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Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber (2000)

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Re: Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber (2000)

#91

Post by etplayer »

dgut wrote: post #80
pizza wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's The Dialectic of Enlightenment (written in 1947 - when Nazism, Stalinism, Fat Boy & Little Man, and the advent of popular culture were still in short-term memory) devotes a good amount of analysis to how - in spite of society's tendency to espouse 'progress eliminates regression' - society is not monotonically increasing. > "The self, entirely encompassed by civilization, is dissol…

I've read some Adorno and his work appears to me as meaningless chewing around. After all, he was inspired by Marx and Hegel. E.g: > What philosophy once called life, has turned into the sphere of the private and then merely of consumption, which is dragged along as an addendum of the material production-process, without autonomy and without its own substance. To quote Hume: > If we take in our hand any volume; of di…

I would have expected something less dogmatic from Hume, himself a philosopher. The irony is that the Dialectic of Enlightenment is exactly about this kind of attitude spawned with the enlightenment and its relation to the old Greek mythos. Sometimes I think that empiricism fell out of favour for a reason; the wide dismissal of the Continental branch is astonishing and rather ignorant - but who could blame Hume, for German idealism came about after him.

Re: Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber (2000)

#92

Post by dalore »

Iv wrote: post #31
justboxing wrote: post #16

> The "Bad" Parts of Technology Cannot Be Separated from the "Good" Parts. [1] I thought this was one of the most prophetic statement from his Technology Manifesto. Written in 1995, still true today. Take any technology, and you'll see it has been used for doing "good" things as well as "evil" things, and it's impossible for anyone to separate the two and enforce usage of only the "good" parts. Example: Drones. Used…

> You cannot invent drones and tell people it should only be used for good things, not bad things. Sure you can. This is the purpose of laws and law enforcement. Try to fly a drone with a knife to stab people and people will destroy it and arrest you. Internationally we have a lack of laws and a lack of enforcement, therefore we had only limited success at preventing nuclear proliferation or chemical/bio weapons uses…

Nothing is stopping you from doing it. You're talking about the consequences of doing it after the fact.

Re: Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber (2000)

#93

Post by titzer »

watty wrote: post #83
tray5 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not what I'm saying, I'm saying it is well thought out and has reasoned arguments. Not just that he believes in it a lot.

When someone goes crazy they don't lose the ability to use sophisticated language. I feel like people are reading the words and respecting the sophistication yet ignoring the meaning. What is he actually saying? Nothing that makes sense, hence the crazy part.

> Nothing that makes sense, hence the crazy part.

Have you actually read the manifesto and tried to understand it instead of just dismissing it as "crazy"? The only way to distinguish nonsense from sense is to...try to make sense of it.

IMO the only crazy part of the manifesto is the explanation and defense of his violence. But given that that violence almost certainly _did_ lead to a wider proliferation of his manifesto and ideas, it's even hard to argue that that was not an entirely rational (if inhuman) strategy.

Re: Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber (2000)

#94

Post by kerkeslager »

Iv wrote: post #31
justboxing wrote: post #16

> The "Bad" Parts of Technology Cannot Be Separated from the "Good" Parts. [1] I thought this was one of the most prophetic statement from his Technology Manifesto. Written in 1995, still true today. Take any technology, and you'll see it has been used for doing "good" things as well as "evil" things, and it's impossible for anyone to separate the two and enforce usage of only the "good" parts. Example: Drones. Used…

> You cannot invent drones and tell people it should only be used for good things, not bad things. Sure you can. This is the purpose of laws and law enforcement. Try to fly a drone with a knife to stab people and people will destroy it and arrest you. Internationally we have a lack of laws and a lack of enforcement, therefore we had only limited success at preventing nuclear proliferation or chemical/bio weapons uses…

> Sure you can. This is the purpose of laws and law enforcement. Try to fly a drone with a knife to stab people and people will destroy it and arrest you.

There are lots of drones in the Middle East killing people with much more dangerous weapons than knives.

> Both Antarctica and outer space are military-weapons-free

This is a fairly academic point given the US is capable of nuking anywhere on earth that anyone could possibly want to nuke. There aren't weapons in space because the purposes of putting weapons in space are achieved by other means.

Re: Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber (2000)

#95

Post by dumbneurologist »

this section:

  its research committee approved my request to view the 
  records of this experiment, the so-called data set, which 
  referred to subjects by code names only. But because 
  kaczynski’s alias was by then known to some journalists, I 
  was not permitted to view his records.
is straight-up B.S.. the only (putative) purpose of withholding records is to protect confidentiality. but in this case, the journalist was researching with Kaczynski's consent. they might have been playing games with the author (alston chase) and omitted this detail so that he didn't come back with the signed slip of paper, but any of the subject's data should absolutely be available to the subject.

I say "putative" because the _real_ purpose seems apparent... to hide from an investigation.

