I don't see researchers going on Youtube or Twitter to talk about their research, they are usually too busy for that. It is usually the university's journal (sometimes written by students) that writes the news pieces. Then we have MSM reporting on it, which is the bottom of the barrel. — Lionino

I'm glad to hear that. But you did say "literal idiots on Twitter quoting psychometric papers".

That sounds very wrong, but I don't know what they taught in Britain back in his time. — Lionino

I think that he was pulling my leg by exaggerating the facts. We didn't know each other very well at the time. But you see how easy it is to get the wrong end of the stick.

It's his mixture of biology with politics that is really close conceptually to the race-based reasonings for slavery: — Moliere

I don't deny that for a minute. I just think that we should acknowledge that his version wasn't based on race. In other words, the 18th century version not only attempted to justify slavery, but did not so racial grounds.

he doesn't explicitly put slavish souls into a biological category, but their essence differs from other members of the species giving a sub-species "kind" with essence; — Moliere

Yes. That's not in itself wrong - we do the same thing when we classify certain people as incompetent. What matters is what happens next.

I take it that no one can actually perceive a slavish or masterful soul, that there must be markers for that, and things like being non-greek would work for that. — Moliere

One might suspect that. But does the actual practice reflect that? For now, I can produce:-

There were four primary sources of slaves: war, in which the defeated would become slaves to the victorious unless a more objective outcome was reached; piracy (at sea); banditry (on land); and international trade. — Wikipedia - Slavery in Ancient Greece

In the case of the first three sources, a ransom was often sought as the first resort. In the case of the last, the actual enslavement would have happened elsewhere. I think it's pretty clear that although barbaroi were not excluded from slavery, they were not specifically targeted - as they were in the 18th century.
It's curious, thought, that Aristotle's criteria don't seem to have figured in actual practice at all. Perhaps we should give him credit for trying to introduce some criterion other than brute force.

I don't think it unreasonable to think that Aristotle prefers Greeks of the upper echelon, — Moliere

I don't deny that for a minute, either. I'm sure he also preferred Athenians to Greeks from other Greek cities as well. They were treated as foreigners, weren't they?

It's Aristotle's justification or reasoning about slavery that I think is similar to the later justifications.; though even in slavery there are better and worse masters, the belief that there are those who are inferior by their very nature -- and so needing a guiding hand -- seems pretty similar here: — Moliere

I'm not denying that. On the contrary, in the 18th century, a lot of the gentry would have read Aristotle. But Aristotle does not specify that speaking a foreign language or not being a Greek is evidence of being suitable for slavery.

Democratisation of knowledge wasn't the best blessing to this world. Now we have literal idiots on Twitter quoting psychometric papers to prove their case when they don't even know what a p-value is, and unfortunately such rubbish gets exposed to thousands of naïve people. But it is not like those people matter in the big picture often, so it is not too bad. — Lionino

H'm. In respect of physics, you may be right. In respect of other matters, I'm not so sure. We all worry about fake news, don't we? This is where it originates. And it matters.

Science books? Sometimes. Textbooks? That would defeat the purpose. Joe must exercise his common sense. — Lionino

I wouldn't dream of contradicting you. But it was a comment from a guy who qualified in physics before switching to philosophy (of science) for his Master's. He also told me that everything in the physics A-Level (School leaving) syllabus was false.

I don't know, my common sense has delivered to me consistently. — Lionino

You were fortunate. Mine was not. I had some nasty awakenings when I was young. I'm still very sceptical about what common sense tells me. But then, I'm also sceptical about what everyone tells me.

Democratisation of knowledge wasn't the best blessing to this world. — Lionino

Well, the world before the enlightenment ideal was not exactly ideal either.

More specifically, when it comes to Joe Public, he has no business touching research papers or textbooks or things of the sort. Most people can't solve a basic quadratic equation, and have never really heard of Kant. — Lionino

Perhaps part of the trouble is that many researchers are anxious to spread their news as widely as possible. Whether they are after fame or fortune or just research grants, I wouldn't know.

Assisting the poor and the needy is a perfectly legitimate moral obligation. If your own wealth exceeds a particular threshold, the laws of the Almighty insist that you help others in need. It is, however, not the government's job to enforce this. It is your own conscience that is supposed to do that. — Tarskian

Maybe I'm nit-picking, but I think "moral obligation" is a contradiction in terms. But the important question is whether the system achieves its objectives. What are the facts?

In the UAE, for example, the emir of Dubai is not a cleric. In Islamic history, the ruling sultan was rarely a cleric. Instead, he was typically the supreme commander of the armed forces. I do not believe at all that clergy should be the head of the army. — Tarskian

Ah, god and guns. That's all you need to be in control. Keep the two separate, and no-one's in control.

He (sc. Fukuyama) analyses political structure across the world from the year dot. Read Debt as well for the economic story. — apokrisis

Are you referring to "The End of History"? I'm really sorry and I may be prejudiced, but given what has happened since then, I think I have other priorities.

In a society, we would want everyone to have enough to eat, a bed to sleep, a voice in any decision making. These are goods to be distributed evenly. — apokrisis

That sounds like a good start. We aren't there yet. All suggestions considered.

If we step back to understand hierarchical order as a pure form, we can see that it is a distribution system. It is a way to distribute power, information, entropy, whatever, in an evenly balanced fashion across a closed and cohesive network of relations. — apokrisis

Are you saying that power is equally distributed in a hierarchy? Had you thought to ask those at the bottom of the heap what they think? What happens if I'm at the top and don't want to distribute power in an evenly balanced fashion?

A landscape is drained of water by forming a fractal network of trickles, streams, rivers and deltas. World aviation is organised into remote grass airstrips, small rural airports, large city airports, major international hubs. The mathematics of this is precise. A fractal distribution system has a log/log or powerlaw scale of size. That is how a geography can be efficiently covered so every drop of water or wannabe flyer gets an equal chance of participating in a well-organised network of flow. — apokrisis

I can understand how the system applies in the case of water or air travel opportunities - though "equal chance" is not an entirely transparent description. But what grounds are there to supposed that power behaves in the same fashion? I have a nasty feeling that power attracts power, so has an inherent tendency to inequality - like money.

In that sense, we can say that: if who makes the claim matters, then what he claims cannot possibly matter. — Tarskian

Ideally, I would do all experiments myself. But life's too short. I'm sure you agree.

If the field does not have an objective justification method, then such original research is not a knowledge claim to begin with. In that case, no publication by whoever is authoritative. — Tarskian

Well, that's clear enough. What do you do for fun?

In practice, that is not true. Competence in the field is not required, just common sense. — Lionino

Competence is over-stating it, I agree. But you are expecting more from common sense than it will deliver.

