alt Hacker NewsIt also leads to fundamentally wrong conclusions: a related issue I have with this is the use of anthropomorphic shorthand when discussing international politics. You've heard a phrase like "the US thinks...", "China wants...", "Europe believes..." so much you don't even notice it.
All useful shorthands, all which lead to people displaying fundamental misunderstandings of what they're talking about - i.e. expressing surprise that a nation of millions doesn't display consistency of behavior of human lifetime scales, even though fairly obviously the mechanisms of government are churning their make up constantly, and depending on context maybe entirely different people.
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A country. A collective of people with a dedicated structure to represent interests and enforce strategies of the said collective as a whole.
It seems obvious to me that entities have emergent needs and plans and so on, independent of any of the humans inside.
For example, if you've worked at a large company, one of the little tragedies is when someone everyone likes gets laid off. There were probably no people who actively wanted Bob to lose his job. Even the CEO/Board who pulled the trigger probably had nothing against Bob. Heck, they might be the next ones out the door. The company is faceless, yet it wanted Bob to go, because that apparently contributed to the company's objective function. Had the company consisted entirely of different people, plus Bob, Bob might have been laid off anyway.
There is a strong will to do ... things the emerges from large structures of people and technology. It's funny like that.