Re: Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber (2000)

#96

Post by bjl »

dgut wrote: post #80
pizza wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's The Dialectic of Enlightenment (written in 1947 - when Nazism, Stalinism, Fat Boy & Little Man, and the advent of popular culture were still in short-term memory) devotes a good amount of analysis to how - in spite of society's tendency to espouse 'progress eliminates regression' - society is not monotonically increasing. > "The self, entirely encompassed by civilization, is dissol…

I've read some Adorno and his work appears to me as meaningless chewing around. After all, he was inspired by Marx and Hegel. E.g: > What philosophy once called life, has turned into the sphere of the private and then merely of consumption, which is dragged along as an addendum of the material production-process, without autonomy and without its own substance. To quote Hume: > If we take in our hand any volume; of di…

It takes a lot of hubris (all too common in the software engineering community) to suggest that Marx and Hegel, two of the most influential philosophers of all time, produced nothing of meaning.

Re: Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber (2000)

#97

Post by titzer »

pvg wrote: post #78
tray5 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not what I'm saying, I'm saying it is well thought out and has reasoned arguments. Not just that he believes in it a lot.

Really? You're one of few people who think that. The 'manifesto' hits the crazy right off the bat and sticks to it for 35k words. "One of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world is leftism [...] When we speak of leftists in this article we have in mind mainly socialists, collectivists, “politically correct” types, feminists, gay and disability activists, animal rights activists and the like […

> We argue that modern leftists tend to have some such feelings (possibly more or less repressed) and that these feelings are decisive in determining the direction of modern leftism.

So he made a (controversial) argument about leftists which actually fits in with his broader point that humans these days are not able to self actualize and therefore suffer from repressed feelings. IMO the statement he made is significantly less crazy than Freud's "scientific" theory of penis envy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis_envy#Freud.27s_theory), which was treated as an actual theory by the scientific community for _decades_.

It's a bit polemic about leftists in that regard, but do you think the overall point is invalid? If so, maybe argue why instead of just calling him crazy.

Re: Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber (2000)

#98

Post by k-mcgrady »

Houshalter wrote: post #84
k-mcgrady wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this was said while he was campaigning for Brexit. And it worked. There's a fascinating article in the FT today where people who voted leave are asked what they think of the current status. It is astonishing how uninformed the vast majority were and are. One person, for example, thought that we'd be out of Europe a week after the vote. Another - 6 months. Nobody understands why there should be a transition,…

Your comment implies people who voted the other way were more informed, which I really doubt. This happens every election. Someone does a survey and finds out the majority of voters know nothing about the candidates or issues. The majority of people don't even know who their representatives are. Democracy is terrible.

That wasn't what I was trying to imply at all. My point was - maybe we should listen to the experts instead of self-serving politicians.

Re: Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber (2000)

#99

Post by etplayer »

bjl wrote: post #96
dgut wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read some Adorno and his work appears to me as meaningless chewing around. After all, he was inspired by Marx and Hegel. E.g: > What philosophy once called life, has turned into the sphere of the private and then merely of consumption, which is dragged along as an addendum of the material production-process, without autonomy and without its own substance. To quote Hume: > If we take in our hand any volume; of di…

It takes a lot of hubris (all too common in the software engineering community) to suggest that Marx and Hegel, two of the most influential philosophers of all time, produced nothing of meaning.

I wouldn't say it's hubris as much as it's ignorance, dogmatic positivism, and scientism that tends to show itself here and there; I'd say it's more common among those who have made it their life course to be in science or engineering - and I don't mean this disparagingly, as I study EE myself.

It's not only ignorance of Marx and Hegel either, Slavoj Zizek regards Marx not as a philosopher but as a sociologist and economist, however GP's words stretch further than Hegel but into Schelling, Kant and all the way back to Aristotle - to say nothing of the "metaphysical" Indian philosophy too. The idea that only Marx and Hegel are guilty of the resistance against dogmatic empiricism in the light of considering being, time, morality and epistemology is a mistake they have made themselves.

Re: Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber (2000)

#100

Post by baursak »

Iv wrote: post #31
justboxing wrote: post #16

> The "Bad" Parts of Technology Cannot Be Separated from the "Good" Parts. [1] I thought this was one of the most prophetic statement from his Technology Manifesto. Written in 1995, still true today. Take any technology, and you'll see it has been used for doing "good" things as well as "evil" things, and it's impossible for anyone to separate the two and enforce usage of only the "good" parts. Example: Drones. Used…

> You cannot invent drones and tell people it should only be used for good things, not bad things. Sure you can. This is the purpose of laws and law enforcement. Try to fly a drone with a knife to stab people and people will destroy it and arrest you. Internationally we have a lack of laws and a lack of enforcement, therefore we had only limited success at preventing nuclear proliferation or chemical/bio weapons uses…

You seem to imply that the government and laws cannot be evil and enforce evil policies.
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