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‘His ideas resonate’: how the Unabomber’s dangerous anti-tech manifesto lives on

theguardian.com

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Re: ‘His ideas resonate’: how the Unabomber’s dangerous anti-tech manifesto lives on

#11

Post by ok123456 »

djyaz1200 wrote: post #8

Kaczynski was a loser. He couldn't manage to turn a Harvard degree into a productive role in society so he waged a cowardly war on people who did nothing to harm him. The detailed list of specific injuries to victims here is sad... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski

He did less damage than a Harvard grad who went on to run a hedge fund, or went on to work in private equity, or work for McKinsey, or become a lobbyist.

Where's the detailed list of victims of globalization and finance?

Re: ‘His ideas resonate’: how the Unabomber’s dangerous anti-tech manifesto lives on

#13

Post by renewiltord »

The quest for novelty finds itself in the "but what if the bad guy were right" thing very often. I can tell you that I enjoy stories where I'm the bad guy - either accidentally or through some discovery of harm (video games do this in a fun way). But in the end, it's just fantasy. This guy couldn't separate real life from a poor model of the world. In the end, intelligence is a composite measure and he lacked it in sufficient form. Pity.

Re: ‘His ideas resonate’: how the Unabomber’s dangerous anti-tech manifesto lives on

#14

Post by [deleted] »

ok123456 wrote: post #11
djyaz1200 wrote: post #8

Kaczynski was a loser. He couldn't manage to turn a Harvard degree into a productive role in society so he waged a cowardly war on people who did nothing to harm him. The detailed list of specific injuries to victims here is sad... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski

He did less damage than a Harvard grad who went on to run a hedge fund, or went on to work in private equity, or work for McKinsey, or become a lobbyist. Where's the detailed list of victims of globalization and finance?

[deleted]

Re: ‘His ideas resonate’: how the Unabomber’s dangerous anti-tech manifesto lives on

#15

Post by infamouscow »

ok123456 wrote: post #11
djyaz1200 wrote: post #8

Kaczynski was a loser. He couldn't manage to turn a Harvard degree into a productive role in society so he waged a cowardly war on people who did nothing to harm him. The detailed list of specific injuries to victims here is sad... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski

He did less damage than a Harvard grad who went on to run a hedge fund, or went on to work in private equity, or work for McKinsey, or become a lobbyist. Where's the detailed list of victims of globalization and finance?

Or invading another country and killing somewhere on the order of 100K-1M innocent civilians.

If we're going to make a rank order list of genocidal maniacs, Ted Kaczynski isn't anywhere near the top.

Re: ‘His ideas resonate’: how the Unabomber’s dangerous anti-tech manifesto lives on

#16

Post by ahartmetz »

xg15 wrote: post #2

> After the terrorist’s death was announced, the entrepreneur Elon Musk tweeted that Kaczynski “might not be wrong” in his diagnosis that technology had been a disaster for humanity, one of a list of Silicon Valley figures who have praised the clarity of the bomber’s reasoning (while condemning his violent acts). I play both sides, so I always come out on top!

Better than some "we just want to make the world a better place" true believer.

Re: ‘His ideas resonate’: how the Unabomber’s dangerous anti-tech manifesto lives on

#17

Post by SilasX »

djyaz1200 wrote: post #8

Kaczynski was a loser. He couldn't manage to turn a Harvard degree into a productive role in society so he waged a cowardly war on people who did nothing to harm him. The detailed list of specific injuries to victims here is sad... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski

What? Didn’t he get an associate professorship, and at a pretty young age? That’s not productive? Not to mention the doctoral dissertation itself.

Re: ‘His ideas resonate’: how the Unabomber’s dangerous anti-tech manifesto lives on

#18

Post by nier »

Most of the article seems to be based on an interview with a certain Sean Fleming. He’s a research fellow at the University of Nottingham, who is writing the first book-length study of the Unabomber’s ideology.

From the article: «If Kaczynski did raise valid points, Fleming says, it is because he took them from others, including the French sociologist Jacques Ellul, whose 1954 text, The Technological Society, electrified the bomber as a young man.»

Re: ‘His ideas resonate’: how the Unabomber’s dangerous anti-tech manifesto lives on

#19

Post by joshuaheard »

I watched a TV show about the Unabomber a while back that was really good. I remember one of the detectives investigating him became sympathetic after reading his manifesto. I don't think the Unabomber was as much anti-tech as he was against tech controlling our lives. A valid concern in the AI era.

I'll never forget the one scene where the detective was driving an empty road late at night and came up to a red light at an intersection where there was no other cars in sight. We have all had this experience. You can see that the detective was slowly realizing the Unabomber's point as he waited a long time for the piece of technology, that had complete control over him at that moment, to allow him to proceed.

Re: ‘His ideas resonate’: how the Unabomber’s dangerous anti-tech manifesto lives on

#20

Post by fwlr »

speak_plainly wrote: post #3

I never found his argument convincing. The main tension in his manifesto is motivated by an underlying assumption that isn’t accurate. He sees technology as being a distinct force in opposition to humanity rather than an extension of humanity and that is the source of his fears. There are a lot of reasons to believe that technology is not an opposing force, like the idea of embedded cognition and embedded action. I t…

Hmm, I’m not sure I buy your contention. You can point to an individual instance of applying a specific technology and say “it is an extension of a particular human intention”, sure. But this is not commutative; Person A’s application of Technology X to Situation 1 is “extension of human intention”, but to Person B who is also in Situation 1, Technology X is “counter force in opposition to (Person B’s) humanity”. See for instance social media recommendation algorithms. I know a girl who can’t use TikTok because she loves pets and can’t look away from families grieving their pets - even starting from a blank slate, the algorithm quickly detects that grief videos engage her, and so inevitably fills up her feed with dead dogs. She absolutely experiences this particular technology as a distinct, and distinctly anti-human, counter force.

Even if every instance of technology has its origins as an extension of human intention, it is still valid to look at the unintended consequences that are anti-humanity, and it is valid to filter for just these negative experiences and say “technology is a counter force”.

That’s not disagreeing with your contention that it is an extension, by the way - it’s saying “also”.

It’s been a long time since I read Kaczynski’s manifesto and I only skimmed it at the time, so I can’t recall whether he makes this claim, or whether I had this thought myself as an obvious patch to his claims. But I think he did say this.

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