Leadership in crisis – why the West needs Plato more than ever • Hacker News Board

Re: Leadership in crisis – why the West needs Plato more than ever

#51

Post by 082349872349872 » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 4:57 AM UTC

bccdee wrote: post #14

What a bad essay. I'm shocked that standards for writing have dropped so low. Consider this paragraph: > Democracy’s fetishisation of freedom inevitably gives way to anarchy. Fathers pander to their sons, teachers to their pupils, humans to animals, and ‘the minds of the citizens become so sensitive that the least vestige of restraint is resented as intolerable’. Anarchy produces class struggle, as the poor attack th…

1984 owes much to Orwell's boarding school (pre-Oxbridge) experiences. Orwell's having been second rate, they studied strictly to the test, and never read entire works, but I find it plausible he read The Republic on his own. Which leaves the question: does 1984 resemble The Republic because Orwell was directly making fun of Plato's ideas[1], or because his school was stanning Jowett who was stanning the greeks, and playing telephone with Plato produces Oceania?

[1] Goldstein explicitly states the Inner Party / guardians are a meritocracy. (Orwell's observation on equality of educational chances is that children of the Inner Party do not in principle become inner party members themselves.) Life is difficult for the Outer Party, because, having failed their quals, they must rely on ideology over aptitude to keep their positions. (The yanks, innovative as ever, have shown us the IngSoc model works even better with two mutually antagonistic yet still self-policing outer parties. Competition between outer parties frees up inner party members to do, without having to waste time keeping everyone else down, whatever it is that inner party people do.)

Bonus track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEeBAO5o3aU

Re: Leadership in crisis – why the West needs Plato more than ever

#52

Post by phroobster » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 5:17 AM UTC

Fishysoup wrote: post #21

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #8

The oldest democracy today is ~200 years old, and a modern democracy [1] for much less - 100 years. Still, we have been talking about democracy for at least 2300 years. If Plato had the answers, we should have learned by now. I think the jury is still out on wether this is just a matter of "bad implementation", or long-term democracy is an impossibility without degenerating into a dystopia. Also, funny way to "pick a…

Eugenics isn't the logical conclusion of the "leader caste" because we know that not only is it deeply unethical, it also doesn't work. We don't really know what makes someone "better", we don't know how to do it, and we don't even know how to define "better". Stephen Hawking contributed an enormous amount to society despite having a devastating genetic condition. Note, correcting devastating conditions in newborns (…

In my opinion eugenics is only wrong when it is forced. I see nothing wrong with providing financial incentives for people to reproduce if they have qualities that society tends to find positive, such as having a high IQ or performing well on some exam. Obviously no metric will be perfect, but they are at least a better proxy for intelligence than a coin flip.

Re: Leadership in crisis – why the West needs Plato more than ever

#53

Post by fakedang » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 5:56 AM UTC

DonaldFisk wrote: post #37

> The Covid-19 crisis has shocked us by revealing the weakness of Western government, particularly in the United States and Britain, and the strength of the Chinese government. > The philosopher and the cult of Plato provide us with both a model and inspiration for how to fix the ship of state. Yet Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister, graduated in Classics at Oxford University, and would not only have studied P…

Boris Johnson's education at Oxford was less Greek classics and more Oxford Union, as was that of many current Tory candidates. Of course, the one who led the UK down the crapshoot of a Brexit path in the first place, David Cameron, was a first class holder.

Re: Leadership in crisis – why the West needs Plato more than ever

#54

Post by dwaltrip » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 6:10 AM UTC

dwohnitmok wrote: post #30

vkou wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A simple answer may be Darwinism. The politicians that survive are politicians that seek re-election. The 'why' they originally go into politics (money or ideology) may be irrelevant as a fitness function for this sort of thing. (And eventually, as t -> ∞, the percentage of politicians that seek re-election will -> 100%.)

Darwinism generally arises in a world of fitness where reproduction is the dominating force. That is if politicians reproduced while in office to form more politicians and reproduction among politicians was the main source of new politicians then yes we might have reason to believe that seeking re-election is an emergent behavior from basic survival. However, that's not the way politics works. There is a stable equil…

Behavior can “reproduce” when it is copied by (or taught to) others. There are a variety of selective factors that make it more likely for certain copied behaviors to “survive” and then be copied further. This is cultural evolution.

