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Ted Kaczynski has died

nytimes.com

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Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#281

Post by dang »

inglor_cz wrote: post #92
dang wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't do this here.

Dang, I am not sure he is wrong. His comment is snarky, but there are reasons to think that the explosion of social networks has led to a major mental health crisis, especially among the young, and it may indeed be true that social networks are optimized to make you angry, depressed and resentful.

On HN, not being snarky is more important than not being wrong—especially when it comes to drive-by oneliners. This is not a borderline call!

Your longer explanation would have been fine as the GP, for example, but the GP comment wasn't anything like that.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#282

Post by MarkMarine »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #169
MarkMarine wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charles Manson. Frank Rudolph Emmanuel Olson.

I saw Charles Manson and a few others on the MKUltra Wikipedia page but they use phrases like "alleged", "according to author...". Without an idea of the sample size of people subjected to experimentation it's still inconclusive.

I’m sorry, is your point that MKUltra experimentation on people isn’t proven to be bad for them?

Unexpected high doses of LSD, attempts at programming, manipulation and what can only honestly be described as torture… the CIA destroyed all the records of this and because we don’t have complete records we just have to make a big shrug and say “ah well JKCalhoun isn’t convinced, guess it’s not bad for you.”

What would it take to convince you that dosing unexpecting people with high amounts of LSD could have a detrimental effect on their mental health, possibly making people crazy?

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#283

Post by IceHegel »

rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote: post #245
IceHegel wrote: post #76

Best manifesto of the 20th century imo. Modern man is an animal in a cage. He behaves increasingly abnormally because his environment is unfamiliar and out of his direct control.

The modern man is the best man that has ever been. Ted was just a nutcase.

On what measure? Certainly he is quite healthy and even considered sick.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#284

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

canjobear wrote: post #106
Convolutional wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> The reason Kaczynski stopped He stopped because he was arrested. At that time they found two completed bombs in his cabin, so he was planning to renege on his deal not to plant any more bombs.

The deal was that he won't kill any more people with his bombs, but property was fair deal.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#285

Post by mdp2021 »

SergeAx wrote: post #271
HKH2 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which ones?

"If you want to shine like sun first you have to burn like it" "If freedom is short of weapons, we must compensate with willpower" "The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people" He was quite a speaker, old Adi.

> [Death in the battlefield] is what the youth is for, after all

...Which suggests (cpr. the "treasure" quote) how quote dropping is mostly a leisurely activity, given broad statements.

> I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few

...Which suggests - hopefully - how quote dropping is mostly a leisurely activity, given its non exhaustive intrinsic nature.

--

Edit: related (with the first branch):

> He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future

Put the three together ("treasure", "battlefield", "owning"), the whole idea gets a sinister tone; take "treasure" alone, it may even raise "awww"s - without substance.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#286

Post by bmitc »

californiadreem wrote: post #32

Anyone who disagrees with Kaczynski's ideas because they came from a convicted terrorist should read the works of Jacques Ellul instead, of which Kaczynski's was largely a popular reduction. The Technological Society is the clearest influence on Kaczynski's manifesto, but Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes is possibly more pertinent in this day and age. Ellul was a professor, a pacifist, and a Christian ana…

Thank you for the reference to Jacques Ellul, as I hadn't heard of him before. From looking a few reviews, I'm liking what appears to be him having a critique of the worship of technique, which is an interesting thought.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#287

Post by justinator »

sneak wrote: post #226
justinator wrote: post #8

His opinions may be credible. His methods to gain attention towards them were absolutely not. A travesty how he was treated in those medical experiments. It's always tragic to find out reasons why people hurt others.

Credible? Absolutely - I wouldn't have read his manifesto had he not systematically engaged in the premeditated slaughter of human beings. That doesn't make his methods not reprehensible.

I think it's worth thinking about how climate science during the 80's and 90 s (at least) was suppressed by the very companies that were in business to profit from practices that actively harmed all life on Earth. There's rarely justice against huge multinationals. It's just business as usual.

I don't condone domestic terrorism (especially with so many innocent hurt), but I also don't condone climate change denial for shareholder profit. Is that ever going to stop? Given the velocity already created, I would say: not in my lifetime.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#288

Post by AnimalMuppet »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #84
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

unless you can show with substantive research that there are some ideas that cannot be held by violent terrorists I don't see why that would color these particular ideas.

It's not their ideas, exactly. It's their moral judgment.

See, the unabomber manifesto was essentially a moral argument. "These things cause damage" is a moral observation. (Because how are you going to define "damage" without moral judgment?) "Therefore we should destroy technology" is a moral judgment (because you can't get there without the moral judgment of "humans should not be damaged").

So, the point is, I'm not going to trust the moral judgment of a murderer. Every fact he says in the manifesto may be correct. But his moral judgment is self-evidently terrible. And he reaches his conclusions through that moral judgment.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#289

Post by mdp2021 »

bmitc wrote: post #123
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unless you can show with substantive research that there are some ideas that cannot be held by violent terrorists I don't see why that would color these particular ideas.

People are human and not logical, purely rational (whatever that would mean), data machines. We're emotional. I can certainly understand the perspective when the above commenter has seen the pain and suffering that those ideas, threaded amplified through either mental illness and/or pathological personality, led to. Okay, maybe Kaczynski had some points that resonate and concur with other more respected scholars and…

> human

Those things endowed with the capability of effortful judgement, abstracting from more "primitive" (biologically ancestral) instances.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#290

Post by siftrics »

jstarfish wrote: post #263
siftrics wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not claiming to know the timeline, but he could have built them before "the deal", then made the deal and decided not to plant them. Innocent until proven guilty. There is more than enough evidence to put away Teddy K for life. Lean on real evidence. Don't stretch the truth and muddy the waters for the innocent. Your line of reasoning could be used to convict the innocent.

There was only one live bomb found and he did intend to use it. > Kaczynski replied Penthouse was less "respectable" than The New York Times and The Washington Post, and said that, "to increase our chances of getting our stuff published in some 'respectable' periodical", he would "reserve the right to plant one (and only one) bomb intended to kill, after our manuscript has been published" if Penthouse published the d…

Just because he bombed people previously doesn't mean he intended to do it again. You have to have stronger evidence, like writings or postage stamps, to prove beyond reasonable doubt that these two bombs were going to be planted. (I'm not arguing this evidence doesn't exist.)

I don't get what the big deal is. We already have more than enough evidence from his previous plantings to convict him as a bomb planter and put him away for life. Is it just that you can't compartmentalize and separate the two things in your mind?

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