A physics textbook by a professor from Utretch, used in physics courses internationally, is authoritative, a researcher's blogspot is not. — Lionino

Certainly. But I'm not Joe Public, who will say "If it is by a professor, it must be right and anything from a university is OK. Where is Utrecht? How do I find out which courses it's used on? Didn't someone once tell me that science textbooks are always out of date by the time they are printed?"

I don't need to know neuroscience to have the common sense to not take at face value a research paper (which isn't made for laymen) from 2011 with 2 citations and 1 no-name researcher. — Lionino

That may be common sense to you and common sense to me. But it doesn't follow that it is common sense to everyone.

I tend favour incompetence instead of maliciousness or deceptiveness to explain these things — AmadeusD

I'm sure you are right, at least in a forum like this.

My issue is not with Quora, but more that you don't seem to be competent with physics in a way that you are in a position to judge good from bad in non-authoritative sources. — Lionino

I do understand how annoying it can be when someone pronounces authoritatively about something I know about but they clearly don't. It is particularly tempting in philosophy because the range of competence one would like to have is way beyond what is possible for most human beings. The big difficulty is that one has to have competence in a field in order to assess how authoritative a source is.

The sciences are concerned with “what,” whereas the humanities are concerned with “how.” — ucarr

This was an interesting attempt at the same sort of distinction. Every subject asks "What, Where, When" (and sometimes "Who") and so it is tempting to go for a distinction in terms of subject-matter. "How" and "Why" are traditionally (in philosophy) used to distinguish between causal and rational explanations, so they look like a good basis for distinguishing between science and the rest. But ordinary use does not follow the Aristotelian distinction between efficient and final causes, so I doubt if there's any mileage in this.

Yes, it means that science is an epistemic domain governed by a justification method. It really does not matter what exactly it is about as long as the justification method of testability can successfully be applied.
The same is true for mathematics. It is the epistemic domain governed by the justification method of axiomatic provability.
The humanities, on the other hand, are not an epistemic domain. They are a (collection of) subject domain(s). The humanities are generally about human behavior. — Tarskian

I liked this. I agree that most disciplines are partly characterized by their domains of authority and partly by the methods they adopt. There's a link between the two, which helps.

I notice that you don't mention the justification method for the humanities. That might be because they don't all have the same justification method. But I'm sure you'll agree that they do have justification methods - just not the same ones as mathematics and the sciences. (I assume that you count literature, history and philosophy among them.)

The human sciences (psychology, sociology, economics) are particularly interesting cases because they all have the same domain and their appropriate methodologies are not clear. (In philosophy jargon, they straddle the hard problem, and so are likely to end up having to decide how to solve it or dissolve it.)

Should we not apply the some version of the same structure (domain plus method) to the arts (performing and otherwise), not to mention the various professional (law, medicine, business, accountancy etc.) and applied (engineering, architecture, medicine) subjects and the unclassifiable subjects like politics and theology?

You say that nations require "a formal structure to enable the kind of cohesion suggested by society", do you mean something like civil laws, and the hierarchy they necessarily impose? — NOS4A2

I did mean something like laws - because they involve compulsion.

When people talk about structure in the context of a discussion about societies, states nations, they mean (so far as I know) some kind of social relationship. So friendship and love would also be regarded as social structure, though they are very different from laws. A family is a social structure, so is a corporation or a club, so is the army, navy, so is the government - most people (I think) would say that the government, or perhaps the constitution, is the structure that forms a state. It's one of those vague all-encompassing words that really ought to be specified whenever it is used. But its vagueness is also quite convenient sometimes.

The barbarians are uncivilized, as can be heard from when they speak "Bar bar bar", saying basically nothing, and so need an enlightened human of knowledge to direct them towards the best that the inferior can hope to achieve (since they won't reach for it on their own) — Moliere

That's not ancient slavery.
Certainly, the ancient greeks regarded foreigners as lesser beings because they couldn't speak properly. But ancient greek colonies don't seem to have behaved like European colonies later on. They didn't, so far as I can see, take over ownership of the hinterland, never mind its inhabitants. On the contrary, they were there primarily to trade.
The account of slavery that you are outlining is the barbarous version of it cooked up by Europeans to justify maltreating people they chose to see as savages. Ancient slavery included anyone who could not pay their debts, prisoners of war, common criminals. Whether they were members of the society that enslaved them was irrelevant.

Unionism is where I'm most familiar with syndicalism from (not that all unions run that way). I think that systems which reject representation are, on the whole, less chaotic because in order for measures to pass you have to build consent. That you have different perspectives with each brings about stability because it becomes less about what some individual person Represents to us, and more about what the collective wants. If you alienate less of the people in a collective, then it's more liable to be maintained by the people participating in it rather than torn down. — Moliere

I wouldn't disagree with you. It's probably slower than allowing representatives to make the decision, but the benefit in greater consensus is probably worth it. It certainly gives more power to the people. The desire of the establishment at the time of the Reform Act in 1832 not to undermine the representation system as it stood, rather than introducing mandating them, was undoubtedly reinforced by the fact mandating representatives gives more control to the voters.
Much as I respect the union practice, I'm not convinced that in our giant states mandating representatives would work at all well for the entire state. It's just too big and too complicated.

Some kind (sc. of hierarchy), yes, though I tried to pick as an extreme a contrast as possible to demonstrate that "some kind" has meaningful differences between the various instantiations (and even their structures of hierarchy will differ, or not-count as hierarchical between one another) — Moliere

I didn't mean to eradicate those important differences. Some hierarchies are more vicious than others. Whether any are not vicious at all, I wouldn't like to say.

That's the bit of human nature I'm targeting I think we have lots of reasonings to excuse social dominance, but for the most part it's our chimpanzee side which gives rise to such reasonings rather than the purportedly enlightened side. — Moliere

I see the point (but would be inclined to wonder whether chimpanzees are really as bad as human beings, for all their dominant ways). But I also think that in some situations, where decisions need to be made quickly or close co-ordination is required, there are practical reasons for choosing hierarchy. The ancient roman constitution had a provision that allowed the senate to elected a supreme commander, by-passing the political hierarchy (called "dictator") for a limited time to deal with an emergency - especially useful in time of war. It is high risk though and came unstuck in the civil wars that led to the establishment of the imperial system.

Primates live in gangs and follow the lead of a mafia boss. It's preprogrammed biology. — Tarskian

I'm not sure about "pre-programmed" biology. But even if it is pre-programmed biology, it doesn't show that it is pre-programmed in human beings.

