apokrisis

A post-scarcity, demarchic [democratic] social system is as "fair and just" as I can imagine. — 180 Proof

But, wait, such as system will not be an equilibrated balance between existential opposites - namely between that democratic system the quote affirms as an extreme, on the one hand, and the totalitarian extremes wherein scarcity proliferates because the totalitarian doesn't give a shit about the people, this as the existential/conceptual opposite of the former - so it can't be what we ought strive for. We must have moderate evil in order for the good to obtain - well, not good, since this is an extreme polar that is to be shunned, but that which is optimally beneficial to us without being itself good: an ideal balance in everything ... such that none are better in any capacity than any other. After all, good as the polar extreme of what is possible in the spectrum of good and bad is the enemy of what is good! (all this is sarcasm on my part, to those who are reading this a bit too literally).

A very pertinent satire regarding this whole notion of equality between opposite extremes (rather than equality in intrinsic value despite the differences which make some better than others in different attributes ... this latter being a completely different ball park as issue) can be found in Kurt Vonnegut's short story "Harrison Bergeron". I won't be quoting the entire summary, but to get the ball rolling:

In the year 2081, the Constitution dictates that all Americans are fully equal and not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else. The Handicapper General's agents enforce the equality laws, forcing citizens to wear "handicaps": masks for those who are too beautiful, earpiece radios for the intelligent that broadcast loud noises meant to disrupt thoughts, and heavy weights for the strong or athletic. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron

... hence delivering an equilibrated balance between the best and the worst as opposite extremes pertaining to possible human attributes. A dystopia indeed.

----

Edit: just to clarify the issue of demarchy (and why putting a strike-though in the quote above might possibly have been an error made in haste by me): on second musing, to have a functional and thereby persisting lottocracy one must have all the ideal values of a democracy thoroughly instilled in, not just some, but all of the populace. Imperfect thought it was, as can be partly illustrated by Ancient Athens.

Here, though, were such an ideal state of human society to ever be obtained not just for some but for all within a society, one would no longer be able to differentiate between the literal democracy (likely no longer in any way a valid republic), a governance of anarchy (here strictly specifying a lack of any separation between the state and the people themselves, this such that governance is under the full sway of all people's voluntary cooperation at all times, even when differences occur), and, thirdly, a non-hypocritical governance of communism (wherein - as can be more or less found in kibbutz society - all economy, and hence ownership of goods, from social to personal, is in some way cooperative; resulting in a fully voluntary (rather than in any way imposed) economic system of community-ism). Considering that this state of affairs might be a bit over the top for most as to what is considered a possible global society from today's standards - while I don't claim that such system of demarchy, i.e. lottocracy, is logically impossible to fathom as an extreme form of fairness and justice - I merely prefer to sponsor strict democratic values as they can be found in any system comprised of a republic (i.e., representative democracy as democracies function in today's world).

Long story short, a "post-scarcity demarchy" might well be imaginable by some as a possible future state of being to ideally progress toward, and, if so, then there wasn't much warrant for me to replace it with the notion of "democracy". Still, I find the more general notion of a "post-scarcity democracy" to be hard enough to achieve as it is. So I used this notion instead.

All of this tangential ado mainly oriented toward @180 Proof. Just in case it might in any way matter.

Fairness is not something you we come across in the world.

It's something you we do in the world.

(Edited for )

How does it make sense to ask which of these is closest to thermodynamic equilibrium?

If there is such a thing as a "world" you call "fake" you seem to have the need to bolster defenses against, perhaps it begs a question as to your own understanding.

Is "reality" fair and just? Is a tool created for one purpose unable to be used for the opposite?

Sure, there's a natural dynamic. It seems for one thing to live, another thing must die. This is the problem in thinking, sentient beings. It doesn't seem "right" or "moral". Even if one's "morality" is efficiency in disguise.

Nevertheless, we must abstract the fact we have the ability to recognize when a thing is wrong, immoral, etc., and from there choose what we wish to "do about it", per se. So, the possibility of such is there, as is the chance of the opposite. What happens next is up to you, I suppose it could be said. :smile:

Fairness is not something you come across in the world.

It's something you do in the world. — Banno

A bit too laconic for accuracy's sake here. Since the world consists of multiple doers and not just oneself, one can and at time does come across fairness in world - for one example, by traveling to societies, communities, or else clicks that are far more just than one's own. (For a more concrete example, it's what at the very least once upon a time made the US a place where many a foreigner desired to reside as a national: the fairness aspect to life which certain foreigners did not encounter in their own home country. This before the American Dream became strictly that of becoming rich. Different can of worms though.)

