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Ted Kaczynski has died

nytimes.com

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Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#501

Post by bsdetector »

brezelgoring wrote: post #488
siftrics wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Them finding two completed bombs is not evidence that he planned to plant them.

A guy with a history of bombing buildings has more bombs at his house and you say it's not demonstrative of future bombings? I don't see it, man, I think you just want to go against the grain, here. Explain yourself.

I suppose it would be like how the U.S has a history of using nuclear bombs, has a bunch more assembled and ready to be used, but claims to have no plans to actually use them.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#502

Post by AnimalMuppet »

siftrics wrote: post #350
dang wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.yc…

I am writing now as earnestly and charitably as possible: could you tell me how what I wrote is a personal attack? I want to engage on HN in a productive way and I do not mean to personally attack anyone. I think the reason you were able to link to so many instances of me personally attacking someone is because I genuinely do not understand what you consider a personal attack. I thought I was arguing against ideas an…

"Intellectually dishonest" (in the great-grandparent to this comment). That's a personal attack.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#503

Post by tymekpavel »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #429
bkohlmann wrote: post #352

One of my good friend’s dad was brutally murdered by Kaczynski when she was a young teenager. A small bomb in a package that used razor blazes, nails, and other bits of metal to nearly tear his head off while his young family was in the house with him. And it turns out the victim was the “wrong” man, as he didn’t even work on the project Kaczynski wanted to bring “retribution” for. Kaczynski May have said some intere…

thanks for posting and sorry for your loss. I've heard the name TK first when reading Bill Joy's "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us". 15 years later I was burnt out and increasingly aware that Tech was not a force of good. I went on a 3 year journey trying to understand what made TK chose violence. It can't just be the struggle of a Pollak getting people to pronounce his name correctly, however hard that is. I started b…

I’m sure you didn’t mean it, but in the English language “Pollak” and its variations are derogatory terms for people of Polish descent. The preferred term is “Pole.”

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#504

Post by sterlind »

I read Industrial Society to my parents last year. They were both quite surprised that, rather than just being the schizophrenic ramblings of a crank, it made a lot of sense and raised good points. Uncomfortable, finding yourself in agreement with some points raised by a notorious domestic terrorist and murderer.

I recommend the Manifesto to the HN audience. The section on AI is particularly timely, but a lot of it holds up well - especially the discussion of surrogate activities and the problem with hobbies.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#505

Post by JshWright »

bkohlmann wrote: post #352

One of my good friend’s dad was brutally murdered by Kaczynski when she was a young teenager. A small bomb in a package that used razor blazes, nails, and other bits of metal to nearly tear his head off while his young family was in the house with him. And it turns out the victim was the “wrong” man, as he didn’t even work on the project Kaczynski wanted to bring “retribution” for. Kaczynski May have said some intere…

Your friend’s dad’s death is also my (very trivial) connection to Kaczynski. That morning our family had gone Christmas tree shopping, and the tree was scheduled to be delivered later that day. As it turned out, the delivery driver was also a Verona volunteer firefighter and ended up responding to the explosion, delaying our tree to the next day. It’s a super trivial connection, but it has always stuck with me.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#506

Post by mxkopy »

I think we should all feel a little more guilt for gluttonously consuming everything all around us and making such consumption morally defensible under the guise of "just taking care of family"/"living a peaceful life". We should all feel a little more hatred to those aloof imbeciles smiling and pointing at animals to their children in zoos.

Though I think we would eventually reach this conclusion without needing to kill random people.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#507

Post by [deleted] »

LawTalkingGuy wrote: post #499
cogman10 wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I found the manifesto to be lucid and well-argued. > For example, if one believes that affirmative action is good for black people, does it make sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or dogmatic terms? Obviously it would be more productive to take a diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal and symbolic concessions to white people who think that affirmative action discriminates ag…

> To paraphrase 'ole ted "You see, affirmative action makes white people feel bad and mad at black people which is the real secret goal of leftists". No. It's more like "Leftist activists push AA and other policies with no concern for the impact on the communities they're purportedly intended to help." > Do you, or have you ever, felt mad a black person because of affirmative action? I'm pretty sure you could find a…

[deleted]

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#508

Post by least »

Aunche wrote: post #125
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

Even if Ted Kaczynski is in the top .1% of people worth listening to, which I don't think he is, that means that there are millions of people with equally profound ideas. You should prioritze learning from those people first rather than one who resorted to violence as a means to spread his message.

It hardly matters if millions of people have equally profound ideas if there's no way to reasonably seek those ideas out. I'm quite certain a lot of knowledge is lost to the ether as very few people have the ability to think about things very deeply, and of those that can, even fewer are able to articulate them, and from that small group, an even smaller group of people are able to actually turn those articulations into something accessible to everyone else. Then it's a matter of how anyone else can find those things. A lot of the times it can't be found.

Frankly, I don't see any reason to gate keep my own curiosity. Moral filtering just breeds ignorance.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#509

Post by xwdv »

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 agree with what he did, but as time goes on I understand more why he did it.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#510

Post by Dylan16807 »

williamcotton wrote: post #492
Dylan16807 wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that a real question? The answer is very obvious. Those people are a million times less culpable. (Yes, I know it's sarcastic. But sarcasm still needs to make sense to be effective. You can't say the equivalent of "that logic leads to X very bad thing" if you get the logic wrong.)

The logic is really simple: someone can come up with almost any reason to justify murder if they believe themselves solely capable of such judgment. If someone recognizes the failings of every human then they are less prone to pass judgment. Did Ted K not feel justified in his actions? Did he not find his own murderous actions acceptable? Why would he do these things if he didn’t think he was devoid of the sin he saw…

> The logic is really simple: someone can come up with almost any reason to justify murder if they believe themselves solely capable of such judgment.

I think if you do a survey you'll find lots of people agreeing that major oil executives and PR should be judged harshly. Not murder, but definitely being judged as bad in a way that everyday people pass.

I don't think your argument works at all. Harshly judging some people is not even close to harshly judging almost everyone. The former does not beget the latter.

> If someone recognizes the failings of every human then they are less prone to pass judgment.

Less, sure, but these are pretty egregious cases.

> Did Ted K not feel justified in his actions? Did he not find his own murderous actions acceptable? Why would he do these things if he didn’t think he was devoid of the sin he saw in his targets?

You definitely don't have to think you're free of sin to target sinners.

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