Ted Kaczynski has died • Hacker News Board

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#521

Post by spurgu » Sun, Jun 11, 2023, 2:17 AM UTC

bbor wrote: post #517

spurgu wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The positive comments are mostly in response to his view/ideas/philosophy, as in Industrial Society and Its Future and his subsequent books - I don't think there's a single person here condoning the bombings. If you were to read his works you might find that he wasn't so deranged after all, quite the opposite. Edit: In terms of the philosophy/view I mean. The bombings were made out of bitterness and anger and are ine…

>He justifies the trade-offs that come with losing industrial society as being worth the cost. That is fucking deranged. Describing it as deranged is an understatement, and it blows my mind that you’re defending it _on an internet forum_. Only someone who’s never seen someone die of violence or disease could ever say some shit like that. Today is reminding me that I need to take hacker news commenters much less serio…

Wait, whom are you quoting (and responding to) here?

In any case it sounds like you're describing a trolley problem (where people die whatever option you choose and you might pick the one killing less).

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#522

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jun 11, 2023, 2:20 AM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#523

Post by siftrics » Sun, Jun 11, 2023, 2:21 AM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #493

siftrics wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but I only have to come up with a reasonable doubt. It's analogous to coming up with one counterexample to disprove something in mathematics. I can reasonably theorize that he fully intended to stop bombing people based on this "deal". There. Done. I can doubt he planned to bomb people in a reasonable way. The onus is on you to remove all reasonable doubt. You have not done so by simply showing that there are bo…

> The onus is on you to remove all reasonable doubt. No it's not. Again, that's the standard for criminal punishment. Not moral judgement. And have you heard of civil law? Despite the high stakes that's usually decided based on the preponderance of evidence.

>Again, that's the standard for criminal punishment. Not moral judgement.

I never said anything about moral judgement. I was never talking about moral judgement.

> And have you heard of civil law? Despite the high stakes that's usually decided based on the preponderance of evidence.

Unrelated. Please, do share a link where Ted Kaczynski was convicted of a crime in connection with the unplanted bombs in question, because that's what I have been talking about in this entire string of comments.

I am exonerated by fact. Ted was not convicted of a crime for the unplanted bomb because there was insufficient evidence to do so. End of story ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#524

Post by fairity » Sun, Jun 11, 2023, 2:21 AM UTC

dennis_jeeves1 wrote: post #448

fairity wrote: post #324

My takeaway from Kacynski’s manifesto is that he makes an astute observation about the root causes of unhappiness, but then proposes an absurd solution. The astute observation is that a lot of unhappiness is driven by over-socialization and a commitment to inauthentic, subjective values. The solution, to tear down technology to force mankind to work on more primitive goals, only makes sense if there are no alternativ…

>Thankfully there are many alternatives. What exactly are they? (the last I checked is that it's virtually impossible to live somewhere (even remote) off the land, without paying a ton in taxes, if you did succeed in some manner without attracting attention in a remote place it would soon get the attention of authorities in due course).

IMO, the alternatives are all based on a reframing of mindset versus a change in external environment.

My understanding is that most of Kacynski’s disillusionment was born out of:

- a recognition of how artificial most people’s values and goals are

- an inability to find authentic & fulfilling values and goals

- an innate urge to be useful and important

Put another way, Kacynski didn’t want to be like the brainwashed masses that chase status, approval, and riches. But, when he looked around for better things to spend his time on, he didn’t find any bc technology is so advanced.

I think the alternative to burning everything down is learning how to disconnect from the need to feel important and useful. It’s this inability to disconnect from the need to be useful and authentic that ultimately causes the disillusionment.

The ability to do so starts with an acceptance of the absurdity of life and a release of one’s ego. To put it colloquially, learning to not take things so seriously.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#525

Post by resolutebat » Sun, Jun 11, 2023, 2:24 AM UTC

bbor wrote: post #517

spurgu wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The positive comments are mostly in response to his view/ideas/philosophy, as in Industrial Society and Its Future and his subsequent books - I don't think there's a single person here condoning the bombings. If you were to read his works you might find that he wasn't so deranged after all, quite the opposite. Edit: In terms of the philosophy/view I mean. The bombings were made out of bitterness and anger and are ine…

>He justifies the trade-offs that come with losing industrial society as being worth the cost. That is fucking deranged. Describing it as deranged is an understatement, and it blows my mind that you’re defending it _on an internet forum_. Only someone who’s never seen someone die of violence or disease could ever say some shit like that. Today is reminding me that I need to take hacker news commenters much less serio…

His argument is basically that industrial society increases net suffering from violence and disease, because large populations are unsustainable and rely on the exploitation of the third world's poor. So instead of having one person die from a curable infection because nobody has antibiotics, you have five dying of infections because the population has exploded and antibiotics exist but they can't afford them.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#526

Post by siftrics » Sun, Jun 11, 2023, 2:27 AM UTC

noarchy wrote: post #378

jstarfish wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>"Innocent until proven guilty" doesn't apply to the fucking Unabomber. Bombing people is kind of his thing. He proved it, what, 16 times? That won't stop people determined enough to defend him here, and as you can see people will die on that hill. How many lives were saved due to his arrest? That we will never know, but I suspect the number is not zero.

I'm not defending him. I'm simply stating the fact that him having a bomb in his possession is insufficient evidence to convict him of the crime in question.

I am exonerated by fact. The prosecutors did not have enough evidence to convict him of a crime related to the live bomb they found.

