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Ted Kaczynski has died

nytimes.com

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Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#301

Post by hackermailman »

moffkalast wrote: post #62
crhulls wrote: post #31

His manifesto is worth reading. Although he was obviously a twisted man many of his predictions for the future were eerily prescient. http://editions-hache.com/essais/pdf/kaczynski2.pdf

I don't suppose anyone has a short summary?

The real summary isn't just technology bad. He claims mankind as evolved is not compatible with the industrial world we have created therefore humanity will never be able to adapt to it. In order to force adaptation he then lists all the ways those in power will attempt to do so from psych drugs to pleasure bribes to gene editing in order to remove this trait of mankind of needing personal power over one's own destiny so we can better adapt to being serfs in the industrial world (his claims, not mine). He lists numerous scenarios where we will be an unrecognizable species in the future serving the machines too, many of them familiar like how medicine will become too complex to understand so reliance on machines to cure us of problems which in turn becomes irresistible to those in power to make us even more dependent on them for survival.

He also is definitely not any kind of primitive man utopia shill, that's why he rants in the beginning against 'green anarchy' type ideology. He is more of an evolutionist saying even if we returned to primitive life before the industrial revolution we would at least still be human and would have to accept all kinds of terrible things that come with primitive life as the alternative is being a spiritless organism serving machines (again his ideology not mine).

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#302

Post by [deleted] »

happytoexplain wrote: post #195
hnuser847 wrote: post #52

It’s fun to drop verbatim quotes from his manifesto into random internet discussions without attribution. A lot of people agree with his ideas without realizing it.

This isn't as indicative of ignorance or hypocrisy as it implies (and it comes off as a petty "gotcha" with an attitude of superiority). He said and did a lot of things. It's normal to variously agree and disagree with each thing in a vacuum. This is true of most political/societal figures, no matter how horrific they are, taken as a whole.

[deleted]

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#303

Post by dang »

siftrics wrote: post #157
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Personal attacks aren't allowed on HN, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. We ban accounts that do that, so please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: it turns out, unfortunately, that you've been doing this repeatedly:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35605613

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35605547

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34558731

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34328210

That's seriously not ok and we need it to stop if you want to keep posting here.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#304

Post by brvsft »

martythemaniak wrote: post #251
jmull wrote: post #239

[flagged]

[flagged]

At least most of us have the ability to engage in a discussion about it. You seem to be here to do some backslapping with people who agree with you, and you have no response to a refutation of your normie opinion that He KiLL tHrEe PeOpLe = bAd. Keep on with those deep thoughts that fixate on who Kaczynski killed and never turn that ire towards your government or society. Real brave of you.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#305

Post by JamesLeonis »

mypastself wrote: post #147

It’s been years since I’ve read Industrial Society and its Future , but I remember it felt like the author was rationalizing his own emotional state into a philosophy supposedly explaining society. It contained many subjective ideas presented as hard fact, as well as some naive romanticization of pre-industrial societies. He was right about one thing, though. No one would give his writings a second look if he wasn’t…

> I remember it felt like the author was rationalizing his own emotional state into a philosophy supposedly explaining society.

Your intuition is correct. Here's TK's own words on the matter [0]:

> But even leaving aside all questions of “political” utility and considering only my personal predilections, I have little interest in philosophical questions such as the desirability or undesirability of the “herd mentality.” The mountains of Western Montana offered me nearly everything I needed or wanted. If those mountains could have remained just as they were when I first moved to Montana in 1971, I would have been satisfied. The rest of the world could have had a herd mentality, or an individualistic mentality or whatever, and it would have been all the same to me. But, of course, under modern conditions there was no way the mountains could have remained isolated from the rest of the world. Civilization moved in and squeezed me, so…

[0]: https://www.thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-s-lette...

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#307

Post by dbspin »

golemotron wrote: post #279
ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also Lewis Mumford [1], Günther Anders [2], or if you want to go truly underground, Gilbert Simondon [3] [4] or Friedrich Kittler [5]. If there are thinkers who have been in the conceptual space of the 23rd century and beyond, Simondon was surely one. Also radically of the future and forgotten is FM-2030 [6] [7]. All in all, blowing up people is easy, blowing up antiquated concepts, grasping for the grounds of a new…

> Besides, to think that there even is such a thing called technology (as distinguished from what) is incredibly naive The same could be said about Capitalism.

This is an ideological position, termed Capitalist Realism [1]. Given the failing of social reproduction, environmental protection, long term planning against existential and systemic risk, the mental health crisis and the collapse of civil and political life, under entrenched and victorious capitalism - an increasingly absurd one.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_Realism

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#308

Post by cscurmudgeon »

dbspin wrote: post #307
golemotron wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Besides, to think that there even is such a thing called technology (as distinguished from what) is incredibly naive The same could be said about Capitalism.

This is an ideological position, termed Capitalist Realism [1]. Given the failing of social reproduction, environmental protection, long term planning against existential and systemic risk, the mental health crisis and the collapse of civil and political life, under entrenched and victorious capitalism - an increasingly absurd one. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_Realism

All of those happen in non-capitalist societies too and some times to a more larger extent.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#309

Post by JKCalhoun »

ren_engineer wrote: post #237
crhulls wrote: post #31

His manifesto is worth reading. Although he was obviously a twisted man many of his predictions for the future were eerily prescient. http://editions-hache.com/essais/pdf/kaczynski2.pdf

not sure why people are so surprised he got some things right or was at least able to create compelling arguments for this ideas, the guy was a legit genius. Got into Harvard at 16, youngest math professor ever at Cal Berkley at the time he was hired

I know I am stereotyping, but you're describing for me exactly why he was probably emotionally immature.

Maybe related to something like Piaget's theory of cognitive development, I believe that if you advance too fast intellectually, there are other things, developmentally, that are trodden on, or left completely behind.

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