Some may arrive there due to sheer brutality and force. In short, many dominant chimps behave like “self-interested thugs."

"Some may arrive..." and "many dominant chimps..." suggests very strongly that not all arrive in that way and some do not behave like self-interest thugs when they get there. If it was pre-programmed, they would all behave that way and only self-interested thugs would get to be dominant.

One difference between alpha chimps and mafia bosses is that alpha chimps get there in the socially recognized way and when they get there, their behaviour is socially acceptable. But then, the mafia began amongst a socially oppressed group in Sicily and live in a sub-culture in what they do is socially acceptable.

A hierarchy is not necessarily a mafia, even though a mafia is a hierarchy.

That’s the only distinction between “natural” and “artificial” societies I’ve been making. — NOS4A2

OK. If you had explained this up front, it would have been clearer what you were saying.

A common trick is to conflate a state or nation as a society. I just don’t know how one consider such an aggregate of human beings a “society”, so I’ll stick to the simpler ones. — NOS4A2

Yes, those words do get used in very sloppy ways. It's complicated and there are many different ways to live.

Remember that Aristotle thought the relationships between master and slave were natural. Do you? — NOS4A2

Now, there's a tricky question. Let's stipulate that "master" and "slave" are social roles that are backed by law - i.e. backed by coercion. It would not be wrong to say, then, that if those roles are not backed by law, they cannot exist in that society.
But could master/slave-like relationships exist without the backing of the law? Of course they can. There are two kinds.
One is created when a group is formed to function in certain kinds of environment, like a ship's crew or an dangerous environment, like an dangerous journey or a war situation. (Civilian police and some other roles are also like this.) In those cases, one (normally) volunteers and, in so doing, accepts the discipline required. We could say that because it is (normally) temporary and one can leave, it is a temporary master/slave relationship, but I think that would be misleading.
The other is a certain kind of relationship that has come to prominence in recent years, known as "coercive control". It is not backed by law - indeed, it is banned by law in some countries. In many cases, it is virtually indistinguishable, apart from the lack of backing by law, from slavery.

You'll notice that I've avoided the question whether such relationships - particularly the second one - are natural or not. The reason is simple. If I say that they are natural, then the moral implication is that they are not immoral - that's why Aristotle said that master/slave relationships are natural. He was misled, of course, but he couldn't really be expected to know any better, since slavery, in his times, was more or less universally recognized and taken for granted by everyone whose opinion we know about. Nowadays, in most parts of the world, we think that slavery is immoral and consequently we would be very reluctant to say that it is natural.

However, many animal societies are structured by a dominance hierarchy (pecking order). These are not exactly slave societies, but they are dictated by coercion, or the threat of it. But it would be meaningless to try to apply our moral standards to them. However, I do think that we should not think that we can eliminate informal dominance relationships between individuals and within social groups. The trick will be to prevent them becoming slave-like relationships.

A natural society, to me, is kinship. It consists of people we know: family, friends, those we trade with, or otherwise deal with on a consistent basis. The activity that operates here is premised on largely social and voluntary cooperation. — NOS4A2

Certainly, there are such social groups. There are also half-way houses in which volunteers sign up for a common purpose which, for one reason or another depends on cohesion. That requires an acceptance of discipline and usually, in practice, some kind of hierarchy whether formal or informal. (I'll mention these again below.)
I'm not at all sure what you mean by "the family hierarchy". Did you mean that we don't get to choose our at least our first parents and we are subject to control until we grow up? Certainly, relationships with our birth/childhood family (-ies) are rather different from our family relationships when we start our own families and both are different from our friendship relationships; all those are different from our work and business relationships. Perhaps social and voluntary co-operation dominate, but they are not the whole story. (I don't say that you are wrong)

Now, could a state or nation (or nation-state) be structured in that way, largely free of hierarchy. The issue here is that we need to consider social relationships that extend beyond "kith and kin" - people you know and people you are related to by birth or "marriage" (in its widest sense)?
It seems to me, that since you don't know these people, they cannot work in the same way as your kith and kin relationships. There needs to be a formal structure to enable the kind of cohesion that is suggested by "society" and I don't see how that would work if there were not some kind of hierarchy, no matter how benevolent and co-operative. In practice, I think you will find, there always has been some kind of hierarchy in states and nations and that is suggestive.

That makes sense. Though didn't I read earlier that you do take up some work or business opportunities from time to time? But I guess that's marginal.

It's a life-style choice. It doesn't happen to be mine.

Come to think of it, I have upped sticks and moved to somewhere new with no social links - apart from a job opportunity - a few times. So it isn't an all or nothing choice. There are options in between.

It seems to me, from the little I know about world history, that static societies do benefit from welcoming travellers and immigrant (and from their people travelling and sometimes moving out). On the other hand, travellers and immigrants do rely on ordered societies to move between.

One could discuss exceptions, like colonization of unoccupied land (though my guess is that has not occurred since pre-historic times) and imperialistic conquest. But they are exceptions.

So from the point of view of social philosophy, the best situation is for both patterns to co-exist.

During colonial times, the colonizing powers strictly prohibited access from the motherland to the colonies, except for some colonies earmarked for settling purposes, such as North America, Australia, and New Zealand. — Tarskian

Thanks for this. I'm glad I stuck to what I was sure of. Those countries were, of course, regarded as terra nullius because the societies there were not recognized as such. I'm not sure why. I'm pretty sure there was widespread settlement in Africa, though, as well. I forgot about that for some reason.

In fact, in my experience, every country where there is no serious excess of visitors -- think Barcelona and Venice -- tends to be welcoming, or even very welcoming to foreigners. They mostly treat you as a curiosum. They want to talk with you, go out with you, and so on. — Tarskian

I'm sure that's true. Less so when there are many immigrants, though. But there is still ambivalence, as one can see in the USA and Europe, especially Britain.

I just wanted to point out that picking up one's traps and moving elsewhere is not always an easy option.

All I’m saying is groups of people living anywhere needn’t impose a hierarchy on others. — NOS4A2

Well, there's no-one forcing hierarchies on us. Unless you are positing that hierarchies are only ever formed because some individual decides to grab power. But, if that's what happens, why is it unnatural?
You may well be aware that Marx, in the 19th century, developed the ideas known as communism - there are many varieties of this. His theory was that we would, in the end, develop communist non-hierarchical societies.

