Not Hegel but Peirce. — apokrisis

It is about the dialectical interaction between parts and wholes. — apokrisis

Ah, my bad...?

Your criticisms are still too vague and unfocused. If you think Nature has an alternative, just spell out what that would look like.

Does Nature have a choice to be other than self organising? Well only if we start appealing to some divine creator.

Does Nature have a choice to be other than functional? Well only if we are not interested in forms of being that enjoy a capacity to persist as anything.

Does Nature have a choice to be other than hierarchically organised? Well dialectics tells us that the simplest model of a balanced structure is a complementary deal between global constraints and local degrees of freedom.

If you have some other model of self organising, persisting, functional structure, now would be the time to present it.

Ah, my bad...? — Banno

Have you read Peirce?

I am sort of coming around to my original position. The non-hierarchical nature of the software at its core, has to be acknowledged. You can't just say it's a hierarchy because that's how the packets flow. It's a lot different than a pure hierarchical network. — fishfry

It might be helpful to talk about this in the language that network theory has created for itself.

In network science, a hub is a node with a number of links that greatly exceeds the average. Emergence of hubs is a consequence of a scale-free property of networks. While hubs cannot be observed in a random network, they are expected to emerge in scale-free networks. The uprise of hubs in scale-free networks is associated with power-law distribution. Hubs have a significant impact on the network topology. Hubs can be found in many real networks, such as the brain or the Internet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hub_(network_science)

So your peer-to-peer revolution created a flat landscape - a new world in which making an informational connection carried a uniform costs, regardless of the underlying hardware physics.

But then that flat landscape got colonised in a free or locally unconstrained way. Everyone got busy on the internet in ways that freely expressed their own functional(?) human interest.

Connections were added and a hierarchical structure resulted because of the Matthew Effect or preferential attachment. Hubs and fat tails became a thing.

A "flat" network would have had a Gaussian randomness in its connectivity - everyone would have connected to the same average degree. That is what net equality would have looked like.



But as a freely growing beast, the internet instead developed hierarchical complexity. It developed the different statistical pattern of scale invariance. It became fractally organised so that now scales of being were themselves "equalised" in that there was no one standard mean. Connectivity was powerlaw and hubs of any size could manifest.

Porn could dominate the internet. And philosophy forums could live alongside just as freely as the tiniest scales of interest communities.

Well, on technical point, the internet is probably more log/normal as a distribution and not quite making the giddy heights of a log/log distribution. Just like the stock market or most other real world systems.

So the Gaussian and Powerlaw models of "randomness" are a dialectic that frame the ideal extremes of self-organisation. Reality falls in-between the two, depending on how constrained or unconstrained the connectivity happens to be.

But the point is that hierarchies of connectivity emerge naturally as the structures that dissipate flows. And this is dialectical in the sense that either the flow tends towards the closed Gaussian equilibrium balance, or towards the exponentially growing Powerlaw equilibrium balance.

A Gaussian hierarchy is canonically simple. It is a single scale system because it has a single mean. Like an ideal gas, it has a stable temperature and pressure - even as all the gas particles ricochet about with statistical freedom. There are no internal scales of difference - gangs of particles that dominate. Everything is as average as possible. Internally there are no differences that make a difference, even if every particle is expressing some different momentum.

Then a Powerlaw system would be at the other extreme. As Universality describes, as you start to disrupt the stable Gaussian equilibrium of some flow by heating it up, it start to form internal structure.

You get the dialectical patterning that Banno stumbled upon when he hastily googled "What is self organisation"...

pigmentation of a porphyry olive shell
lichen growth
zebra and giraffe coat patterns
hexagonal Bénard convection cells
spiral patterns produced by the Belousov-Zhabotinski reaction — Banno

If an equilibrium balance is disturbed by an injection of energy, then it starts to oscillate. The system depends on some dissipative balance of reaction~diffusion and suddenly it is having to absorb more energy than it can immediately handle. It becomes like the straight river that begins to carve out a snaking channel. If the river can't drain faster, it can add dissipative capacity by becoming longer. And so it does.

