I've become rather disturbed by the amount of pro-autocratic sentiment I've encountered in tech circles. It comes in both the "right" (and "alt-right") and "lef

I've become rather disturbed by the amount of pro-autocratic sentiment I've encountered in tech circles. It comes in both the "right" (and "alt-right") and "left" varieties, as well as a few other weirder forms, but it's there. I guess hackers are no different from anyone else. Dangle money in front of people and they do tend to toss their morals out the window more often than not. I am not claiming that I am superior either. If someone offered me a shitload of money to do something I considered unethical, I can't say with 100% certainty that I'd never take it... to claim so would be the fallacy of self-exclusion. "I might be a coward I've just never been tested." - The Mighty Mighty Bosstones / The Impression That I Get I've also anecdotally observed that people with high IQs are often autocrats. They're prone to imagining that there are straightforward solutions to all the worlds problems and that all these problems could be solved if only things were run by smart people like them. They haven't yet been humbled by attempting to solve a really brutal multi-objective optimization problem or tame a complex system full of paradoxical effects and feedback loops. Attempting to govern a complex society is both of these things.