Of course, much complexity is uncovered when you dig into the details. It isn’t a perfect analogy but it seems very useful.

Re: Leadership in crisis – why the West needs Plato more than ever

#55

Post by prox » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 7:05 AM UTC

diegoholiveira wrote: post #10

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #8

The oldest democracy today is ~200 years old, and a modern democracy [1] for much less - 100 years. Still, we have been talking about democracy for at least 2300 years. If Plato had the answers, we should have learned by now. I think the jury is still out on wether this is just a matter of "bad implementation", or long-term democracy is an impossibility without degenerating into a dystopia. Also, funny way to "pick a…

> If Plato had the answers, we should have learned by now. The passage of time doesn't implies moral progress, unlike natural sciences who progress is only forward. What I'm want to mean by this is: we'll do the same mistakes again and again and again.

Every generation learns anew, so that is one of the reasons why this occurs. At best you have a mentor who is at max 100 years old.

Books can be informative, but it is no substitute for people actually being part of history. Especially if you frame it in the lens of power dynamics and the ownership of wealth. Those in power are connected to those with wealth and their ethics and politics determine to a great extend what happens.

Re: Leadership in crisis – why the West needs Plato more than ever

#56

Post by 082349872349872 » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 7:40 AM UTC

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #8

The oldest democracy today is ~200 years old, and a modern democracy [1] for much less - 100 years. Still, we have been talking about democracy for at least 2300 years. If Plato had the answers, we should have learned by now. I think the jury is still out on wether this is just a matter of "bad implementation", or long-term democracy is an impossibility without degenerating into a dystopia. Also, funny way to "pick a…

> If Plato had the answers, we should have learned by now.

Plato's rebuttal (virtue can't be taught or learned, but occurs): http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%... et seq

Bonus clip (can virtue be recalled?): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIq4Az-M9Ts (thank you Chekhov)

Re: Leadership in crisis – why the West needs Plato more than ever

#57

Post by fennecfoxen » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 1:03 PM UTC

_qulr wrote: post #43

fennecfoxen wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not bizarre. It's the culmination of an unfortunate "democracy is bad" and even "freedom is bad" undertone in the rest of the author's essay. Plato of course got a lot going for him, but The Republic never really solved the problem of making sure you get a philosopher-king instead of a tyrant. This essay's author declines to mention the possibility of tyrants because he knows it will undermine his argument badly…

> The Republic never really solved the problem of making sure you get a philosopher-king instead of a tyrant. I disagree. "train the guardians through a prolonged education that involves not just academic education but also character-training designed to ensure that guardians put the public good above private interests" "the guardians should be banned from getting married or owning private property in order to focus…

This isn’t actually a solution in fact.

Re: Leadership in crisis – why the West needs Plato more than ever

#58

Post by dwohnitmok » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 4:26 PM UTC

dwaltrip wrote: post #54

dwohnitmok wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Darwinism generally arises in a world of fitness where reproduction is the dominating force. That is if politicians reproduced while in office to form more politicians and reproduction among politicians was the main source of new politicians then yes we might have reason to believe that seeking re-election is an emergent behavior from basic survival. However, that's not the way politics works. There is a stable equil…

Behavior can “reproduce” when it is copied by (or taught to) others. There are a variety of selective factors that make it more likely for certain copied behaviors to “survive” and then be copied further. This is cultural evolution. Of course, much complexity is uncovered when you dig into the details. It isn’t a perfect analogy but it seems very useful.

By the time we're talking about things like cultural evolution and memetic propagation, we're getting pretty close to just talking about ideology again.

Re: Leadership in crisis – why the West needs Plato more than ever

#59

Post by nine_zeros » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

dwohnitmok wrote: post #46

nine_zeros wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people are so entrenched and need to make a living, they will make a living out of what they are entrenched in. There are no other real career choices for them besides continuing in politics.

Isn't it the case that those politicians who leave office and continue to work (mostly those who are not of retirement age) almost always make more money in their post-office careers than while they were in-office as a politician?

But they need to establish themselves as successful politicians before they can have a successful post-office careers.

By enforcing duration of political careers, there will be a constant influx of new blood who will represent the people of the time.