But keep adding energy and there is a transition to chaos - a Powerlaw regime. Dissipative features - oscillations, turbulence, etc - start to appear on all scales as ways to absorb the increasing throughput. You again have a scalefree hierarchy of structure being expressed on every possible scale to cope with the demand. You arrive at an ecosystem level of complexity in biological terms.

So the patterns of nature take these forms. You have the highly Gaussian pole of being where the hierarchy is just a simple stable bounded system with no internal structure.

In human terms, we might be thinking of ideals like a hunter gatherer tribe or a Masonic lodge - a group with a stable common identity and no internal divisions. (Of course, no actual tribe or lodge is ideal as stuff is always happening to disrupt the "energy").

Then at the other extreme of being, you have the crazy chaos of the stock market or the internet. You have some essential dialectic - such as reaction~diffusion - being expressed over all possible scales of being. Internally, the number of hierarchical levels tends towards the infinite.

In terms of wealth vs poverty, or fame vs anonymity, these social systems have such diversity of outcomes that anything is possible in either direction. Life isn't homogenous as it is with a static hierarchical order - a single scale of local~global interaction, a single deal when it comes to the exchange between competitive and cooperative behaviours. It is instead as inhomogenous as could be imagined .... and yet still a stable, natural, functional, outcome in terms of producing the maximum dissipative flow that its structure can support.

Chaos as a dialectic expressed freely over infinite scale is also a hierarchical state of order.

And then - because we have these two ideal limit descriptions of hierarchical order - we also have all the intermediate states that are somewhere in between. We have the log/normal conditions where there is a fair bit of hubbing, but a fair bit of egalatarianism too. And this might be a functional balance for dealing with the available entropic throughput - doing the actual job of the system.

Not every river has to be a sluggish canal or a wild fractal delta. Plenty are carving out snaking loops across the landscape as an intermediate form of hierarchical architecture.

And here endeth another science lesson on how it all connects up. :grin:

I think that you would have to trample on those to destroy hierarchies? — Judaka

How do you know that it's not the other way around? If you simply read over this thread you will see admissions from apokrisis that go exactly in this direction.

So Herbert A. Simon's analysis is a start, not the end. — Banno

Has Banno actually read Simon? He contributed an excellent chapter to the 1973 classic edited by Howard Pattee - Hierarchy Theory: The Challenge of Complex Systems.

Contains the articles: "The Organization of Complex Systems" by Herbert A. Simon; "The Hierarchical Order and Neogenesis" by Clifford Drobstein; "Hierarchical Control Programs in Biological Development" By James Bonner; "The Physical Basis and Origin of Hierarchical Control" by Howard H. Pattee; and, "The Limits of Complexity" by Richard Levins.

And this wiki entry sums it up....

Empirically, a large proportion of the (complex) biological systems we observe in nature exhibit hierarchical structure. On theoretical grounds we could expect complex systems to be hierarchies in a world in which complexity had to evolve from simplicity. System hierarchies analysis performed in the 1950s, laid the empirical foundations for a field that would be, from the 1980s, hierarchical ecology.

The theoretical foundations are summarized by thermodynamics. When biological systems are modeled as physical systems, in its most general abstraction, they are thermodynamic open systems that exhibit self-organised behavior, and the set/subset relations between dissipative structures can be characterized in a hierarchy.

A simpler and more direct way to explain the fundamentals of the "hierarchical organization of life", was introduced in Ecology by Odum and others as the "Simon's hierarchical principle";[14] Simon[15] emphasized that hierarchy "emerges almost inevitably through a wide variety of evolutionary processes, for the simple reason that hierarchical structures are stable".

A lack of scholarship is one thing. A wilful ignorance being displayed while also citing said scholarship is taking it to another level, dontcha think? :chin:

If you simply read over this thread you will see admissions from apokrisis that go exactly in this direction. — JerseyFlight

Instead of making hopeful sounds that people have no choice but to agree with you, why not make a considered argument.

For example, why did Marxist ideals wind up in the tyrannies imposed by Stalin and Mao? What went on there exactly?

Then why did those tyrannies collapse for a while only to be re-imposed (to some degree) by Putin and Xi?

The real world offers you interesting examples in terms of what you claim to be your area of interest. Yet you won't engage in such specifics.