In the 17th and 18th centuries it was popular to speculate about the origins of society. Various theories were developed on the basis of that society was created. See Hobbes' Leviathan 1651, Locke'sTwo Treatises of Government 1689 and Rousseau Social Contract 1762. There was much interest at the time in the "savages" discovered in the Americas who provided a model for this process. In the early years of the 20th century, it was realized that all "savage" societies were all working societies before Europeans arrived, so the idea of the state of nature has been abandoned for lack of empirical evidence. Nowadays, we are aware that many animals, fish and insects form societies naturally, so the idea that societies are a distinctively human idea has lapsed. It seems that we naturally form societies.
The question now is why societies have evolved, on the assumption that they must have some evolutionary advantage. Non-human societies have various structures; you can find details and examples on the internet. But I think you'll find that many, if not most, of them are hierarchical.

This life strategy acknowledges the very limited or even inexistent ability of the individual to improve his current political environment while emphasizing his very real ability to simply choose another one. — Tarskian

Yes. Many individuals have sought, willingly or not, to choose somewhere else to live. But colonization is over and many find it difficult to find another environment that will accept them. It helps to have a plenty of money. Without that, it is a very hard road even when you find somewhere else to settle.

It is morally superior because it encourages the individual to do something about the problem instead of endlessly complaining about it. — Tarskian

Complaining about things doesn't necessarily mean that you want to move. There are often good reasons to stay put even if there are difficulties to put up with.

They didn’t have to. They just wanted to. — NOS4A2

Yes, I expect that there were people who were keen to take advantage. But the question is, could cities have supported that many people in a hunter-gather life-style? It's a complicated question and I think that a definitive answer would be hard to impossible to get. So there may well have been an element of choice. In some way, cities must have offered something that was desirable to everyone. What could it have been. Agriculture arose around the same time, so that might have had something to do with it.

Now we have to adhere to the hierarchy or risk being punished. — NOS4A2

Do you seriously think that hunter-gather bands were all sweetness and light, with everybody doing exactly what they wanted and no force or compulsion?

By coincidence, I've been reminded that Wittgenstein discusses the difference between tacit and explicit knowledge - the paradox that one may know how to use a word perfectly well, but be unable to define it - Socrates' great mistake. In fact, this was a lynch-pin of his argument for meaning as use. Socrates thought that if you can't give an explicit definition of, say, courage, you didn't know what it is. But, for Wittgenstein, if you can behave bravely, you do know what courage is, even if you can't define it.
I think of tacit knowledge as like a sub-routine in a programme. It's the routine stuff that is delegated by consciousness, which is limited and lazy and prefers not to concentrate if it is not necessary. That does demand an explanation by reference to what's going on in the brain - and in the rest of the body as well. However, this is not a simple matter of physical laws, but requires an intervening layer, like the software in a computer.
Those sub-routines will involve implementation of rules - otherwise they cannot possibly be successful or even unsuccessful. So indeterminacy and blind action will apply.

There was no personal income tax anywhere in the world until around the first world war. — Tarskian

Income tax was levied in the UK from 1799 to 1802, and again from 1803 to 1816. It was brought back - on a strictly temporary basis - in 1842. Somehow, Parliament has never got round to abolishing it. In the USA personal income tax was imposed from 1872. A new income tax statute in 1894 was effectively struck down by the Supreme Court in 1895. The 16th Amendment reintroduced it on a firm legal basis in 1913. It's always been unpopular and bitter battles were fought over it in the 19th century. I can't quickly find information for other countries.

Also, government expenditure as a percentage of GDP is much lower. The government simply spends less. — Tarskian

That makes sense. You get what you pay for. It will be interesting to see how things develop as their economies develop. Hint - The first welfare state in the world was initiated by Otto von Bismarck in 1883 as a remedial measure to appease the working class and undermine support for his political opponents. For clarity, he was a conservative politician, deeply opposed to socialism.

Representation is an illusion anyway. Why pay for an illusion? — Tarskian

If one doesn't think it is an illusion, one might pay for it. Or even, perhaps, one might pay for it even it is an illusion because it is a useful illusion.

In politics and government the hierarchy is artificial and conventional, not natural. So this type of hierarchy is not inevitable or born of necessity, but the practical and logical consequence of synthetic political organization. — NOS4A2

Yes. As cities got larger, new forms of social organization had to be developed. You could always go back to hunting and gathering. Not my choice, though.

A well-structured operating system does not need a virus-checker. — Tarskian

Yes. If I had my time again, I would probably adopt Linux long before now. But it would be a big project for me and I think I have more pressing things to attend to. I'll have to manage as I am.

In all practical terms, personal income tax is not even implemented outside the West. — Tarskian

Fair enough. I thought there might be an answer along those lines. What about VAT or sales tax? It is not politically clever to apply taxes that each citizen must individually pay. The best taxes are not visible to voters. But then there's the moral argument that, just as there should be no taxation without representation, there should be no representation without taxation. So it's not easy.

I have used these principles since 2013. I have never had any security problem related to Bitcoin — Tarskian

I have not used either. I had no protection whatever until 10 years ago. Now, I have a virus-checker (Norton). I have never had any security problem.

The power of the local ruling mafia is continuously being challenged by other political clans who want to replace them. If you've got nothing to do with that, you are simply of no interest to them. — Tarskian

... apart from your ability to pay your taxes?

The truth is that the only real, inalienable wealth is your ability to deal with changes in fortune and, in the end, to walk away from everything you possess and start again, using whatever you have to hand. That's not entirely bullet-proof, but it's as near as one can get.

They are mostly a matter of self-discipline. — Tarskian

H'm. Perhaps self-discipline is freedom. An interesting thought.

However, that is typically not what any local ruling mafia is interested in. They have other politically more interesting people on their radar as well as limited resources to watch them. — Tarskian

So you know how far to trust them? Or do you just think you know? Put a foot wrong and you might become an object of great political interest.

I would have to distrust the math/cryptography. In fact, mathematicians and cryptographers generally do. That is why they invariably demand proof and then scrutinize it thoroughly. The method itself is already one of systematic distrust. — Tarskian

I'm really sorry, but the fact is that I have had many firm reassurances that IT is absolutely, finally secure, only to discover that it isn't. So I'm not buying.

when we posit conceptions of the physical and the mechanistic and attempt to found indeterminate intersubjective discursivity on these. — Joshs

Yes. One quibble. Our conceptions of the physical and mechanistic will originate with us (collectively). What would it mean to found our indeterminate inter-subjective discursivity on them? I would have thought that some sort of inter-subjective discursivity would have to be in place in order to develop any conceptions of the physical and mechanistic. But then, how could we not have a conception of the physical and mechanistic if we can discourse between ourselves?

The task of the philosopher is not to extract a common conceptual scheme from these myriad domains and to determine its faithfulness to some uncorrupted reality; it is, rather, to learn to navigate among the domains, and so to clarify their concerns in relation to each other. — Evan Thompson

I like that. It doesn't have a hierarchy and requires only an arbitrary starting-point.

