Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber (2000)

I strongly recommend technologists read the work of Fredy Perlman. It is essential that the builders start thinking about social consequences of their creations.

http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/fredy-perlman-against...

It seems you think we disagree? We are both in agreement. (and, yes, the article asserts that attacks against Kaczynski's credibility arose from hypocritical or idiotic critics having to simultaneously merit his ideas and defend orthodoxy, leading to well-poisoning attacks). I think attempts to discount him as schizophrenic are bullshit, that the paranoia he experienced was clearly rational because it was obvious that he would put himself into the crosshairs of law enforcement/a huge adversary, and that to evaporate his responsibility because of hearsay diagnoses would be like a priest condemning an atheist as an evil witch to be burned at the stake for the reason that there would be no reason for anyone who understood the consequences of religion to willingly put themselves into such a compromised position.. if that makes sense.

But, to him, his actions must have been his magnum opus, his number 1 feat, not the manifesto. If he had believed his manifesto primarily would have made his intended impact on society, then why would he have needed to architect his campaign before its release? I can believe he prized his behavior over his manifesto AND also believe that the manifesto has more gravity than, and will outlast in public memory, his deeds. I admit the possibility that he realized he needed notoriety or a skin-in-the-game (I'm not a Taleb fanboy I swear) reputation so as to be worth being noticed..

but it all gets fed back into the spectacle at large, which is what he detested. His plot to weaken technological society's tight grasp on the direction of humanity's potential .. had the effect of fortifying all of the same levers of control: a state of emergency leads to boosting ordinary controls to desperate, extraordinary levels, like an immune response.

And from my armchair it's easy to say this, but an autoimmune response (where social technological controls would eat away at the survival of those controls themselves) wouldn't have backfired for his plan.. But present-day technology/'the techne' hardly finds itself in situations where it mistakenly combats its own self-maintenance, so it might not really be a possibility.. (yet?)

tl;dr:

Fine. Donald produced the KMP algorithm, an abstract method people can use with computers or other domains to do things with abstract representations (e.g. 'text'). (to develop programs that modify data)

Hegel produced the theory of dialectic, an abstract method of analysis people can use with cultural and historical concepts to do things with abstract representations(e.g. the notion of a 'state', 'culture', 'people'). (To develop arguments that modify concepts(aka brain data))

That's the best way I can put it in a fashion I think you'll find more agreeable. If you disagree, so be it, but I'd urge you to actually read Hegel or study the history of philosophy before making a statement that in physics would be something like the equivalent of saying Einstein's work was worthless. That could of course be the case, but I imagine you can see why many people would need a great deal of convincing argument to begin to side with you.

-------- more thoughts (not that you seem to have much willingness to engage with them, but, just in case you're bored and would like to stir up your ire, since this will likely sound like a whole lot of cruft and baloney and "gaseous word bending" to you):

And what is meaningful/useful/valuable to mankind? You began by saying meaningful, which is not by default, useful, especially to all of mankind--who is this invisible judge deciding what constitutes the definition of useful for all humanity? Oh. It's you, isn't it--or is it?

Love is a very meaningful experience for the parties involved. But love itself is pretty useless to humanity from a strictly utilitarian standpoint. One of its frequent side effects, babies, is useful, but that's not always the case, and plenty of babies are conceived without 'love' having any say in the matter. Plus, not all babies wind up bringing good to the state and thus good to a greater number--some are just drains on the commonwealth. Though of course a positivist would probably want to reduce the concept 'love' to something amenable to scientific description, such as a chemical state of the brain--but unless you're a total robot I think you'd see that we lose quite a lot in such a reductive picture of the concept.

Useful to humanity...would that be anything that enables us to propagate further? To allow our species, which has disrupted ecosystems and done greater environmental damage than all other forms of life, to continue? To make technology, which, though incredibly beneficial, also incredibly negative (the Unabomber's point) more efficient? is that usefulness?

This is precisely what I was talking about earlier re: incommensurability. I can't answer you because you've already determined you want to remain rooted in your utilitarian/positivist/scientific framework of thought and have no willingness to step outside of it. Yes, from that worldview, you have to admit Hegel is useless--all theories have sets of exclusion--things they consider valueless. Such a positivist train of thought considers a great deal of the work in the humanities valueless. If you want to say Hegel is valueless you'll have to work out a very hokey caveat to ensure all of the humanities and arts aren't also captured in that class of valueless things.

> "Help me understand Hegel. Your turn."

If you actually wanted to understand you wouldn't be so abrasive and terse about this. You'd be doing more work trying to understand my perspective, and not demanding that I conform to whatever bizarre expectation you have. You're asking for an explanation in very bad faith. You really only want fodder to confirm your own bias. You want to be able to say "see, all these people who value Hegel are fools"--but what's the point in that? What does that accomplish? you haven't broadened your horizons at all--you're only stroking your ego--there's better ways to go about that, like, idk, maybe follow Knuth and devise some algorithms?

Human beings can change their minds and consider things from different perspectives. That's one of our gifts. Why do so many insist on resisting it?

I read a dogmatic adherence to the scientific in your post--"Marxism is unscientific" (read the hidden value judgement: therefore marxism is BAD)--that's equatable to the sort of blind religious adherence that the faithful used to have when religions were the dominant paradigm.

Why are you trying to start a conversation if you're already dictating the parameters? The way you've responded to me indicates you expect me to give you the 'right' answer "225 words and you couldn't answer me", e.g. I have to say Hegel contributed such in a particular way for it to be "right"--that's not a conversation, that's you looking to reaffirm your prevailing worldview and dogmatic, cough and thus incredibly unscientific, way of thinking. You want to talk but only so long as the conversation adheres to the terms and conditions you've set out in your head. Basically you want to play schoolmaster and pat me on the head when I confirm 6 times 11 is indeed 66--but culture and conversation is not mathematics. It's messy. Just because something isn't scientific doesn't make it valueless.

That's not how a conversation or fruitful argument is supposed to work. We are supposed to play with each other's perspectives together and devise an answer. A good argument is a collaboration, not a conflict. The ancient greeks understood this. The Americans and modern keyboardists swiftly forgot. Your approach implies there's some correct answer you already have in mind--or something of the sort, like, Hegel's theory directly increased food production in country xyz.

Rather than working with me to determine if the theory is in fact valuable, you're just being difficult and obstinate. I'm happy to entertain your positivist perspective, but since you've yet to elaborate precisely why you need such convincing that one of the philosophers generally regarded as important and great in the tradition of western philosophy, by experts studied in the field is important I can't really work with you.

I don't understand why people forget knowledge of tradition is important in the humanities too. We seem to think it's okay to be near uneducated in philosophical thought, methodology, and history, to never have fully read or studied source materials, and to still question the legitimacy of Hegel's work, but we think it a total point of idiocy to have no knowledge of physics and attempt to levy a serious question as to the legitimacy of Einstein's output.

People are choosy as to where they direct their skepticism--as it has alway been, we retain our 'sacred objects' be they religions, rulers, or science.

Do you really want to dive into dogmatic positivism that far?

By all means go ahead, but you won't be very pleasant to get along with, at least in my opinion.

If a murderer believes the sky is blue, does that mean it is actually lime green?

If Hitler believed washing your hands before surgery improved patient outcome, would that also be wrong?

It's not as though the speaker alters reality by speaking.