491–500 of 823 posts
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Hey, what about all of the people driving cars that buy the products from those oil giants? Why not just go open season on all of humanity?
(Yes, I know it's sarcastic. But sarcasm still needs to make sense to be effective. You can't say the equivalent of "that logic leads to X very bad thing" if you get the logic wrong.)
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Hey, what about all of the people driving cars that buy the products from those oil giants? Why not just go open season on all of humanity?
Is that a real question? The answer is very obvious. Those people are a million times less culpable. (Yes, I know it's sarcastic. But sarcasm still needs to make sense to be effective. You can't say the equivalent of "that logic leads to X very bad thing" if you get the logic wrong.)
If someone recognizes the failings of every human then they are less prone to pass judgment.
Did Ted K not feel justified in his actions? Did he not find his own murderous actions acceptable? Why would he do these things if he didn’t think he was devoid of the sin he saw in his targets?
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He does not need any of that. He is not about to put Kaczynsky to jail. He is doing moral judgement and that one requires only reasonable probability. > Is it just that you can't compartmentalize and separate the two things in your mind? They are not separate. Past behavior predicts future one. And ignoring probabilities is just demanding that people act as if they were stupid.
Yeah but I only have to come up with a reasonable doubt. It's analogous to coming up with one counterexample to disprove something in mathematics. I can reasonably theorize that he fully intended to stop bombing people based on this "deal". There. Done. I can doubt he planned to bomb people in a reasonable way. The onus is on you to remove all reasonable doubt. You have not done so by simply showing that there are bo…
No it's not.
Again, that's the standard for criminal punishment. Not moral judgement.
And have you heard of civil law? Despite the high stakes that's usually decided based on the preponderance of evidence.
On one hand, he murdered a bunch of people and ruined a huge number of lives. On the other hand, wrote a mildly interesting manifesto that only attracted any sort of attention because it was published by The Washington Post in a desperate bid to figure out who he was so we could get him to stop murdering people. (Which worked, by the way.) So, y'know. Evens right out... Interested in his ideas? Read better manifestos…
Put down the strawman, it's already dead.
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Would his methods be credible if he was doing it in the 40s and they were directed against nazi intelligentsia for example?
Of course they would be. Morality doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's not objective, it's collectively determined by society. As a society we have decided en masse that blowing up randomly selected people to draw attention to one's political views is not acceptable. As a society we also have decided that violent actions taken against the German government in the early 1940s were acceptable. This isn't a contradiction, no…
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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…
> If the name on the front page was not of a murderer, I truly believe it would be recommended reading in schools and philosophy clubs I assure you a lot of incredibly smart writing doing absolutely accurate predictions is ignored by schools and clubs. Literally only thing that sets Kaczynsky apart are the bombs. > , I quite enjoyed his critique of the modern Leftist ideals and why they would create the factionalism…
Anyone else find it strange that Ted and Robert Hanssen died at the same time? Locked in the same place....
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Really? I would completely disagree. Reading his manifesto at 14 after seeing endless newspaper descriptions of it as incoherent, rambling, crazy, etc. was an eye-opening moment for me: I found the manifesto to be lucid and well-argued. In a moment of shock I realized you can't trust the newspapers, at all -- a judgement I hold even more strongly today, with a few decades more of experience. I'd encourage anyone who…
> I found the manifesto to be lucid and well-argued. > For example, if one believes that affirmative action is good for black people, does it make sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or dogmatic terms? Obviously it would be more productive to take a diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal and symbolic concessions to white people who think that affirmative action discriminates ag…
No. It's more like "Leftist activists push AA and other policies with no concern for the impact on the communities they're purportedly intended to help."
> Do you, or have you ever, felt mad a black person because of affirmative action?
I'm pretty sure you could find a ton of people who do if you searched for it. But even if the harm wasn't real I think the point is that activists don't care about collateral damage.
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Really? I would completely disagree. Reading his manifesto at 14 after seeing endless newspaper descriptions of it as incoherent, rambling, crazy, etc. was an eye-opening moment for me: I found the manifesto to be lucid and well-argued. In a moment of shock I realized you can't trust the newspapers, at all -- a judgement I hold even more strongly today, with a few decades more of experience. I'd encourage anyone who…
> I found the manifesto to be lucid and well-argued. > For example, if one believes that affirmative action is good for black people, does it make sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or dogmatic terms? Obviously it would be more productive to take a diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal and symbolic concessions to white people who think that affirmative action discriminates ag…