Personally, I so far like the "only if we make it so" far better as an terse but precise answer.

---------------

How does it make sense to ask which of these is in thermodynamic equilibrium? — Banno

I'll wait for an answer with bated breath. Kinda

Fairness is not something you we come across in the world.

It's something you we do in the world.

(Edited for ↪javra
) — Banno

Thanks, but this still dismisses a crucial facet. The relative fairness, or lack thereof, of the world we're born into - as another example - is not a result of something we do, but is what we come across.

There is no pure-reason explanation for suffering. If you insist anyway, you will fight against the absurd until you give up and call the suicide prevention hotline.

I feel like this hotline makes ends meet solely off of TPF members.

A post-scarcity, demarchic social system is as "fair and just" as I can imagine. — 180 Proof

:up:

How does it make sense to ask which of these is closest to thermodynamic equilibrium? — Banno

Hah. That is the problem of argument by Hallmark card cutesiness. You would have to be thermodynamically-informed enough to tell the difference between a closed Gaussian equilbrium and an open powerlaw one.

So sadly, an F.

Although I'm quite surprised by this, in a pleasant manner I'll add, I here fully endorse Banno's laconic answer (thought doubtless we'll differ on the ontological details):
Only if we make it so. — Banno — javra

That is also my own facile answer to this thread's title question. The physical universe is not a God to be held responsible for my personal flourishing or perishing. Instead, the world in which I live & act is an amoral (neutral) context for my own moral choices. So, if I want the world to be more Good and less Evil, it's my job as a moral agent to attempt to "make it so". Unfortunately, as you noted, our personal Utopia votes are seldom unanimous ; because we all "differ on the ontological details". Hence, the necessity for a moderate philosophical attitude toward the extremes of Good & Evil. :smile:

Is the real world fair and just?

Good~evil is tarred jargon as it does speak to the simplicities of reductionist models of causality. But we can sort of get what the terms are getting at from a systems perspective and its ecosystem style, richness constructing, hierarchical complexity. — apokrisis

Good vs Evil is indeed a religious concept, often expressed in dualistic terms of Gods and Devils. But the OP was not asking about such a two-value reductionist model. In the title, the question is about "Fair & Just", which are evaluations of the whole world from a "why me?" personal perspective. When Vyse noted that "religious and spiritual beliefs promote the assumption that the universe is fair", the premise seems to be that the moral playing ground is not tilted in favor of the black or white team. In other words, the game of life is not rigged. So, each of us can expect to get our "just deserts" : punishment for wicked acts, and blessings for virtuous behavior. To a secular philosopher though, it should be obvious that Nature is fair & balanced only in the sense that it has no agenda pro or con "poor little me".

However, some who say "everything happens for a reason" seem to believe that --- although the natural world does not reward or punish --- its equitable system of actions & reactions*1 at least gives each of us a fighting chance to get what we deserve. Yet, when our personal experience implies that we don't get our Just Deserts, some may look for a super-natural force to blame, or to petition. For example, monotheistic religions originally had only a single universal Cause for every Effect. So, a duality had to be invented : an imaginary adversary who opposed the "perfect" works of the Good God. The polytheistic Pagans though, had a slightly different explanation for the imperfections of the Logos-designed world : an inferior demi-god to be held responsible for any defects. Either way, the dualistic worldview tends to portray the universe as a battleground of praiseworthy Good vs reproachable Evil.

On the other hand, I'm inclined to interpret your "systems perspective" in terms of philosophical Holism. Which is not a reductive Either/Or analysis, but an all-things-considered frame of reference. When viewed as a unique system, the Cosmos is neither Good nor Evil, but morally neutral. So, it's the personal perspective that judges general causality from a local point of view : "why me?". However, some philosophical systems, such as Stoicism and Buddhism, advise taking a more Holistic view of whatever happens : "why not me?" Instead of praising or condemning the gods for picking me for pain, or not protecting me, I must learn to deal equitably with both pain and pleasure, both Good and Evil. From that "systems perspective", in which I am merely a cog in a big wheel, the world is Fair & Just, in the sense that I am not singled-out, but an integral part of the whole system. Fortunately though, we humans are moral agents, who have the power to design a sub-system of our own : an ethical society, which is intended to be Fair and Just. Given more time, perhaps we --- moral agents collectively --- will be able to evolve our own little whole/hale/healthy Utopia, where Peace & Justice reign on Earth. :smile:


*1. Proportional Action and Reaction :
Newton's third law simply states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
https://spacecenter.org/science-in-action-newtons-third-law-of-motion/

Fortunately though, we humans are moral agents, who have the power to design a sub-system of our own : an ethical society, which is intended to be Fair and Just. — Gnomon

The problem here is perhaps expecting a rosy outcome in terms of a human social geography where “all are winners”. The natural dynamic at the heart of the human social order is a balancing of competition and cooperation. This is how the basic systems dynamic of global constraints in interaction with local degrees of freedom plays out in a biological species that then becomes organised by the greater entropic possibilities of language and reason.