Instead of making hopeful sounds that people have no choice but to agree with you, why not make a considered argument. — apokrisis

??? Not following here. Some of the objections I have raised in the course of this thread have been validated, your response was simply to minimize them, or assert that there is no other option. My entire discourse has been directed at potential tyranny. I even cited a book that was just recently published, and while this text is not about Hierarchy Theory in terms of biology, the questioned I asked you was valid, are you sure that Hierarchy Theory will not end up going in this direction? We are talking "about global constraints imposed on local degrees of freedom," enshrined as a normative political philosophy. I would argue that this matters far more than the fundamentalism of your academic theory.

Sure, all that.

@apokrisis claims that hierarchies are inevitable.

@fishfry, @JerseyFlight and I don't agree. Not all complex systems are hierarchies.

Further, Apo says that it is science that backs his claim, while mixing in Hegel and Peirce. That's not just science; that's science with an ideological spin.

But of more philosophical interest is the incipient denial of human autonomy, which is perhaps the core issue raised in the OP.

Not all complex systems are hierarchies. — Banno

I agree with this, so I will just say, I agree with you. This is also a serious objection against Hierarchy Theory, which so far as I know, has not been addressed. Why isolate the hierarchical example? Further, this proves my point about mediation. If we are choosing between complex systems, as well as interpreting, thought is already mediating. So if there is any real hierarchy here it must be thought itself, which sits at the foundation of all this predication.

My entire discourse has been directed at potential tyranny. — JerseyFlight

So when hierarchies go bad? Or "all hierarchy is bad"?

Which claim do you mean to defend?

...are you sure that Hierarchy Theory will not end up going in this direction? — JerseyFlight

Your questions are mind-numbingly monotonic.

I've tried to give you a baseline description of hierarchies as the natural, logically inevitable, expression of functional organisation.

I've emphasised the way that this is a balancing act in terms I thought you might best understand - the Hegelian dialectic.

And so it should have sunk in by now that an organisation that is self-organised to achieve a dialectical balance could also fail to achieve that balance - and thus be ripe for evolutionary recycling.

If tyrannies (however you define that term, you are not saying) can persist, then hierarchy theory would demand that they have found some way to repair and reproduce their own fabric.

We could examine that and decide - from some other viewpoint - that it isn't ideal.

In a dictatorship, or a slave based society, there will be some folk who think that is a great deal. Yet clearly, there are tensions built into "what works". And over time we would expect those tensions manifest in ways that force change and achieve some better overall balance for the whole of that society.

So self-organising is self-correcting. Evolution does its job in good time. And if we understand the way it works - as we definitely started to with the Enlightenment and its inquiry into the nature of society - then we can even nudge things along to that broader state of global cohesion and individual contribution.

But to hear you bleat on about "hierarchies are the slippery slope to tyranny" is just painful to listen to. It's not my idea of a discussion of the realities.

fishfry, JerseyFlight and I don't agree. Not all complex systems are hierarchies. — Banno

Agreed. Even simple systems are as well. :up:

Your problem is that you don't even recognise when your examples of non-hierarchical systems are examples of hierarchical systems. That is what happens when google leads you to source material you can't comprehend.

Further, Apo says that it is science that backs his claim, while mixing in Hegel and Peirce. — Banno

What I actually said was that systems scientists pick out their own metaphysical heroes. So systems scientists set their holism against a reductionist metaphysics by citing Aristotle, and more recently, Peirce.

Hegel individually doesn't get that much of a look in. But Naturphilosophie as the broader strand of German idealism does.

Likewise Heraclitus sort of fits. But Aristotle gave the comprehensive framework.

Again, you are speaking of a whole vein of intellectual history that is above your pay grade. Your every comment reveals that ignorance.

Your questions are mind-numbingly monotonic. — apokrisis

I fancy your expression here.

So when hierarchies go bad? Or "all hierarchy is bad"? — apokrisis

The question you are asking me is negated by your metaphysics: "If tyrannies can persist, then hierarchy theory would demand that they have found some way to repair and reproduce their own fabric."

Which is contradicted by:

"It is the same as the wealth inequality story. We can't accuse neoliberalism of having a malign intent. It is just a fact of exponential growth..."

