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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

#61

Post by petsfed »

wellthisisgreat wrote: post #31
ok123456 wrote: post #11

Earlier 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

In the context of "having a harvard degree implies a certain amount of skill and capability of to improve the world", I think its fair to honestly look at who he's being held up to in comparison. There a lot people in the world who, if you asked them who was the most dangerous person to graduate from Harvard, they'd pick George W. Bush over some guy who killed 3 and injured not quite 2 dozen.

Getting into or graduating from Harvard as an undergrad doesn't mean much. Granted, Kaczynski didn't buy his way in, but the comment as written doesn't differentiate between some rich kid buying their way in and some genius earning their way in.

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

#62

Post by rcktmrtn »

adamrezich wrote: post #24
euix wrote: post #5

Getting a faculty job at 25 is extremely impressive, the mistake he made was using violence to spread his message - in his manifesto he even states that he uses it to make sure message heard - but if he had just held on, resisted the urge and played the long game he could have had a much bigger voice in the world - even if he never became an academic, outside of the system as a pundit, youtuber, hacker, etc. The worl…

> but if he had just held on, resisted the urge and played the long game I don't think everyone having wireless devices that connect to a global information network in their pockets at all times is something one could've really foreseen in 1978. and, even so, it's not as though it's really feasible to make any sort of shock-to-the-system sentiment widely and broadly heard, today, while abstaining from violence—even o…

> had Kaczynski chosen peaceful decades-later contemporary Internet discourse as his means of promoting his ideas, he'd simply be tarred and feathered as an "alt-right" nutjob, just like everyone else with views that contradict the present Western civilization status quo.

So what? Anyone with an ounce of spirituality knows that living your life to be admired in your lifetime is not the real goal. Ivan Illich spent his life being as lefty and now he's trendy on the right (making similar critiques, btw). Truth is beautiful when it's spoken for its own sake -- insecurity makes it ugly. It can't be forced into the world by terror.

Kaczynski killed because he was unbalanced and insecure, not because he held (partial) truth. Better thinkers on the issue were dime-a-dozen, even in his day (E.M. Forester, Samuel Butler, McLuhan). And it wasn't his terrorism but sophomoricly intellectual "incel" rage and religious fundamentalist movements that are finally waking people up.

edit: ... and this isn't to say that truth never justifies any form of violence, just that there is absolutely nothing to learn from Kaczynski's brand -- which was ignoble and totally futile to his intended ends.

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

#63

Post by NoRelToEmber »

I would urge everyone to read the manifesto directly, and not The Guardian's selective summary, that gives no hints the manifesto has chapters such as "The Psychology of Modern Leftism".

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/national...

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

#64

Post by awaythrow483 »

If you haven't read the manifesto, do yourself a favor and read it and come to your own conclusions. In my opinion it's a weird mix of extremely coherent and well reasoned points that come to a sort of nonsensensical conclusion but that doesn't deter from how good the good parts are and they are definitely worth reading

If you strip out the call for revolution stuff which is very poorly argued anyway and I think just transparently will never happen, the remaining 80% of the manifesto is very well written

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

#65

Post by norir »

mcint wrote: post #59

Points 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 hi…

Kaczynski needs to be understood as much as a brilliant propagandist as a philosopher. Dismissing him as a philosopher because he drew his ideas from others misses the point. Regardless of what one thinks of the man, his ideas and actions (and I strongly disagree with many of his ideas and all of his violent actions), he has clearly been more influential than Ellul in the US by a wide margin.

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

#66

Post by TeMPOraL »

aeternum wrote: post #49
aero-deck wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech can start out as an extension, but what people fail to understand is that it can become slowly become autonomous over time, kinda like how a party gets out of control and people start putting holes in walls. I think technologists rarely, if ever, talk about this because a lot of what enables our blind pursuit of technology is to say that technology must be an extension of humans and so it can never become autono…

I think you really nailed the ultimately question: Can technology have agency? If not, then it's just another tool for humans. We are excellent tool users, and leverage everything we can to expand our senses and abilities. We already successfully wield tools of unimaginable power. If technology itself can have agency, then it truly is a paradigm shift for the millennia. There has never been an entity that is better a…

I think this is all a red herring. At least until we crack GAI, at which point paperclip maximizers and other lethal agents of pure technology come knocking.

Point being: technology, so far, has never been autonomous. But technology also doesn't grow on trees, nor does it stick out from the ground like a valuable rock. Technology is actively invented, and requires costly reproduction and maintenance. It only sticks around if enough people deem it worthy to have enough resources allocated to birth and propagate some piece of technology.

In other words: there is always someone commissioning the technology. Someone with use for it. When considering the gains and ills of progress, it is IMO wrong to focus on technology itself. Especially when talking ills, it's a good way for the actual cause of suffering to remain hidden. Every technology that ever harmed anyone was commissioned and deployed by somebody. Perhaps commissioned with ill intent from the start, or perhaps only repurposed for evil. But it's not technology that does the damage, but people - and these days, organizations, which is both government branches and businesses.

Going back to agency and autonomy - technology doesn't have agency, but people do, and importantly, large organizations seem to have separate agency of their own. Sans of GAI, no tech will turn on all humans on its own - but a corporation might, and corporations wield the most powerful of technologies.

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

#67

Post by xg15 »

leobg wrote: post #22
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!

Dude. Read the tweet in context [1]. He was responding to this headline: “The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race." Most likely, he was thinking of the dangers of AI (hence “might” - because we still don’t know). [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1667627403089268739?s=46...

If that's the case, it's still hypocritical - he was one of the early investors in OpenAI: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-openai-reason-exis...

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

#68

Post by ok123456 »

petsfed wrote: post #61
wellthisisgreat wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's some rich whataboutism

In the context of "having a harvard degree implies a certain amount of skill and capability of to improve the world", I think its fair to honestly look at who he's being held up to in comparison. There a lot people in the world who, if you asked them who was the most dangerous person to graduate from Harvard, they'd pick George W. Bush over some guy who killed 3 and injured not quite 2 dozen. Getting into or graduati…

The introduction of the SAT kept Jeb from going there.

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

#69

Post by aeternum »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #66
aeternum wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you really nailed the ultimately question: Can technology have agency? If not, then it's just another tool for humans. We are excellent tool users, and leverage everything we can to expand our senses and abilities. We already successfully wield tools of unimaginable power. If technology itself can have agency, then it truly is a paradigm shift for the millennia. There has never been an entity that is better a…

I think this is all a red herring. At least until we crack GAI, at which point paperclip maximizers and other lethal agents of pure technology come knocking. Point being: technology, so far, has never been autonomous. But technology also doesn't grow on trees, nor does it stick out from the ground like a valuable rock. Technology is actively invented, and requires costly reproduction and maintenance. It only sticks a…

A corporation is just a group of humans. There's also clear governance. The CEO makes the decisions and the board of directors has oversight. The shareholders elect the board members.

It's ultimately still a group of humans making the decisions, and they are almost always rational decisions, may just not look that way from the outside with only a partial view.

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

#70

Post by rc5150 »

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #36
ok123456 wrote: post #11

Earlier 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?

Kill ten people and you're a serial killer. Kill ten million and you're a politician.

Kill em all... YOU'RE A GOD!

(Megadeth - Captive Honour, by way of Jean Rostand)

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