So for a system to persist as an entropifying structure, it has to develop some set of global constraints - a way of life - that shapes the individual degrees of freedom within it - the people whose actions then reconstruct that way of life in its adapted and thus persistent form.

The human social system depends on having rational agents who can make creative choices as that is what allows sapiens to climb up the entropic ladder. We can go from being a few thousand foragers to a few million agriculturalists to billions of oil burning technologists. The ability to be strongly self interested in our actions is the kind of people that our social order is interested in producing.

But then to close the system as a persisting state of generalised progress, society must also have its long run political and cultural institutions. It must be able to place constraints on its people so that the individual energy is statistically at least managing to recreate the same way of life for a next few generations. A cooperativity has to also be prioritised to match the production of a useful degree of free self interest.

So neither competition nor cooperation are bad in themselves - something to be suppressed rather than promoted. But the art is in tuning the balance between individualism and institutionalisation.

The moral order is thus a negotiation between these two distinct imperatives. To foster the kind of rational agent who can live within a global order and play hard by the rules.

In a perfect world, that might look rather like social democracy. :razz:

But regardless, at least the debate over fair and just can start with this recognition that a system depends on this apparently “paradoxical” dichotomy of being a system of constraints that must be in the business of shaping up the degrees of freedom that can keep rebuilding that very same persisting state of generalised constraints.

Like a biological system, it is all about the capacity to repair and reproduce. The body of the organism is constantly falling apart. But it only has to rebuild itself a little faster than it decays to stay ahead in the entropification game.

So as a society, the same applies. You don’t need perfect and idealised outcomes for all to succeed in the basic game of existing as a long run entropy system. You only have to achieve enough repair and reproduction of the fabric which keeps everything hanging together.

That is basically the philosophy of a social democracy with its free market and safety nets. It isn’t a utopian vision of selfless and individually perfect beings. It is a recognition that the game just has to be kept going in a statistical fashion.

This is what pragmatism looks like from the political point of view.

In a perfect world, that might look rather like social democracy. — apokrisis

Isn't that the role of Philosophy, to deduce both the Good and the Bad aspects of the Real and Cultural worlds, and to devise a new more Ideal social system that will be better for A> those who seek justice, or B> those who seek power? Perhaps to emulate Nature in its physical perfecting tool : survival of the fittest, by means of competitive selection. Or to discover a new metaphysical tool for increasing moral fitness.

Unfortunately, as Marx noted, the thinking philosophers usually leave the implementation of their Utopias to doing politicians, who tend to sort themselves into dueling dualistic categories, such as Liberals and Conservatives, or Nationalists and Communists. What can we learn from the failures of either/or political paradigms? :cool:

Karl Marx politics :
“The philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways,” he famously said. “The point, however, is to change it.”
https://blog.apaonline.org/2021/04/29/the-point-is-to-change-the-world/

Hence, the necessity for a moderate philosophical attitude toward the extremes of Good & Evil. :smile: — Gnomon

To which I might only add that ethics may be of more help here than physics. For while physics tells us what is the case, ethics acknowledges that we might well make things otherwise.

Not that analysis is wrong. But maybe not quite right, either.

Perhaps to emulate Nature in its physical perfecting tool : survival of the fittest, by means of competitive selection. — Gnomon

Nature should be our instructor for sure. Unless you are indeed a theist or idealist.

But Darwinian competition was the first draft of science. It was a reductionist view that certainly reflected the early harshness of an industrialising and capitalistic Britain.

Over in Germany, there was the alternative of Naturphilosophie. A search for a more systems view of nature.

Science got there eventually with ecology. The global cooperation of species was added to their "red in tooth and claw" Darwinian competition. And the third ingredient of thermodynamics was added in explicit fashion. An ecology is an organismic state of order, closed for causality, in being a balance of competition and cooperation that maximises a stable state of entropy production.

