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Ted Kaczynski has died

nytimes.com

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Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#631

Post by happytoexplain »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #620
emodendroket wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He forced his way into the conversation through terrorism. It seems reasonable enough to reject his ideas out of hand rather than give them respectful hearing.

With respect this is not correct. What you are describing is Ad Hominem driven by some kind of moralist knee-jerk reaction. The absurd extreme of this line of reasoning would be to refuse to acknowledge the existence of snow because Hitler mentioned in passing in a letter or a speech at some point.

Not correct? Ad hominem? Moralist knee-jerk reaction? Absurd? Extreme? There is probably a more reasonable version of this disagreement, to put it lightly.

Unlike Hitler's opinions on snow, Ted Kaczynski's murders are inextricably linked to his ideology.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#632

Post by Eisenstein »

bbor wrote: post #599
lumb63 wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a different take on his writings than yours. Rather than thinking his solution was bad, he encouraged me to question why we “spend our days improving humanity”. What does “improving humanity” even mean? What’s the metric we are optimizing for? Are we, humanity, any happier than we were when we were hunter-gatherer tribes? I don’t think so - we’ve just found new metrics to focus on and to be disappointed in ours…

> Are we, humanity, any happier than we were when we were hunter-gatherer tribes? I don’t think so - we’ve just found new metrics to focus on and to be disappointed in ourselves in. This seems crazy to me, leaning heavily on the proof that you yourself obviously are not choosing that life when you easily could. It’s possible in the same way that anything is possible, but cmon - the world is objectively less violent,…

> This seems crazy to me, leaning heavily on the proof that you yourself obviously are not choosing that life when you easily could.

Can someone do this? Find a place you can live and hunt for free that isn't incredibly difficult to survive in because of its inhospitable climate or lack of resources.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#633

Post by fsckboy »

tptacek wrote: post #442
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…

When threads about Kaczynski come up, I try to remind people that the guy attempted to take down an American Airlines jetliner. He got a bomb on board in the cargo bay designed to explode at altitude --- and it did indeed explode, caused the plane to lose pressure, and filled the cabin with smoke. There were 78 people on board that flight, and but for the skill of the pilots, Kaczynski would have murdered all of them…

We're talking about someone who suffered from very serious mental illness. And we're talking about stochastic processes.

We can agree that killing people or trying to kill people is terrible, but I'd stress the mental illness part so perhaps society will get serious about treating mental illness with seriousness. Our cities are full of mentally ill people living on the streets. Are they a ticking time bomb? was Kaczynski?

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#634

Post by guerrilla »

lumb63 wrote: post #567
spencerchubb wrote: post #557

I don't find Ted Kaczynski's manifesto to be insightful. It points out that technology has flaws, which is frankly quite obvious and is a fact that everyone already agrees with. Furthermore, his proposed solution is crap. He proposes that we just go back to wilderness, which is bad for many obvious reasons. Technology and division of labor has allowed us to spend our days improving humanity rather than finding food j…

I had a different take on his writings than yours. Rather than thinking his solution was bad, he encouraged me to question why we “spend our days improving humanity”. What does “improving humanity” even mean? What’s the metric we are optimizing for? Are we, humanity, any happier than we were when we were hunter-gatherer tribes? I don’t think so - we’ve just found new metrics to focus on and to be disappointed in ours…

The way you put it sounds like a part of the foundational thesis of Buddhism.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#635

Post by Eisenstein »

pyuser583 wrote: post #569
spencerchubb wrote: post #557

I don't find Ted Kaczynski's manifesto to be insightful. It points out that technology has flaws, which is frankly quite obvious and is a fact that everyone already agrees with. Furthermore, his proposed solution is crap. He proposes that we just go back to wilderness, which is bad for many obvious reasons. Technology and division of labor has allowed us to spend our days improving humanity rather than finding food j…

It’s not insightful. But it’s obvious he is highly educated, and familiar with academic culture. I don’t understand how the FBI profiled him as poorly educated.

Because FBI profiles are only good for crimes that happen often enough to have perpetrators willing and available for psychological study.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#636

Post by [deleted] »

spencerchubb wrote: post #557

I don't find Ted Kaczynski's manifesto to be insightful. It points out that technology has flaws, which is frankly quite obvious and is a fact that everyone already agrees with. Furthermore, his proposed solution is crap. He proposes that we just go back to wilderness, which is bad for many obvious reasons. Technology and division of labor has allowed us to spend our days improving humanity rather than finding food j…

[deleted]

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#637

Post by fsckboy »

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…

> It still has potential to be misunderstood ofc

> It can't just be the struggle of a Pollak getting people to pronounce his name correctly

I just happened to research this recently, rabbit hole a propos nothing: (1) in English, "Polack" is an ethnic slur for a Polish person; (2) in a handful of unrelated European languages, Polak is just the word for a Pole; just so y'all know.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#638

Post by dredmorbius »

jzellis wrote: post #121

Ted's manifesto is a remarkable piece of analysis. It's his solutions that weren't really, uh, constructive.

It's a classic challenge in Big Problem resolution:

- Is there a problem?

- What is the problem?

- What is its cause?

- How can it be remediated / addressed?

There are a few elements, though those tend to be the big ones. It's possible to go wrong at pretty much any point in the chain.

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2fsr0g/hierarc...>

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#639

Post by dredmorbius »

paiute wrote: post #552

I'm surprised mention of David Gelertner hasn't come up at all. He is a computer scientist who was attack by Ted kaczynski. He is an interesting person.

What might you have to say about him that's of interest?

(It's generally more interesting to contribute to the conversation you find lacking or underrepresented then to meta-comment on it. I do this (contributing, not meta-comment) frequently myself.)

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