There is real discrepancy here.

If the hierarchy is destructive to potential value, then the reply within the system is simply to say, "we can't accuse... it is just a fact" of nature.

So when you ask me about hierarchies versus hierarchy it is you who have made them the same thing, because by accepting them as normative you are also making the claim that they are socially intelligent standards. Again, category immune from criticism. My objection is that just because we see it in nature doesn't make it a wise procedure for humans to adopt.

there are tensions built into "what works". And over time we would expect those tensions manifest in ways that force change and achieve some better overall balance for the whole of that society. — apokrisis

Not if the hierarchy stacks the system against such change to achieve its functional form.

But to hear you bleat on about "hierarchies are the slippery slope to tyranny" is just painful to listen to. — apokrisis

This is not exactly my position, but it is the direction of my questions. I did cite a book that uses this concept for exactly this purpose.

I am not disputing that hierarchies can be tyrannical or don't have elements of tyranny in them. Honestly, I think this is an ideological angle but let's say it isn't, we should approach this problem from the initial question of: does the empirical evidence put the science in a category beyond criticism? Secondly, if yes, then what does that extend to? The inevitability of hierarchies, yes but what about their functions and structure? And third, if no, then are hierarchies bad and/or is there a better alternative?

Sadly, I think the correct answer to the first question is yes, the empirical evidence does put the science in a category beyond criticism. Thus I am interested in the second question, what is not beyond criticism and what can be maximised for things of the nature of human rights.

I am not surprised to see this debate, I would've been shocked to see you also answer yes, I see your views about "human thought" as being mostly an extreme take on the nature vs nurture debate. You are the most nurture-orientated thinker I've ever seen. I pretty much lost interest when I read your debate vs Carlos.

In any case how do you create a world where attraction is no longer an advantage for one and a disadvantage for another? — BitconnectCarlos

Cultivate a stronger cultural emphasis valuing quality of character above that of physical appearance. — JerseyFlight

The evidence for how looks orientated humans are, is far more overwhelming than the proof for the inevitability of hierarchies. The only actual chance you have here, to destroy this particular hierarchy is to impose rules that constitute the absolute greatest degree of tyranny. I think when you reject reality to this extent, posit the power of human thought to change it in any which way, it becomes a moral issue of "well, why don't we?". It is this very moral conundrum which is being rejected.

So our societies make us what we are by placing limits on our actions. And if those limits are well adapted, then we will spend our lives expressing the resulting habits of action in ways that bring personal achievement while confirming those same rules of engagement. — apokrisis

I would like to go back to your example of the Roman army, because one might point out the similarities and differences between discipline there and in the modern army. For example, a restriction on behaviour for the purpose of discipline is necessary but the punishment for that in the Roman army might be execution or lashing, while in a modern army, the measures taken are substantially less severe. I think we could all agree that it is preferable to have the later approach though both undeniably function. Tyranny may become an issue where the Roman general has the complete authority to execute a soldier for a minor offence, whereas the authority of the modern general is far more constrained. I think even if the Roman method was superior in some ways, though I'm not claiming it is, we would still prefer to see the methods of the modern army because we place a high-value on human freedom and life.

It seems we have the ability to impose constraints on behaviours which don't merely sabotage the effectiveness of the hierarchy but also on those that result in infringements upon human rights or our ideas about fairness. To what extent is it practical for us to think that we can introduce such restrictions due the concerns we might have about hierarchies? I am really interested in what is unrealistic for us to try to manufacture and what we should be able to do to make society as fair and pleasant as possible. What parts of the hierarchical system can't be touched?

The question you are asking me is negated by your metaphysics: "If tyrannies can persist, then hierarchy theory would demand that they have found some way to repair and reproduce their own fabric."

Which is contradicted by:

"It is the same as the wealth inequality story. We can't accuse neoliberalism of having a malign intent. It is just a fact of exponential growth..." — JerseyFlight

So in what technical sense is neoliberalism a tyranny?

I'm not saying that such an argument couldn't be made. But I'm asking you to make it.