So if we applied ecological science to global human politics then that would be the sound basis for a long term human plan. You would have something concrete and measurable, not just a lot of pie in the sky ethical precepts and other idealistic imperatives which folk say are truths that all must obey.

Unfortunately, as Marx noted, the thinking philosophers usually leave the implementation of their Utopias to doing politicians, who tend to sort themselves into dueling dualistic categories, such as Liberals and Conservatives, or Nationalists and Communists. — Gnomon

Dichotomies must emerge to organise any system. Communism failed because it was an idealistic, one-sided dream of a workers' paradise. People would own the means of entropy production but only take from it according to their needs. There was no natural balance in this rosy vision so of course it tipped over into something else in practice.

The thing instead is to expect a functioning society to organise itself into dichotomies. Some version of a complementary division is going to emerge that will defeat any simplistic notions of "everyone lives fair and equal". But then ecology teaches us that what this looks like when it is in a healthy balance is that a society feels like a collection of interest groups or social institutions that exists over all its hierarchical scales.

Kant was quite an eco-thinker – in the Germanic tradition – and framed this as his triangle of peace. The social ideal is the community. And the challenge of a fast paced growing system like the modern techological world is to build community across all possible scales. From tennis clubs to leagues of nations.

Communities recognise rights and responsibilities. Private freedoms and public duties. They enshrine some balance of the two that works for their members. And the political trick is create a power broking system that doesn't get frozen into stand-off but which can negotiate towards whatever is the balance across all its levels and types of communities.

If you find that your nation is becoming entrenched in a competitive divide, you can engineer a different system where cooperation and negotiation force the two sides into mutual accomodation. A two party state – the product of one vote for one party – can be broken up by proportional representation or other ways of forcing political opponents into alliances of convenience.

You can never fix a broken society by applying more philosophical idealism. Communism proved that. Facism likewise. It is frankly the dangerous path.

But you can apply a pragmatic and technocratic systems science understanding. You can do what a Singapore, Norway or New Zealand does. Innovate politically – it helps to be small and centralised. And figure out your competitive entropic edge – are you the pitstop of the world's busiest shipping lane, the beneficiary of a one-time oil bonanza, or an empty place that can grow grass really cheaply?

Dichotomies are not bad. They are natural. A system naturally divides itself in a complementary fashion. That is the basis of any order.

But then dichotomies do have to prove themselves by being complementary and thus synergistic or "win/win" when correctly balanced. The system goes on to flourish as a collective.

Of course, flourish is how we talk about entropy production, as in the end, everything is grounded in the ecology that is organising a steady energy throughput. To repair and reproduce the fabric of a society, it has to be living off some kind of disposable income. It has to be able to direct a material flow to the task of maintaining the community.

Ethical choices then open up within this context. If a society feels safe and secure in terms of its food and shelter, it can start to look further up the chain of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It can have interest groups organised around drag racing or flower arranging – each free to have its ethical debates about what "good and bad", or "fair and just", means within their institutional settings.

But humans can't just wish away the realities of their ecological realities. Societies must blend the dichotomy of competition and cooperation. And they must acknowledge that entropy production is how nature across all its possible levels is how it pays its negentropic rent.

Not that ↪apokrisis analysis is wrong. But maybe not quite right, either. — Banno

Doing the usual? Offering judgement and having no argument. Standing on the sideline, pretending you are winning when you aren't even in the game. :yawn:

Well, I suspect that will go along with your scientism. Of course, I don't think it is I who is not in the game. You do not appear to even see the ethical considerations. But my posts only elicit more spit. I'll leave you to it.

Edit: just to be clear, here are my two contributions to this thread:

• Fairness is not found in the world, it is found in what we do about it.
• The way things are does not determine what we ought do about them.

You do not appear to even see the ethical considerations. — Banno

You do not appear to have even argued for them. So how could I know what you have in mind?

I'll leave you to it. — Banno

You never joined. And so won't be missed.

Well, I suspect that ↪Gnomon will go along with your scientism. — Banno

Oh yeah. A classic bit of your social manipulation. The mean girl asking if you really want to be seen hanging out with him. :up:

Is the real world fair and just? — Gnomon

Can a planet be fair and just? Who's asking? Who or what could answer the question? Maybe our planet is indifferent?

'The world' has been in business for 4.543 billion years. Things have changed over time. Life started on earth about 3.7 billion years ago and filled the oceans with lots of microbes. Later, new organisms came along and wiped out the old life (killing it with poisonous oxygen). Fair? Just? The earth got hotter, cooler, wetter, dryer. and so on. Every change benefitted some things and ruined others. The earth is what it is--a dynamic rocky planet among many in the galaxy which is among many in the universe.