The pragmatist insists that the world is both found and made: it is made in the finding and found in the making.

That's brilliant. Would you care to share the reference? Then I could quote it too.

It's based on a collection of math/cryptographic theories, that I investigated -- starting in 2013 -- and that are not easy to refute. Well, I am still waiting for someone to successfully do that. If someone really can, he will probably become a trillionaire. — Tarskian

It's certainly a protection in a different league. So I'm not saying you are wrong to trust it. How does that square with your policy of distrust?

I define true (or maximum) freedom as keeping just the laws of God. — Tarskian

Some people regard those as very restricting.

The local ruling mafia is actually a quite manageable problem. I am certainly not complaining. — Tarskian

I'm sure you're not. They might be watching. Anyway, that's the policy that most people go for, isn't it?

It's not just a press of the button to take your coins away from you. — Tarskian

... unless you are a fraudster!

Seizure-prone wealth is a form of slavery. It is not true freedom. — Tarskian

What is true freedom?

I trust that ultimately the true consensus will be to distrust. — Tarskian

Total trust in everyone is idiotic. Total distrust of everyone makes life impossible. The trick is, to know how far you can trust each person. You seem to trust Bitcoin.

A British official threatened to extradite Americans whose free speech offended him. There is no conceivable way you can spin this. It's disgraceful. — fishfry

Are you saying that US law should apply in the UK? How is that not imperialism?

In Britain a guy was arrested for "anti-establishment rhetoric." If that doesn't bother you, I won't further argue the point. — fishfry

Actuallly, it does
[quote=News report]the posts were alleged to contain anti-Muslim and anti-establishment rhetoric.[/quote]
They don't give details (no doubt for fear of being accused of spreading the words more widely), so I can't sort out what's going on. Anti-Muslim is a problem. Anti-establishment is not. It's interesting that the headlines all mention "anti-establishment" and don't mention "anti-muslim". That does puzzle me.

It's hard to believe they could actually do it; but a British official did threaten it. — fishfry

I don't think they could do it either.

The British government has gone full fascist. I'm sorry you can't see it. Maybe you're too close — fishfry

Perhaps I am. My parents fought WW2. So I think I have a real understanding of what full fascism is. Believe me, this isn't it.

You don't seem very keen on free speech as I understand the term. — fishfry

Perhaps we just have different ideas about free speech. You have yours. I have mine. Why is that a problem? I don't think anyone thinks there should be no restrictions at all. Even the US has libel laws, doesn't it?

I'm sure Europeans have been conditioned to hate and fear free speech, free expression, and free thinking. That's to their own ultimate detriment. — fishfry

Sadly, from my point of view, US citizens have been conditioned to hate and fear sensible controls to minimize the harm that some people will inflict on them by exploiting their freedoms - not only in free speech, but also in the matter of gun control. There may be detriments to control, but there are detriments to unlimited freedom. It's a choice. Nothing is pure benefit.

Lot of people in the States want the government control the Internet too. — fishfry

And have they been conditioned as well? Or just making a different choice from you?

Lot of people in the States want the government control the Internet too. — fishfry

And have they been conditioned as well? Or just making a different choice from you?

You're making an obscure and convoluted point. I'm fully aware of the dangers to illegal immigrants. But most just walk across (in the US) and are welcomed by an administration that refuses to enforce its own laws. — fishfry

Perhaps. So long as you are aware. The problem is that many people aren't as concerned about immigration as you are. So, to enforce immigration restrictions, you would need a police state. Indeed, I rather think that you would not be happy about that.
By the way, why are you so keen on freedom of speech and so much against freedom of movement?

I have a theory about why the Americans love the British Royals. We get to enjoy all the pomp, the circumstance, and the salacious scandals. And we don't have to pay for it! — fishfry

I suppose that works. But they are actually very boring people.

Kam's got the media on her side and a newly energized Democratic party. Trump is old, seems confused and out of sorts lately, and IMO may be suffering a touch of age-related dementia himself. The election could go either way. — fishfry

It's true. Kam has managed to revive the Democrats, and now it's more of an actual race. I did wonder, in all the fuss about Biden, whether the issue might come back to bite Trump.

The second-generation native born Muslims seem to manage to get themselves radicalized anyway. — fishfry

There's not that many of them. There will be fewer in the third generation.

By the way, 100,000 Hamas-loving maniacs are going to riot at the Democratic convention in Chicago this week. Should be something for the world to see. — fishfry

Ever since that business started off, I've been astonished how Israel has mismanaged the propaganda war. They started off with the moral high ground and have surrendered it almost completely.

You have the establishment view. .... In your country I'd be subject to arrest. — fishfry

Sometimes I agree with the mainstream (that's less pejorative than "establishment"), but not always. No, you would not be subject to arrest in this country on the basis of anything you have said to me.

I have no idea what would persuade us to accept that any machine, biological or not, is not working from any human-interpretable rules.
— Ludwig V
Its a well-established issue in machine learning and I already had posted a paper talking about it in the context of neuroscience this thread: — Apustimelogist

My statement there is badly written, I'm afraid. I'm relieved to hear that it is an issue. I'll have to read the article later, but the summary is interesting.

But in that case, we can certainly work out what's going on from the results.
— Ludwig V
Which is always our interpretation of what is going on and falls to the same kinds of rule-following issues as initially described - which inevitably would result in another appeal to blindness. — Apustimelogist

Of course. But blindness resolves the infinite regress of interpretation and underdetermination, so it is a feature, not a bug.
You think that the AI's hidden rules resolve the "problem" of blindness. I don't see how. If you are accepting that they are interpretable by humans, how do they not have the same problems as any other rules? To put the question another way, if the AIs rules cannot be understood by human beings (or even, if you insist, by other AIs, how would "correct" and "incorrect" have any meaning? To put the point yet another way, if the AIs rules really were uninterpretable by human beings, what meaning would "correct" and "incorrect" have?

If brains are in their environment then of course they can interact with other brains. — Apustimelogist

Of course they can. Everything interacts with everything else. The interesting questions are about how they interact and whether there are any limits. Surely brains don't interact directly with other brains, but only via a chain that connects them - roughly, via the bodies they live in. How do people and their interactions fit in to this chain?

Depends what you mean, I guess; but, not important. — Apustimelogist

That depends on whether you think people are important. They probably are not, at the level that you are talking about. Indeed, I wonder whether they exist at that level.