So when you ask me about hierarchies versus hierarchy it is you who have made them the same thing, because by accepting them as normative you are also making the claim that they are socially intelligent standards. — JerseyFlight

You have a wild misreading of my ethical conclusions. In general, I don't find being either merely descriptive, nor rigidly normative, a dialectic that works for Natural Philosophy. The whole is~ought debate is a great pain in the arse.

A systems answer instead focuses on the reality that to exist, a system has to be - in some proper sense - functional. So that brings finality into play. A purpose is being served, even if it is merely "to exist".

But then grades of finality are also then recognised. The base grade for nature is the Laws of Thermodynamics. They are normative to the degree they allow no other physical choice. And they are positive as a brute description of what is (unless you want to argue some other cosmology).

But that cosmic grade of telos is a mere physical tendency. It ain't that restrictive. In fact it leaves almost everything to chance. Our major complaint about the Cosmos is that it seems meaningless and uncaring. It is happy being filled with entropy and randomness. It seems the opposite of a tyranny in being an anarchy, I guess. :razz:

Beyond the physico-chemical grade of telos as "tendency", things start to get interesting with living and mindful systems. Now they are driven by "functional" goals.

Then we start to get purpose proper with human language and culture. We can move beyond the merely functional and towards the intentional as - so we like to claim - a physically dissociated level of free choice. The dilemma of freewill and moral imperative is - idealistically - invented.

So my ethical framework is the one that encompasses the usual dialectic of is~ought and reveals its many grades of semiosis, its various levels of hierarchical constraint on individual freedom.

It is the richer view from a natural science perspective. Or the overly complex view, from a layperson's perspective.

I would like to go back to your example of the Roman army, because one might point out the similarities and differences between discipline there and in the modern army. — Judaka

In my first example, I in fact had the modern army in mind. And then I mentioned the Greek hoplites as military histories like Carnage focus on the way that the social democracy of the Greeks was the reason they could self-organise in far more effective fashion as a fighting force.

For example, a restriction on behaviour for the purpose of discipline is necessary but the punishment for that in the Roman army might be execution or lashing, while in a modern army, the measures taken are substantially less severe. I think we could all agree that it is preferable to have the later approach though both undeniably function. Tyranny may become an issue where the Roman general has the complete authority to execute a soldier for a minor offence, whereas the authority of the modern general is far more constrained. — Judaka

The Roman army at least handed out punishment according to Roman concepts of law. There were rules and their consequences. And the discipline was beneficial when it came time to beat the ten times larger army of a barbarian horde.

If your boss is a Persian satrap, you could be lashed or executed by whim. Or at least your protection would be some kind of social communal level of tolerance. And not much connected with the real business of being a fighter.

But Roman generals were constrained by all sorts of rules. They got appointed. They couldn't bring their troops into the capital. There were all sorts of checks and balances that served the function of making the Roman army the colonising economic machine that it was.

And likewise, the modern professional army has its rules-based democracy which is consciously designed not so that is "good" but so that it is effective at its job. If you are hiring weapon system operators and logistic managers to wage your technological war rather than some random gang of toughs, then you have to start treating them like the white collar workers they are. They have to have soft beds, five choices of dessert, and a wifi connection while they are roughing it against the tribes in Afghanistan.

So what matters here is that the rules frame the freedoms. And the more you invest in small highly trained, highly equipped professionals, the less you want to make them go consider alternative career choices - right before you send them into action where their heads get blown off.

It seems we have the ability to impose constraints on behaviours which don't merely sabotage the effectiveness of the hierarchy but also on those that result in infringements upon human rights or our ideas about fairness. To what extent is it practical for us to think that we can introduce such restrictions due the concerns we might have about hierarchies? I am really interested in what is unrealistic for us to try to manufacture and what we should be able to do to make society as fair and pleasant as possible. What parts of the hierarchical system can't be touched? — Judaka

What has actually happened in society? I think we can say that live used to be lived in a very physical way. And the hierarchical organisation of society reflected that.

When I was a kid, you could still strapped on the hand for being cheeky to the teacher. That escalated to a caning at high school. A casual physical brutality was the norm. It was soft to take a tent when you went camping. School dentistry was done without anaesthetic and a slow drill. Nurses were known to do this on wee kids just for practice.

