alt Hacker News> "Famine is not isomorphic to hard times"
Nobody claimed it was
> "particularly not what the aphorism is referring to"
The aphorism does not say what it is referring to, you are making this up so it says what you want it to say (which is bias). This wouldn't be a problem if you used that to make a point and argue your point, but it is a problem when you just go "I imagine that it means something else, so you're wrong". Self-created hard times such as ... what? If laziness in farming doesn't create famine in winter... what hard times are more relevant than that for a society in 0 AD? "Needlessly curtailed" by who or what effect?
> "I said corrosive and/or dangerous, and weakness can be both corrosive and dangerous."
Can it. Is there any way to measure this weakness? Is it actually a thing?
> The aphorism does not say what it is referring to
In which case it makes no falsifiable claims. If “hard times,” “weak men,” and “strong men” have no stable meaning, the cycle can’t explain anything and can be retrofitted to any narrative. There would be nothing to argue for or against.
That isn’t the case. “Hard times” in this context means the cumulative internal consequences of institutional decay, complacency, and short-termism. Not natural disasters. That’s why your famine example is irrelevant.
> Is there any way to measure this weakness? Is it actually a thing?
Sociological concepts are evaluated by their broad effects, not by a single scalar value. Declining institutional competence, eroded norms, reduced accountability, and loss of collective purpose are both observable and historically recurrent.