I mean, I don't understand how you could think this as some kind of over-reductive description when I literally said in the same paragraph the following:
And then, good understanding of whats happening here wants multiple levels of explanation spanning all fields from microbiology to evolution to linguistics, anthropology, social psychology to history and upward. No one field or level of explanation can do justice to everything.
This is one level of description, appeal, explanation - made necessary by the fact that it explains how people behave and think, at least in the proximal sense. — Apustimelogist

Yes. I did read that. This is the idea that all science will, in the end, be unified into a single over-arching structure. That's an article of faith, or perhaps a programme of research. It certainly isn't a fact. What's worse, is that, by eradicating people from your causal chain, you seem to be reducing people to their brains. Perhaps unintentionally, but nonetheless, there's no conceptual space for them.

Wasn't necessarily imply they weren't underdetermined; but the point was that rule behavior is not determined by rule abstractions floating about in a platonic dimension. — Apustimelogist

Certainly. We agree on that.

It is determined by extremely complicated mechanistic processes in the world and our brains, as is the behavior which translates to our agreements about the applications of words and categorizations of behaviors. — Apustimelogist

If the laws are underdetermined, how can they determine those mechanistic processes - except, perhaps, by some version of blind action? I do agree that there are complicated physical processes going on. But we do not know how to translate from the physical level of description to the human - it's called the hard problem. But if there were a translation how would it not be a matter of rules?

Yes, but most wealth is not seizure resistant. — Tarskian

That's true.

The wealth is yours until the government decides that it isn't anymore. — Tarskian

Nonetheless, in practice, it seems to last a lot better than political power.

Of course, words and concepts must be inherently evolved, developed, learned, used in a social context. Brains in some sense synchronizing with other brains as well as other parts of the environments they navigate. — Apustimelogist

I'm afraid that although I understand the first sentence, I think. I cannot understand the second sentence unless I substitute "people" for "brains". That's a bit puzzling because, of course, it's perfectly true that human people need functioning brains if they are to behave as people. I can't help wondering you are making the same mistake that people make when they say that my eyes see. They don't. Neither does my brain. People see, even though they cannot see without eyes or brains.

Forms of life and language games are all just appeals to the blind behavior produced by the brain - in terms of both cognitive and motor-acts - in an interacting community of brains all "acting blindly" together: — Apustimelogist

I take it that you are referring here to Wittgenstein's "We act blindly". So, again, I can only understand this by substituting "people" for "brain". Brains don't (cannot) walk or talk even though one cannot walk or talk without a brain. Whether they can be said to understand anything is not clear to me. Normally, we say that people understand or fail to understand, though we also accept that they could not understand anything if they did not have brains.

Plus, I have already mentioned how I think brains are a deeper explanation more fundamental - brains interacting with their environments, multiple brains interacting together. — Apustimelogist

Of course brains interact with their environments. But they don't interact with other brains, unless that's just a fancy way of saying that people interact with other people, in ways that they could not if they did not have brains. But you do have some definite claims.

It is the explanation of how we act blindly and is linked to the possible idea that brains and any kind of neurons learn to perform tasks without any human-interpretable rules. — Apustimelogist

I suppose you have in mind the (apparent) fact that AIs appear to be able to act on rules without being able to tell what rules they are following. But in that case, we can certainly work out what's going on from the results. I have no idea what would persuade us to accept that any machine, biological or not, is not working from any human-interpretable rules. If we can't identify the rule, we have no evidence that there is one. In any case, whatever the tasks are that brains and neurons are doing, they are not acting blindly in the sense that Wittgesntein had in mind - in fact they are not acting at all in the sense that people act.

The brain idea is that it doesn't matter if rules are underdetermined because what causes our behavior is not platonic representations of rules but a functioning brain acting under the laws of physics. — Apustimelogist

Well, we agree on platonic representations of rules (if I've understood you right), and certainly, we do not (cannot) violate the laws of physics when we act; nor can our brains. But the idea that the laws of physics are not underdetermined is a big jump. So far as I can see, it contradicts (without refuting) the classic argument against induction. What have I missed?

My thought is that as soon as you're "the representative" then, in the material sense of being-able, you're no longer the same as whom you represent. (one of the mechanisms of syndicalism is that representatives cannot re-present, so a new person has to go up to say what the people they represent think every time, whatever that "time" happens to be designated as) — Moliere

The idea of representative democracy is what differentiates modern democracies from the ancient Greek model. They were all run on the basis of citizen assemblies. No representatives. You had to turn up in person. But that can't work in a state much larger than a city.

There's a fundamental issue in the concept of representation, which seems to be completely neglected in what I've seen. (But I'm not a serious academic political philosopher. I'm more interested than what is than in what ought to be.) The left wing, on the whole, sees a representative as someone who is delegated to report to the assembly what the people think, not what they themselves think. Such representatives are, in the jargon, described as mandated. (This is usually based on some formal vote after debate in a local assembly.)

The syndicalist view you describe is an extreme version of mandating representatives. It seems to me to be a recipe for chaos, since each representative will have slightly different views and may differ radically from the previous one. On the whole, the left wing seems to prefer mandating representatives and/or making them bring their decisions back for a popular vote before it is finalized. (That's how the trade unions work, on the whole - at least in the UK.) The alternative view is that representatives are there to decide on behalf of the people, exercising their judgement and discretion. Of course, if the people don't like the decisions their representative makes, they can vote them out next time round. Such representatives are more like agents - acting for their people. That is more popular on the right wing.

The story about the UK Parliament 50 years ago was that electing an MP was about electing the right sort of person to make decisions on one's behalf. That seems to have almost completely disappeared in favour of the hopelessly impractical idea that one votes for a set of policies, which the representative is expected to do their best to implement. But implementation is not always possible or wise, and often results in changes of detail. Hence the popular idea that you can't trust a politician.

You can see a similar issue in the Electoral College for the US Presidency. It seems like an empty ceremony because the people elected to the Electoral College are elected on a mandate. But in the late 18th century, with communications being so much slower, it was more practical to send representatives to vote on behalf of their people, rather than a specified candidate. I don't know when that changed.

you can't build representative systems since the apes that get the office are no better than the apes at home, — Moliere

I think you've slipped up there. Isn't the idea of representation that the apes that get the office should as like the apes as home as possible?

But your subtext is correct, of course. It is very hard to find democratic politicians who will vote for an unpopular policy.

All politically powerful people get approached by wealthy people for political privileges, but not necessarily the other way around. — Tarskian

That's true. But I was also thinking of the political influence wealth can have indirectly, not by influencing politicians. Where does that new factory go? Who going to be laid off? Where am I going to put my money? That sort of thing. Money talks. To put it another way, "it's all about economics, stupid"

There is always a hierarchical top to society where all the political power accumulates, and therefore, also pretty much all the wealth. — Tarskian

That's true. It's a consequence of freedom. Competition means winners and losers. Winners are in a stronger position to compete and tend to win more than losers, and vice versa.