I could go on. But this was only the 1960s and 1970s. Hardly the Stone Age.

Nowadays no human or animal is meant to suffer anything - even the slightest insult to their ego and self-esteem.

Is this inherently better? It is certainly a direction history has taken for some reason. And we can talk about the functional outcomes - analyse them ahead of judging them.

So the big question is why might fairness and happiness seem the highest good? Where does that leave challenge and excitement? Where does that leave the casual freedom of the past? How does it relate to Maslow's hierarchy of needs where "self-actualisation" looks to be what every step leads to?

We have worked so hard as a modern society to remove real world physics as a constraint on our Being. We all laugh at the US military as it can't go anywhere in the world without comfy pillows and Frosty Freeze dispensers.

But in moving our Being into the virtual information reality of the cyberspace, into the temperature controlled environments and snack-filled fridges of our McMansions, into the woke safe zones of our social discourse, have we made some kind of real progress?

I really question that - while agreeing that I more than just about anyone have personally benefited.

So is constraint a problem in itself? Is there anything sacrosanct to be protected in the hierarchical arrangements we create?

My answer has been that constraints are a necessity. Nothing exists unless there is context to give it a shape. And even something to oppose, in the way any organism opposes its own wishes against the vagaries of the world.

So the very idea of a constraint is what entails a "degree of freedom". Constraints simply cause freedoms to become focused in some useful direction.

But the danger for life and mind - as hierarchical systems - lies in not paying sufficient attention to the fact that they are semiotic processes. They are all about information regulating physics (for the purposes of maintaining some balanced and well adapted state of existence).

So you do want to rise above the brute physical world to a pragmatic extent. Comfortable beds can be better than hard ground. But what of the idea of completely transcending the physical realm rather than being more intelligently engaged with it?

Is that where even existing begins to lose its point?

That is the kind of question you can ask of our collective social structure at this point in its evolution. To what degree is it some kind of mad idealist fantasy being spun off the illusory riches of fossil fuels?

Again, for me, modern life is bloody terrific. I'm not complaining personally.

But that is how my understanding of natural systems shapes my critique. If I wanted to put a finger on the lack of balance, it is in things like an economic system based on entropification that fails to account for the costs of its entropic sinks.

So neoliberalism can be fine as a theory. Up until the point it refuses to include the costs of the environment in its market pricing.

The inevitability of hierarchies, yes but what about their functions and structure? And third, if no, then are hierarchies bad and/or is there a better alternative? — Judaka

Yes, if social hierarchies are inevitable in what sense are they inevitable, in the sense of centralized government, in the sense of dictators? In any case we are mediating with thought, which once again proves my point regarding thought in relation to hierarchies. The value is in the mediation not the mere observation of the hierarchy. The fact that we can stand back and judge them already proves that they are not the highest thing, thought is that.

The only actual chance you have here, to destroy this particular hierarchy is to impose rules that constitute the absolute greatest degree of tyranny. — Judaka

Exactly how a human-nature-supernaturalist would think. This is false. I made many other points in that exchange, the most significant being that our sense of attraction is instilled by our experience of culture. Whether you like it or not how your brain functions is a matter of your maturation environment, most specifically the development of your attachment system. This is not my mere opinion (see Allan Schore, Right Brain Psychotherapy). You were allowing Carlos' own insecurity to dictate the objective nature of the situation. If you want a better society you have to produce better humans, and if you want to grow better humans you have to give them a better environment and higher quality nutrients. You are nurture. You couldn't even respond to my replies without the right nutrients, the fact that you can even comprehend them simply means you are a beneficiary of society (this is equally true for myself). All your individual quality can be traced directly to your social experience.

You are the most nurture-orientated thinker I've ever seen. — Judaka

Yes, this I consider a compliment. It means I'm not confusing reality with idealism.

I believe in the power of thought too, but not to do the impossible, rather, to control the narrative through arranging truth. To render truth an irrelevance through control over the narrative is a simple thing done by everyone.

Whether you like it or not how your brain functions is a matter of your maturation environment, most specifically the development of your attachment system — JerseyFlight

What you mean by "functions" here is selective, because indeed, what is included in this "function" you describe? You are excluding a lot, emphasising some portion of the brain's activities.

