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Ted Kaczynski has died

nytimes.com

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Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#621

Post by Thorrez »

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…

>If you really want the full TK experience I implore you to live in the woods for a decade and see how you feel about humanity. No laptop instagram or electricity. Will you have any empathy left for the rest of society upon your return?

There's a name for people who go into the woods and live all alone: hermits. They don't tend to lose all empathy for others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermit

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#622

Post by bbor »

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…

I'm curious to hear what in Ellul echoes Ted's manifesto? Ellul seems very like a very astute and interesting thinker, and Ted obviously referenced him, but to say that it's a "popular reduction" seems like a stretch to me. I say this based on this understanding of Ellul, pulled from his wikipedia page:

> The solution is to simply view technique as objects that can be useful to us and recognize it for what it is, just another thing among many others, instead of believing in technique for its own sake or that of society.

Which I would summarize as "we should examine technology as a means to an end, rather than a good unto itself". On the other hand, I would summarize Ted's thoughts (without having read the manifesto myself) as "technology of all kinds is inherently evil, and we have a moral imperative to dismantle and destroy basically all of it as quickly as possible."

Those two ideas seem related in that they're talking about some of the same concepts, but it kinda ends there for me...

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#623

Post by firecall »

31337Logic wrote: post #580
rlt wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“My good friend’s dad was brutally murdered” “My delivery was delayed” Maybe not the place for it.

He said the connection was super trivial. I think you're mistaken - I think it's precisely the right place for such a comment.

I liked it - it shows how we are all connected.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#624

Post by Thorrez »

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…

>TK was an accelerationist who believed the means justifies the end.

Is this a typo? Do you mean instead that the ends justify the means?

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#625

Post by natmaka »

nine_k wrote: post #556
DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thank you; this elucidates a lot. So it boils down to a question: would you exchange the life of a lone top predator (in a forest with a firearm) to any other kind of life? For some people the answer would be in favor of the top predator life. To choose the life of a tiger, one just should stop loving anyone. After this, killing becomes mere killing (predators do not "murder"), and the whole idea of destroying everyo…

> To choose the life of a tiger, one just should stop loving anyone

Tigers live lonely and avoid fighting other tigers to death (even the extreme case of males both courting the same female rarely leads to such an issue), probably in order to preserve their genus.

Lions live in 'societies' (well-structured prides) and routinely kill other lions (even cubs).

The average lion, albeit way less physically formidable than a tiger, is a very dangerous contender against a tiger: he hits to kill.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#626

Post by natmaka »

nine_k wrote: post #609
jaredhallen wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think characterizing the contempt for technology only in terms of the advantage it conveys to the "adversary" is kind of an incomplete analysis. There are true and valid reasons outside that. I'm in the camp that it (technology) is a double edged sword. It's hard to argue with the improvements in medicine, reduction in basic suffering, etc. But it wreaks a lot of havoc in its own right. The question is whether the…

Is there anything in the world which is not a double-edged sword, something completely devoid of downsides? AFAIK only certain transcendent entities are declared to have this property.

Each and every parameter (even "population size") has an interval of 'adequate' values. Too few of anything, or too much of it, leads to major downsides.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#628

Post by Eisenstein »

nine_k wrote: post #609
jaredhallen wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think characterizing the contempt for technology only in terms of the advantage it conveys to the "adversary" is kind of an incomplete analysis. There are true and valid reasons outside that. I'm in the camp that it (technology) is a double edged sword. It's hard to argue with the improvements in medicine, reduction in basic suffering, etc. But it wreaks a lot of havoc in its own right. The question is whether the…

Is there anything in the world which is not a double-edged sword, something completely devoid of downsides? AFAIK only certain transcendent entities are declared to have this property.

Do you mean personal downside or societal downside? It could be argued that a well developed persona covering up innate sociopathy would be highly beneficial to a person and have no personal downsides, as long they as truly didn't care about others.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#630

Post by asveikau »

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…

> Kaczynski May have said some interesting things

That take is strange to me.

He reminds me a lot of people I've been close to who suffered mental illness. He didn't want to be considered mentally ill, and his apologists don't like it either, and further, many who focus on his victims and crimes don't like it. But for me, that's the major story about him. It was clear to me the first time i tried to read the manifesto many years ago.

From that, his story is sad. He didn't need to go insane and start bombing people. He had potential to do other, better things.

I watched the Netflix documentary, and the commentary from his brother and sister in law was very moving. The brother, because he still loved him, but had to come to terms with what he did and do the right thing. The brother's wife, who it seemed flagged him as mentally ill from nearly the beginning.

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