It is simply not possible to prevent the concentration of political power and therefore of wealth. — Tarskian

That works the other way round, as well. It is simply not possible to prevent the concentration of wealth and therefore of political power.

However, those at the top of the hierarchy tend to succumb to wishful thinking and to deceive themselves into thinking they are not utterly dependent of the lower ranks for their position. Competition means that they can lose everything. Secretly, however, I think they are well aware of this and have to live in fear, while pretending to be utterly confident. "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown". This may explain why philosophers, who are by definition rational, are seldom also kings.

Everybody alive today has been corrupted from early childhood by our degenerate society. — Tarskian

People have been saying that forever - almost certainly since societies were formed. But the Golden Age of the past, on closer inspection, always turns out to be a nightmare. Why on earth would one want to become a nomadic shepherd in any earlier age?

The free market is the worst possible way of organizing an economy except for all the others. It is riddled with paradox. It is not in the interest of sellers, and not in the interest of buyers either. Sellers want higher prices and will always do their best to distort the market. Buyers want lower prices and will always do their best to distort the market.
However, it is not a case of one group of people against another. Every participant in the market is both a buyer and a seller. That's why free markets are an extremely fragile institutions and will always require heavy state regulation. But

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes

indeed. Especially as they are also players in the market.

He explicitly threatened non-Brits in their home countries. I am not confused about this, it has been extremely widely reported. — fishfry

You're right. I was confused. But it is quite simple. If you break British law in Britain and go home, Britain can sue in US courts for extradition, take you to back Britain and try you. If you break US law in the US and go home, US can sue in British courts for extradition, take you to back to the US and try you. Seems fair enough to me. Most countries in the West have the same arrangement - by treaty, i.e. international law.

You can be jailed for just reposting info about riots, not inciting them. — fishfry

Info or Incitement?
There's an interesting question about people who are US citizens in the US posting something to Britain that is within US law but banned in Britain. There's a suggestion that they can be extradited, but I find it very hard to believe.
There's a new law in Britain that if you re-post an illegal post by someone else, you are also guilty of incitement. I agree that's pushing it a bit, but if someone is inciting violence and you join in the incitement, I think there's a case for it - if you can prove it. After all, if you help someone committing a theft, you are also breaking the law. No?
There's a big push in the UK and Europe to get the internet under control. You may not be aware of how much the big internet companies are resented over here. They have a very poor reputation. One has to give them credit for taking the issues seriously, but they don't take effective action. They plead free speech, but no-one believes that. It's about the bottom line and that's not acceptable.

Who is prepared to die? Impoverished peasants streaming across the US southern border? — fishfry

I'm not sure who you trust on this. But Reuters have a pretty good reputation.
Reuters on deaths on US-Mexico border
Certainly, people die in the Channel regularly. BBC on migrant deaths in the Channel
I don't know how many, if any, are illiterate. Why does it matter?

The British courts don't have the US First Amendment, which provides legal protection for the most appalling expressions of ideas. I read that Prince Harry has called the First Amendment "bonkers." The US has very strong protections for speech not found in most other democratic nations. — fishfry

Yes, that's true. The UK does have protection for free speech. Just not as much as in the US. People resent they way the the US internet companies impose your law on us.
However, I really don't care at all what Prince Harry's views are; he has no special knowledge or authority that I'm aware of. I can't understand why people in the US get so excited about our royal family. They are an embarrassment in a supposedly democratic country.

And now you've got Starmer. Good luck! I should talk, right? We're about to have Queen Kamala. — fishfry

Starmer is at least less of a joke than the other lot. Rishi Sunak was better his immediate predecessors, but was undermined by his own party. I have the impression that Trump is still likely to win.

Well if Islam seeks to become a universal religion, what happens to your nation when there are enough of them to make a political difference? It's no hypothetical. — fishfry

Hopefully, by that time, there will be more home-grown imams and fewer radicals imported from back home. There are already a good many of them (home-grown imams) - they just don't get the news coverage. Plus, generations born and brought up here are, on the whole, often atheists or moderates. I think they will settle down. If the other immigrant communities are anything to go by, there'll be a lot of inter-marriage with the general population, anyway.

Who is suppressing your views? — fishfry

Sorry, I wasn't clear. No-one is suppressing my views. Fortunately, I'm pretty much mainstream. I've tried to clarify what I was trying to say and failed, so I'll have to let it go.

Ok. China has its own problems though. I hear they're in demographic collapse. — fishfry

So are many other Western countries, including Britain, not to mention Japan and Korea. There's a lot of argument about the reasons. Most plausible explanation is that that a modern capitalist economy makes it too hard to bring up children. Either you live in poverty with children or you work to make the money for a decent life without children. Not to mention the gloomy outlook for the West. That also is one of the reasons why Britain actually needs immigrants and allows many in, legally.

The USA is not doing well but is not in collapse - yet.
US Census Bureau 2023
US Census Bureau 2021

The question we have been circling around is why language should be the way it is instead of any other way? Social practices seem malleable and contingent, so in virtue of what are they the way they are? — Count Timothy von Icarus

OK. I think I've already pointed out my view that every foundation requires another, just because the question why is it so? is always available. So I've essentially asked for this. I hope you won't think I'm ungrateful just because I'm not happy with your answer. After all, it's disagreements that keep philosophy going.

To be intelligible—to not be arbitrary—social practice must have its explanation in something outside itself. On the view that being is intelligible, such an explanation must be possible. My position is that the tools of reason (language, theories, logic, etc.) are what join us to these explanations—to metaphysical truth. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There's that pesky metaphor again. I guess you mean that social practices are not self-explanatory. But then I think that if I can practice a social practice, I understand it (and if I can't, I don't). So I'm wondering what kind of explanation would be appropriate. I can't see that re-importing reason (language, theories, logic, etc.), which was to be what social practices explained, is going to help. Unless you are saying that social practices and reason etc. are mutually supporting, which would conform to the "outside" requirement, I suppose. But then that would form a new structure which would generate a new "why".

In the same way, a view of truth that is limited to the confines of individual language games explains truth in a “small way.” Reason is no longer ecstatic, taking us beyond what we already are. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There are soaring aspirations here and it is hard to resist. But my ambition is to understand where I am. Nor am I sure what "ecstasy" means here. You posit reason etc as what "joins" us to "the world", and if we were not already in the world, that would be a useful function. I suppose it is true to say that reason is what enables us to understand the world, but, given that we are already in it, that doesn't seem much like ecstasy.