You were allowing Carlos' own insecurity to dictate the objective nature of the situation — JerseyFlight

The burden of proof for characterisations like this, minuscule, but do not think that this applies only for you. To characterise you in unflattering ways is always a possibility for me, to do it to the extent that your ideas don't even have to be contended with, well, I'm sure you've seen that before, you can't be blind to this, can be done by a child.

If you want a better society you have to produce better humans, and if you want to grow better humans you have to give them a better environment and higher quality nutrients. — JerseyFlight

"Better" this, "better" that. Highly selective, highly characterised, highly narrativized. Your "truth" is personalised, it is a creation of yours, not something which I should accept unless I wish to relinquish all control.

I believe in the power of thought too, but not to do the impossible, rather, to control the narrative through arranging truth. To render truth an irrelevance through control over the narrative is a simple thing done by everyone. — Judaka

Point of mediation sustained.

What you mean by "functions" here is selective, because indeed, what is included in this "function" you describe? You are excluding a lot, emphasising some portion of the brain's activities. — Judaka

Directly refuting your false metaphysical nature model of humans, which is left over from the dark ages: "...the maturation of the emotion-processing limbic circuits of specifically the infant's developing right brain are influenced by implicit intersubjective affective transactions embedded in the attachment relationship with the primary caregiver." Ibid. Allan Schore, Chp.2

I am not typing out more, read the book.

The burden of proof for characterisations like this, minuscule, but do not think that this applies only for you. To characterise you in unflattering ways is always a possibility for me, to do it to the extent that your ideas don't even have to be contended with, well, I'm sure you've seen that before, you can't be blind to this, can be done by a child. — Judaka

I did engage the fella you are referring to, I did not simply try to refute him by a characterization. My point here is that you are not looking at the issue objectively but allowing this person's feelings of insecurity to dictate the content and emphasis.

Your "truth" is personalised, it is a creation of yours, not something which I should accept unless I wish to relinquish all control. — Judaka

No. If you don't eat food and drink water you won't have the energy to reply let alone comprehend. This is not my personalized opinion. Further, it is not good for you or anyone else to have an attachment disturbance, attempting to make contact with the social world through the left side of your brain. This is not just my personalized opinion. Yes, better. If you want a better society you have to have an intelligent social system that lends itself to the objective production of better humans.

So in what technical sense is neoliberalism a tyranny? — apokrisis

The fact that it bolsters corporate hierarchies to the detriment of human potential. Privatizing economic sectors of public service to the disenfranchisement of individuals. Deregulation, austerity. Not sure what you need to know that you don't already know?

A systems answer instead focuses on the reality that to exist, a system has to be - in some proper sense - functional. — apokrisis

I understand, but here you seem to have no meta-awareness of your concept of functionality. If you read me as saying that your conclusion of function will always be tyranny, this is wrong. My argument has always targeted your notion of existence, which means, your notion of observed [interpreted] hierarchy posited as intelligence. I am not opposed to making use of hierarchy theory, I am arguing against a kind naturalistic, ethical determinism, my alternative is not make-believe phantoms, but simply the mediation of thought.

But it seems to me there may very well be a deeper problem here. What if the whole notion of hierarchy, as I suspect it to be, is a lie, a delusion of the understanding unaided by reason? (This is to speak in Hegelian terms). Let me explain what I mean, what you interpret to be higher, how can this be the case when its existence hinges, just as vitally, on other components? Maybe the picture of hierarchy is a delusion, which can be proven by the fact of causal contingency? What you discern as a hierarchy, is in fact, only one component in the system... and even so, does this observed hierarchy retain its imaged status throughout the dialectical process of being?

So my ethical framework is the one that encompasses the usual dialectic of is~ought and reveals its many grades of semiosis, its various levels of hierarchical constraint on individual freedom. — apokrisis

Do you take dictation from nature or use intelligence to mediate?

The fact that it bolsters corporate hierarchies to the detriment of human potential. Privatizing economic sectors of public service to the disenfranchisement of individuals. Deregulation, austerity. Not sure what you need to know that you don't already know? — JerseyFlight

So corporations, privatisation and deregulation meet the definition of cruel and oppressive state rule. Sounds legit.

