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‘His ideas resonate’: how the Unabomber’s dangerous anti-tech manifesto lives on
51–60 of 95 posts
Re: ‘His ideas resonate’: how the Unabomber’s dangerous anti-tech manifesto lives on
#52Kaczynski 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
I know this is off-topic, but wow, he died not too long ago (June 10)
Re: ‘His ideas resonate’: how the Unabomber’s dangerous anti-tech manifesto lives on
#53I'm a Marxian leftist, but the one time I tried reading his essay I found it incomprehensible, ramblings of an ill person. It could've been about any topic, the style was redundant overconfident rambling. So, I never cared for the overanalysis of this, the media obsession and spectacle is pretending he had anything comprehensible to say at all. I.e., his ideas resonate for people who have not actually read leftist wr…
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Re: ‘His ideas resonate’: how the Unabomber’s dangerous anti-tech manifesto lives on
#54The movie fight club is a direct editorialized adaption of the Manifesto
Re: ‘His ideas resonate’: how the Unabomber’s dangerous anti-tech manifesto lives on
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The issue with that argument is that it is way too general. IE, suppose one lion has shaper teeth. It uses those teeth to catch antelope more efficiently. The other lions see those sharp teeth as inherently anti-lion because those teeth deprive the rest of them of delicious antelope.
This is exactly how it plays out with humans too, except 1) we can develop ways to sharpen our teeth, and 2) we can organize opposition to individuals who, according to the majority, behave unfairly. The resulting dynamics are obviously much more complicated than with lions, but the phenomenon is there.
I mean, imagine that the lion went on to catch more antelope than it needs to eat, and started to sell the surplus in exchange for cleaning its beard or some other services. The other lions then figure out this is not a bad strategy, and start doing their best to also capture a surplus to trade - perhaps going as far as inventing tricks and tools that let them hunt even more efficiently than the original lion with sharper teeth. This continues for a while, until antelope population crashes and most of the lions starve.
Survivors, should they be smart enough, pass on the story of those events - aptly calling it the Tragedy of Commons. Perhaps a couple generations later, when a lion with sharper teeth starts setting up antelope carcass trade again, they wisely band together to form a lion government, and dispense hunting quotas.
Thus is the story of civilization and technology, in a nutshell.
Re: ‘His ideas resonate’: how the Unabomber’s dangerous anti-tech manifesto lives on
#56I'm a Marxian leftist, but the one time I tried reading his essay I found it incomprehensible, ramblings of an ill person. It could've been about any topic, the style was redundant overconfident rambling. So, I never cared for the overanalysis of this, the media obsession and spectacle is pretending he had anything comprehensible to say at all. I.e., his ideas resonate for people who have not actually read leftist wr…
Couldn't agree more. Which makes sense, he only experienced life through books in near total isolation. You can't really provide anything of value about life or society that way, you're just stuck in your own mental projection of the world.
Re: ‘His ideas resonate’: how the Unabomber’s dangerous anti-tech manifesto lives on
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
For the sake of argument, 100% agreed. However, that's still irrelevant and does nothing to alleviate the fact that he killed many innocent people. Two wrongs don't make a right, as they say.
Who says that? Parent's talking to toddlers?
Surely no one making decisions of consequence in our world. They certainly prefer tit for tat.
Re: ‘His ideas resonate’: how the Unabomber’s dangerous anti-tech manifesto lives on
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
that's some rich whataboutism
You can always tell weak thinkers when they need to throw out pre-labeled idea placeholders instead of making their point
Re: ‘His ideas resonate’: how the Unabomber’s dangerous anti-tech manifesto lives on
#59Points I would raise, from the article:
If Kaczynski did raise valid points, he 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. “Few of his arguments are actually original,” Fleming says. “He borrowed most of his ideas from fairly mainstream academic authors who would never have condoned his violence.
“I don’t think we should read Kaczynski as a theorist or philosopher, and try to separate his ideas from his violence,” he says. “He’s a self-described terrorist, and revolutionary, and this is how I read him.”
Re: ‘His ideas resonate’: how the Unabomber’s dangerous anti-tech manifesto lives on
#60Kaczynski 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
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One important difference between Kaczynski and political leaders is that Kaczynski acted on his own autonomy. Political and military leaders require others to carry out their violence which defuses the moral stain by making so many others complicit (including the voters in democracies). Even an autocratic leader like Putin relies on his citizenry to carry out his will in such a way that it is difficult to even make sense of how the will of Putin differs from the will of the Russian nation.