For Chesterton, the mark of madness is this combination of “logical completeness and a spiritual contraction.” In the same way, a view of truth that is limited to the confines of individual language games explains truth in a “small way.” Reason is no longer ecstatic, taking us beyond what we already are. Rather it runs in tight, isolated circles. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. Confronting delusions of that kind is indeed a tricky business. Though I've seen people behave like that - running round and round a single argument - and thought that although they are very irritating, they are not clinically unwell. Perhaps Chesterton means "madness" in a more informal sense, and of course, there is very likely to be a spectrum.
I think we would indeed regard someone who endlessly played noughts and crosses (tic-tac-toe) without ever becoming bored even though they realized how limited it is, as in poor mental health. But that's not Wittgenstein's vision.

On such a view, reason represents not a bridge, the ground of the mind’s nuptial union with being, but is instead the walls of a perfect but hermetically sealed cell. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Forgive me, but I don't quite understand. You represent the one view as desirable and the other as undesirable. I get that. But I still find myself asking which one is true? It would seem odd to choose the one view because it has more desirable consequences, but that's what you seem to be expecting me to do.

Our language can be regarded as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, of houses with extensions from various periods, and all this surrounded by a multitude of new suburbs with straight and regular streets and uniform houses — Wittgenstein, Phil. Inv. 18

I'm more hesitant than I used to be about treating the notion of a language-game as some sort of analytic tool, but it is clear, isn't it, that he is showing us a complex of structures which are interconnected and interactive, and most definitely not a monolith. Surely, even though he doesn't make the point, it is clear these structures are flexible and dynamic. Not, I would have thought, prisons.
I don't, therefore, think that Wittgenstein's ideas lead us to the narrow view of reason, language and truth. It does allow that each "language game" and "practice" does actually define truth in its own appropriate way and therefore does link us to its own relevant category of being. That's enough for me.
So I'm afraid I still don't know how to answer the question.

This is really getting into the weeds but the NZ context is that bus lanes are being created by taking out roadside parking and the margin of the road where cyclists would normally pedal. — apokrisis

Ouch! I didn't think of that. It certainly puts the project in a different perspective. And I suppose the idea of the cyclists pedalling along outside the bus lane in the car/lorry lane is even worse.
When you have a nice broad roadway, you can separate, pedestrians, cyclists, buses, cars. (Where do horses belong?) But in inner cities, it is much harder. (though the lower traffic speeds do help).
In the end, I guess, it will come down to restricting cars; after all, one person one car is hopelessly (luxuriously) inefficient. In ancient Rome, they forbade commercial vehicles during day-light hours; we could do the same. But the price is noise during night hours. But then, there's not many people living in the inner city. No solution, just balances and compromises.

It's utterly insane that cyclists are legally allowed in bus lanes. Utterly bewilderingly dangerous - and it encourages cyclists to blame everyone else. — AmadeusD

Why? Bus drivers are at least professional and trained to be attentive. They are not texting or day-dreaming like the average car commuter. What's the problem? — apokrisis

I think this comes down to the statistics. How many cyclists use the lanes? How many accidents are there?
My prediction is that cyclists in bus lanes will work until there are too many of them. Then there will be accidents and delays to public transport. The latter, in particular, is the primary reason why they are brought into existence, at least in the UK. You can't run a bus system unless journey times are reasonably predictable; unpredictable traffic jams make it impossible to schedule the buses. Plus, it gives public transport an edge over cars in terms of journey times.
Of course, that will only work if there are not too many buses. If they get too many, they will cause their own traffic jams and delays.
It's also the story of Venice, Madeira, Barcelona in recent news. One cruise ship is excellent business. Ten or twenty cruise ships are a public disaster. Some AirBNB flats are not a problem. Too many AirBNB flats means local people go homeless or have to move out.
You may notice a theme here. Things can work perfectly well until too many people want to take them up. Then they don't work any more. That's the story of cars. It's really quite simple. But the political implications are - tricky.

I doubt a guarantee of "no harm" was given — Paine

Oh, I think a guarantee was exactly the point. But the twist is that goodness or virtue was thought of as inherent in the good man and could not be affected by any external disaster. Which is not a stupid idea. But it is at variance with what common sense regards as suffering harm. Plato takes up the issue again in the Gorgias.

A man contrives evil for himself when he contrives evil for someone else, and an evil plan is most evil for the planner. — Hesiod, Works and Days, 260, translated by Glenn W. Most

A man contrives evil for himself when he contrives evil for someone else, and an evil plan is most evil for the planner. Zeus’ eye, which sees all things and knows all things, perceives this too, if he so wishes, and he is well aware just what kind of justice this is which the city has within it. Right now I myself would not want to be a just man among human beings, neither I nor a son of mine, since it is evil for a man to be just if the more unjust one will receive greater justice. But I do not anticipate that the counselor Zeus will let things end up this way. — Hesiod, Works and Days, 260, translated by Glenn W. Most

My knowledge of Hesiod is sadly lacking. The idea of sin as its own punishment is a most interesting idea and sits well alongside the idea that virtue is its own reward. The threat of Zeus' intervention spoils the effect, though the idea that there will be a divine accounting in the long run and evildoers will suffer for their sins.
The penultimate sentence - "Right now I myself would not want to be a just man among human beings, .... since it is evil for a man to be just if the more unjust one will receive greater justice." is fascinating because of the play on different meanings of justice. Or is it just a muddle?
Heraclitus' remarks about Eris are a different view - less about the individual and more about society. But still, there is an approach at work that identifies what is right or just with what wins out in struggle. If one is charitable, it is be a proto-dialectical view. More realistically, it seems like a "might is right" view.
I find it fascinating to see so many different views of virtue and vice, right and wrong, power and weakness playing out together. The modern world thinks it has got beyond all that, but I think it may have lost something in the process.

You see he says that people get heated through talking too much — Phaedo, 63e, Chris Emlyn-Jones and William Preddy

I suppose this could be a reference to some of the actual symptoms, with a false diagnosis of the cause. I wouldn't have minded if he had just drawn a veil over that actual death, but to represent him as calm and coherent throughout is simply incredible.

That was my point. Left and right used to be about social and economic policy settings. A debate over the right national system. Now it has shifted to identity politics. — apokrisis

OK. Sorry I misunderstood.
I suspect that identity has always been a factor in politics. But it is true that debates these days seem to be mostly single issue, as opposed to more comprehensive approaches that try to see each issue in the context of an overall policy setting. And the debates nowadays do suffer from that narrowness. On the other hand, it makes it easier to decide which side you're on. Perhaps that's why.