711–720 of 823 posts
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Kaczy…
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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…
Nope, only in steppe-like environments, where horses are native.
If anything, technical civilization tends to de-fragment environments worldwide. You can drive the same car in Patagonia or Borneo as long as the road is there, and your phone will use the same stack of communication protocols.
Of course, it has externalities. The question is how these externalities can be mitigated. But a humanity numbering 8 billion people can't realistically think of individual self-sufficiency at a scale, and not even tribes of hunters and gatherers, 1000x less numerous, were ever composed of self-sufficient individuals.
We might be more fragile than our ancestors, but we also gained some other forms of resiliency that they didn't have. Humanity actually passed through a bottleneck event about 70 thousand years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory#:~:tex....
It would be a lot harder for a single natural disaster to threaten survival of the entire Homo sapiens species today.
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Seriously, why do we so often see mental illness as an excuse for simple evil? As far as I know in most non-authoritarian countries if a mentally ill person commits a crime the factor that decides if they get punishment, treatment, or both is not if they are mentally ill, but if they knew what they were doing at the time was wrong. The burden of proving that is on the defense and it's not easy to do so as it should b…
Surely Ted believed what he was doing was a great good, a service to rouse the masses to revolt against modern society (or something like that.)
Surely Ted believed what he was doing was a great good
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65867291
In his own journals he wrote that he didn't claim to be "altruist or to
be acting for the 'good' (whatever that is) of the human race", instead
insisting that he acted "merely from a desire for revenge".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…
Which isn’t crazy if you strip it of its politics and just consider the lifestyle itself.
Many people latch onto what are effectively caveman diets (especially that). And other people justify doing whatever “weird” stuff by saying that it works similar to how we used to do things, like defecating in a squat position instead of sitting on a throne. And indeed, some of the biomechanics are corroborated by findings that tell us that “sitting is the new smoking”.
Then you have the deluge of news about how you literally can’t do anything, ever, in modern society (lightning, food, air quality) without giving yourself X and Y (bad stuff).
That “caveman” philosophy is basically the most conservative approach to living that exists; better the evil you know than the evil you don’t (modern society changing all the time; see for example smart phones which are quite new).
Of course, the caveat to the above paragraph is that we don’t truly know how to “caveman” since we didn’t grow up like that. So it’s not strictly true that it is an uber-conservative approach.
Where anarcho-primitivism fails is that we’re seven billion people on this earth, way too many to go back to hunting deer and rabbits and whatever. The Unabomber figured out that he couldn’t simply make the individualistic choice (see: liberalism) of going out into the woods and start living by himself, because the found out that Civilization would encroach on him. And what’s a hermit got to say to the federal government giving him an Eminent Domain claim or whatever it’s called?
And then he took it in a bad political direction.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seriously, why do we so often see mental illness as an excuse for simple evil? As far as I know in most non-authoritarian countries if a mentally ill person commits a crime the factor that decides if they get punishment, treatment, or both is not if they are mentally ill, but if they knew what they were doing at the time was wrong. The burden of proving that is on the defense and it's not easy to do so as it should b…
You say "evil" as though it's something separate or different from basic chemical brain processes, i.e. something inherent to the person or something mystical like it came from the devil. There is no such thing as "evil", all our behavior stems from chemical/biological processes in the brain, and if you have a brain defect or chemically imbalances then yes, you too could end up murdering people. Get hit in the head e…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seriously, why do we so often see mental illness as an excuse for simple evil? As far as I know in most non-authoritarian countries if a mentally ill person commits a crime the factor that decides if they get punishment, treatment, or both is not if they are mentally ill, but if they knew what they were doing at the time was wrong. The burden of proving that is on the defense and it's not easy to do so as it should b…
Surely Ted believed what he was doing was a great good, a service to rouse the masses to revolt against modern society (or something like that.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Kaczy…
Our cities are full of mentally ill people living on the streets. Are
they a ticking time bomb? was Kaczynski?
His crimes seemed to begin shortly after he was fired from the family
business by his brother for posting abusive limericks to a female colleague
who had dumped him after two dates.
From there he retreated to the Montana wildness and to the cabin he
had built by hand, without heating, plumbing or electricity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Anyone who disagrees with Kaczynski's ideas because they came from a convicted terrorist should read the works of Jacques Ellul instead I refuse to read or become exposed to some ideas because one of their proponents murdered people. I want this strategy to be less effective, not more.
It sounds like the easiest way for ideas to be killed, then, is for a few abhorrent people to champion them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Anyone who disagrees with Kaczynski's ideas because they came from a convicted terrorist should read the works of Jacques Ellul instead I refuse to read or become exposed to some ideas because one of their proponents murdered people. I want this strategy to be less effective, not more.
But the very fact that Kaczynski's ideas were widely published and read directly led to his arrest. If the consideration is to be purely strategic, his case should be an argument in favor of dissemination.