It might be helpful to talk about this in the language that network theory has created for itself. — apokrisis

I've pretty much said my piece on this. The OP said it was hard to think of a big man-made system that's not hierarchical. I offered the Internet not only as an example of a non-hierarchical system, but also one that was easy to think of.

The link you posted claiming the Internet is hierarchical failed to offer evidence or make a case. I agree that the hardware of the Internet, running over the existing 20th century telecommunications network, is hierarchical. The Internet as a whole, though, is peer-to-peer; as our conversation illustrates. I don't have to go up my management chain and down yours in order to speak to you. Everyone in the world is directly connected to each other.

Of course hierarchies have arisen in the software layer (Facebook, etc.), but they don't invalidate the basic point.

The OP hasn't seen fit to reply to me, and I don't have sufficient passion for the subject to reply in detail to your interesting points. I made my points in my initial post and have nothing more to add. The Internet is a peer-to-peer system, despite the hierarchical hardware and the hierarchical Domain name system. And therefore not everything we make is hierarchical. There's at least one exception. We live in an age of disintermediation, or at least so the early Internet theorists believed. You can buy a Gutenberg Bible, you no longer need a priest to tell you the word of God. The printing press was a great blow to hierarchy of its day. Of course governments and corporations are getting a pretty good stranglehold on the Internet these days, which does support your point.

So it had nothing to do with going non-hierarchical and everything to do with creating a new virtual stage where the information was divorced from the physics. — apokrisis

You are making my point.

People let rip in this new world. And as is natural, hierarchical order resulted. We ended up with the influencer economy, Trump, cancel culture, and all those other good things. — apokrisis

The Internet didn't abolish human nature. And cancel culture doesn't need the Internet. Chairman Mao's cultural revolution did fine without it. You are listing all the hierarchical ills of the world and claiming them as evidence that the Internet is hierarchical. That's a terrible debating point. What does Trump have to do with it? You know, American politics is somewhat anti-hierarchical. That's yet another example I could give. Federalism. The president is not boss of the states. Of course in recent decades the Feds have learned to pressure the states by withholding funds and so forth, but our system has much more local autonomy than most other democratic systems, by design.

How exactly is Trump a debating point in favor of the thesis that the Internet is a hierarchy? Can you see that your enthusiasm for your thesis is causing your logic to be a bit weak?

Of course hierarchies have arisen in the software layer (Facebook, etc.), but they don't invalidate the basic point. — fishfry

In fact it does.

Of course governments and corporations are getting a pretty good stranglehold on the Internet these days, which does support your point. — fishfry

It absolutely doesn’t.

Like the OP, you are applying a lay concept of a hierarchy. I am defending something else.

How exactly is Trump a debating point in favor of the thesis that the Internet is a hierarchy? Can you see that your enthusiasm for your thesis is causing your logic to be a bit weak? — fishfry

Yeah, I give up. If you don’t get network theory, then I’ll leave it there.

Like the OP, you are applying a lay concept of a hierarchy. I am defending something else. — apokrisis

"We're not worthy!" :-)

Yeah, I give up. If you don’t get network theory, then I’ll leave it there. — apokrisis

You should get some self-awareness. When you know you're wrong, you get personal. Saw that before.

No. It is simply that you are discussing something else.

Your peer to peer angle is talking about the blank canvas before the structure self organises,

Your harking on about control hierarchies - the popular mechanical conception - is bypassing my arguments based on physical and biological principles.

That’s ok. You never studied these things. And you have no interest.

The OP hasn't seen fit to reply to me — fishfry

My apologies, I was so focused on exchanging with apokrisis I didn't quite pick up on the objection in your reply. I guess I didn't consider it relevant to my objections because you were responding to a citation which I am not dogmatic about. There the fella just says it's hard to think of anything without hierarchy. Yes, you provided a counter example. I think what's more interesting is whether the concept of hierarchy is just an isolated emphasis that obscures the causal contingency of structures? It seems to me there must be something to this because existence is not a hierarchy, but quite literally, a fluctuating movement of causal contingency.