Fairness and Justice had nothing to do with it and such ideas didn't come along until VERY recently. Was it fair and just that dinosaurs were killed off? It wasn't their fault, after all. They were what they were. Big rock plows into the Yucatan Peninsula. Climate changes drastically. Sic transit gloria dinosaurs. Lots of other creatures survived. Birds, mammals, insects, plants, fungi....Will it be fair and just when our species dies out?

As allegedly sentient beings who like to toss around terms like "fair" and "just" when talking about planets and persons, we COULD do better. Why don't we? Because we are what we are, and being good, fair, just, honorable, kind, loving, thoughtful, humble, and so on, is not something we are able to be more often than some of the time, Some people have difficulty being good ever. One day we will be plowed under like millions of species before us by indifferent forces.

In any case, it does't matter, because fairness and justness applies to the species that thought of the concept and has spilt much ink on the matter. We could do better, and that would make life on the indifferent planet more pleasant, but don't hold your breath, because we are what we are.

here are my two contributions to this thread:
Fairness is not found in the world, it is found in what we do about it.
The way things are does not determine what we ought do about them. — Banno

Sounds reasonable.

Quick clarification - based upon this if fairness is not found in the world, then unfairness is not found either?

Fairness and unfairness are the perspectives of conscious creatures (well, humans specifically) who hold views subject to evaluative ideas?

I am not sure what I'm answering in the OP. But, I have comments for the following:

*2. Just World :
The just-world hypothesis refers to our belief that the world is fair, and consequently, that the moral standings of our actions will determine our outcomes. This viewpoint causes us to believe that those who do good will be rewarded, and those who exhibit negative behaviors will be punished. — Gnomon

Nothing could be further from the truth!
The world's terrain, climate, and natural resources were not created equal or fair. There is no reason, period. And yet, primates had found themselves distributed in regions where survival was close to impossible -- food is scarce, growing things would drain your blood, weather is murderous, and the climate hosts a whole bunch of deadly viruses.

The calamities and weather disasters are not created equal. The dinosaurs got wiped out unexpectedly. They themselves did not expect to be erased from the face of the earth just like that.

Oh yeah, the neanderthals -- to me it is bullshit to say that because they didn't have better social skills than homo sapiens, they perished. Perhaps, nature wasn't kind to them when it comes to developing their parietal region.

*4. LOGOS :
By using the term logos, he meant the principle of the cosmos that organizes and orders the world that had the power to regulate the birth and decay of things in the world. The cosmos was, as he saw it, constantly changing, and he conceived logos as the organizing principle of change. — Gnomon

Sometimes I don't believe this. The neanderthals could have been the modern humans of today. What is the organizing principle?

yep.

There’s also a sort of latent animism in some of our expressions in that we do attribute intent to things around us as well as to people.

Your definition of “just world” itself is an unfair game being that no one born agreed to it. If anything, that’s using people for an ends of whatever game of Justice, Karma, or otherwise this world represents.

We are used. Enough said about “just world”. Add to that contingencies of luck, cause-and-effect, our own striving nature, individual pathologies, and a self-reflective animal that knows its own condition- forget about it.

:up:

To which I might only add that ethics may be of more help here than physics. For while physics tells us what is the case, ethics acknowledges that we might well make things otherwise. — Banno

We may even gain some philosophical insights from Biology. My latest blog post is entitled : Synchrony : Small World Networks*1. In 1926, during the heyday of Quantum Physics, biologist Jan Smuts*2 intuited the general principle of Holism as an organizing force in biological Evolution. His acumen was immediately recognized by those who later became labeled as "New Agers". But it was overshadowed by the Atomic bomb builders, until the 21st century emergence of Complexity, Systems and Information sub-disciplines of science. As illustrated in the Oppenheimer movie, physics sans ethics can solve a temporary technical problem, but create an even greater moral dilemma.

Even Democratic politics, as currently practiced, is inherently us vs them dualistic. And a second American civil war is in the wind. But, are we ready for a more Holistic form of government? Will obedient robots, or common-sense-less AI do better than willful & selfish humans at self-government? Sigh! Idealistic Ethics has always been too feckless to overcome the predator/prey pragmatism of Politics. “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” — Martin Luther King, Jr. :smile:


Gnomon reply to :
Fortunately though, we humans are moral agents, who have the power to design a sub-system of our own : an ethical society, which is intended to be Fair and Just. Given more time, perhaps we --- moral agents collectively --- will be able to evolve our own little whole/hale/healthy Utopia, where Peace & Justice reign on Earth.