What are you going to do to argue against that? Deny history? It already happened. He wasn't convicted.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#527

Post by spurgu » Sun, Jun 11, 2023, 2:29 AM UTC

shrimpx wrote: post #450

sph wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Someone linked the manifesto in an HN thread ages ago, and I found more level-headed and thought-provoking than I would have imagined from someone able to commit such evil acts. I do not agree with everything he wrote in the manifesto, and certainly not with his violent methods, but it's stuck with me in this era of naive techno-optimism which I find myself more disillusioned with by the day. If the name on the…

This "third position" is basically anarchy, or anarcho-primitivism. It's not really a political position, it's more like a pathological insistence that civilization should be destroyed. Kaczynski went as far as saying we're biologically wired to live primitive lives and we're misusing ourselves in perversions that he calls 'surrogate activities', which include science and art. To him, hunting or trying to survive whi…

I'd say it's more about autonomy, self-sufficiency and freedom, rather than just "living primitive lives". Technological progress tends to stifle all of the above, in the grand scheme of things.

Think about owning horses back in the day, which you could simply breed to get more of. You could travel freely pretty much anywhere, no roads required. Compare that to a car which is manufactured somewhere far away with tons of special expertise and which basically cannot be repaired by a layman anymore (as opposed to not too many decades ago). And you rely on a huge infrastructure network for building and maintaining the roads.

There are probably better examples (horses just came to mind). We tend to choose the more "advanced" option because it seems more convenient, without considering the externalities of that convenience, whether that's pollution or handing over part of our self-sufficiency in order to do so.

Something like a Carrington event would cripple us and cause utter chaos. Just think of the huge amount of technology that we rely on in daily life and it's not changing direction. At all. We are not becoming more resilient, we're becoming less. We are quickly losing the skills required to adapt to a "lower" level of technology, meaning any quick disruption in the system could be catastrophical.

Technology can potentially enable us to have more freedom, autonomy and self-sufficiency, but for it to be sustainable it would need to be at the top of the decision-making tree.

Right now it's mostly a balancing act between convenience and affordability on behalf of consumers and profitability of producers. And well, mix in some environmental concerns (but those tend to be secondary as well as almost always reactionary).

And yes I'm probably somewhat of a neo-luddite. I take pride in being self-sufficient, to the extent possible. And I'm more than willing to sacrifice convenience for freedom. Technology creates more boundaries, rules and bureaucracy, not less. Technology controls us, rather than the other way around.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#528

Post by NovaDudely » Sun, Jun 11, 2023, 2:30 AM UTC

cogman10 wrote: post #362

msla wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He sounds like an ecofascist to me, someone willing to use violence in pursuit of a "green" ideology.

Funnily, Kaczynski was an ecofascist, he was also an anti-leftest. You have to remember that when he performed the bombing in the 70s environmental protections had bipartisan support (Nixon famously created the EPA [1]). It wasn't until much later that being green turned into a radical partisan issue. I mostly blame Rush Limbaugh [2] and the Koch brothers [3] for that shift. Turns out, a lot of big oil propaganda [4]…

One of his later letters he said was against Eco-fascisim. basically saying that a lot of it is driven by racism or some sort of political/social ideal. That these factors are not distributed equally globally means that it would never work as a long term strategy.

If one half of the global turned to ecofascisim and they got a non-technical world they desired, the other half would immediately capitalize on this and take over.

In a way I find Ted's idea fascinating in the same way I find a lot of smarter spiritual teacher fascinating. Here is this simple base idea, now here is 500 things you have to watch out for how the most simplistic path will cause more harm than good. To that, I don't think he had a complete picture on how to achieve what he wanted.

Like Ram Dass saying, be here now, but take it too far and you will go insane!

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#529

Post by NovaDudely » Sun, Jun 11, 2023, 2:33 AM UTC

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #247

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…

Agree, Kaczynski did make some good points. Maybe if he had learned to channel that energy better.

That is the saddest thing. He had some great ideas and knew how to communicate them. He just didn't think he would be taken seriously unless he used the bomb cheat code on life to get notoriety. I suspect that if he had gone the path of writer with publishing, not only would his works be more popular, there would have actually been a realistic means of implementing some of his ideas.

He had some great ideas and simultaneously pushed back any real change by decades for his own self gain interest.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#530

Post by FooBarBizBazz » Sun, Jun 11, 2023, 2:34 AM UTC

ip26 wrote: post #354

ripourhero wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, have you ever heard of operation condor? project mkultra? As far as I know from studying history, it's impossible to win (= survive as a culture against encroachment from different cultures) without violence. Today's mantra of pacifism and non-violence is just propaganda from current governments (all of which were originally installed through bloodshed, and kept in power through never-ending bloodsh…

As far as I know from studying history, it's impossible to win without violence The threat of violence can be both effective and nonviolent. Every battle is won before it is ever fought- and by corollary, it is possible to win without ever having fought.

Heh. When I think of "nonviolence" I think of Gandhi and MLK. Maybe I should really be thinking about Edward Teller and the RAND corporation?

I'm not sure who would define "orthodox" nonviolence (ahimsa) -- maybe Mahavira? -- but whichever definition we chose, I suspect it would differ from yours on the subject of threats.

Not that you're wrong, necessarily.

But you can't play by only bluffing, can you? In optimal (say) poker play, the different actions, including what amounts to bluffing, are all chosen with some probability (a "mixed strategy"), fundamentally at random.