Oh, but I do. Further, I think it's natural and inevitable. It's ridiculous to expect governments to artificially hobble themselves in terms of potential just because they're governments. It's what they do with that potential that concerns me. As an analogy, the fact that the government controls vast arsenals of weaponry does not necessarily mean it's planning to kill everyone else.
There's a popular meme on HN that government inevitably tends towards tyranny. I think this is total bullshit; tyrranical government is far from unusual, but it isn't the norm either, and the assumption that it is, is a false premise. Or put another way, there's no good priding yourself on your skills at Bayesian analysis if you have a habit of selecting inaccurate priors.
Edit: while I was making dinner it popped into my head that while nowadays there's a high probability that any given terrorist is Islamic, the probability that any given Muslim is a terrorist is, of course, quite low. Likewise, while tyrannies are often perpetuated by governments (that is, bureaucratic organizations as opposed to warlords or roving tribes), the probability of a given government turning tyrannical is far lower.
Oh, but I do. Further, I think it's natural and inevitable. It's ridiculous to expect governments to artificially hobble themselves in terms of potential just because they're governments. It's what they do with that potential that concerns me. As an analogy, the fact that the government controls vast arsenals of weaponry does not necessarily mean it's planning to kill everyone else.
There's a popular meme on HN that government inevitably tends towards tyranny. I think this is total bullshit; tyrranical government is far from unusual, but it isn't the norm either, and the assumption that it is, is a false premise. Or put another way, there's no good priding yourself on your skills at Bayesian analysis if you have a habit of selecting inaccurate priors.
Edit: while I was making dinner it popped into my head that while nowadays there's a high probability that any given terrorist is Islamic, the probability that any given Muslim is a terrorist is, of course, quite low. Likewise, while tyrannies are often perpetuated by governments (that is, bureaucratic organizations as opposed to warlords or roving tribes), the probability of a given government turning tyrannical is far lower.