*1. Small World Networks
http://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page24.html

*2. Jan Smuts :
Albert Einstein counted Smuts as one of approximately ten people that truly understood his theory of relativity.
https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/jan-smuts-reconsidered

↪apokrisis
Well, I suspect that ↪Gnomon will go along with your scientism. Of course, I don't think it is I who is not in the game. You do not appear to even see the ethical considerations. But my posts only elicit more spit. — Banno

I don't want to get in the middle of a spitting contest. But I'll point out that 's discussion of Ecology hardly qualifies as materialistic "scientism". Ecology does have practical applications, but its primary consideration is ethical & holistic*1 : the universe is more than an aggregation of objects & forces. For us earthlings, it's also an association of beings.

Regarding the ethical status of our world, Oughts and Values -- fair & just -- are not physical things to be studied by material scientists, but philosophical concepts that may even guide the investigations of biological scientists. It typically views the world as a holistic interactive integrated system. In which, only a few species are capable of ethical considerations. That's why homo sapiens are often viewed as the caretakers of non-human world*2 : the arbiters of fairness & justice.

The topical question of Fairness & Justice was not referring to the material world, as some have erroneously assumed. Instead it's about the "world" as an Ethical System of sentient beings. FWIW, I value the calm & rational inputs of both Banno and Apo. :grin:


*1. Ecological Ethics :
Ecological (or environmental) ethics is the study of what humans, individually and corporately, ought to value, ought to be, and ought to do in relationships with all other beings and elements in the biosphere.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/ecology-ethics

*2. Who is the caretaker of the world?
Every generation serves as caretaker of this world | Secretary-General : United Nations in India.Apr 17, 2024

How does it make sense to ask which of these is in thermodynamic equilibrium? — Banno

The physical analogy between a Fair & Just distribution of social states, and thermodynamic equilibrium (balanced measure) is a philosophical metaphor, not to be taken literally. :cool:

Why do people use the term, 'Equal' instead of the proper term, 'equilibrium'?
Equilibrium is the balance of dynamic interaction—when the interactions being measured become “equal”.
https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-use-the-term-Equal-instead-of-the-proper-term-equilibrium
Equilibrium : a state in which opposing forces or influences are balanced.

JUSTICE IS BALANCED : psychically, not physically

Ecology does have practical applications, but its primary consideration is ethical & holistic*1 : the universe is more than an aggregation of objects & forces. For us earthlings, it's also an association of beings. — Gnomon

Yep. The holistic ecological perspective brings into focus our real world ethical concerns of today.

The obvious one is whether humans have some kind of right or mandate to transform the planet into an anthroposphere in our own image.

Are we just doing nature’s work in burning all the fossil fuel to build a world of pig farms, office parks and gardened public spaces? This is simply biosemiotic evolution stepping through its gears.

Or should we be hardline greenies trying to return nature to is prehuman “state of grace”?

It is a very practical question, especially if you are in green politics. How much social capital ought to be spent on winding back the huge loss of local species that has occurred just since the 1950s? Or should a greenie accept this loss as inevitable and not actually an issue as the anthropocene is just a stage in nature’s journey?

We face actual ethical concerns that can’t even be widely discussed until you have some metaphysical strength grounding to your arguments. And the science to quantify and evidence the detailed political responses that would follow.

Then even beyond the general anthropocene question there is the political response to the 2050 bottleneck of too many people and not enough food. The dislocations of climate changes and economic collapse.

If you are not thermodynamically and biosemiotically literate, how can you even start to be part of an “ethical” discussion in this current stage of the fast evolving human story?

The physical analogy between a Fair & Just distribution of social states, and thermodynamic equilibrium (balanced measure) is a philosophical metaphor, not to be taken literally — Gnomon

So justice is not reducible to thermodynamics.

Equilibrium is the balance of dynamic interaction—when the interactions being measured become “equal”. — Gnomon

But then this "equality" is itself dichotomised in thermodynamics. There is the conventional reductionist metaphysics of Boltzmann that is a closed system and yield the "dead" kind of equilibrium that has a Gaussian statistics. And then there is the open and evolving story – the one Prigogine got going – of dissipative structure theory that is about geometric growth and complexification. This attracts to a powerlaw or fractal statistical distribution.

So even as metaphor, we need to know the technicalities to be able to draw any proper conclusions. Folk are quick to dismiss the first and simply miss the relevance of the second.