[bkohlmann]

One of my good friend’s dad was brutally murdered by Kaczynski when she was a young teenager.

A small bomb in a package that used razor blazes, nails, and other bits of metal to nearly tear his head off while his young family was in the house with him.

And it turns out the victim was the “wrong” man, as he didn’t even work on the project Kaczynski wanted to bring “retribution” for.

Kaczynski May have said some interesting things, but he physically tore apart the lives of many, leaving a wake of destruction during his crusade.

Actions speak louder than words. Even eloquent ones.

[tptacek]

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.

[blagie]

I don't think anyone disputes that.

However, I think there's a difference between sympathy, empathy, and understanding.

I apologize in advance; the rest of this comment will be a bit long-winded (rambly?), but it's hard to make cultural points concisely:

One of the reactions after World War II was "Never Forget," and we built a whole infrastructure to understand how what happened came to pass. People study many of the most murderous madmen of history, because it's important to understand.

Any serious study will be complex. Germany went from being basically a ruined nation to an economic, military, and industrial superpower in a short amount of time. Hitler did many things to come to power which were effective. The old saying "Mussolini made the trains run on time" isn't quite true, but if he had, any study would show how he did it.

Those are important problems to study. I'll take the Mussolini example, since it's not quite true. Compare two universes:

1) Only Mussolini could make the trains run on time

2) Anyone could make the trains run on time

Which one is more likely to lead to another Mussolini?

This may sound crass in American culture -- there is a tendency to equate any discussion of Hitler with hate -- but I come from a culture which took a different (and I think more effective) stance. We look at what happened, and try to understand, without glorification or downplaying of the problems. The most difficult lies are those which mix fact with fiction, and it's actually important to tease the two apart. If we all acknowledge the facts, the next madman can't use them to support a fiction.

[fsckboy]

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 Kaczynski?

[Roark66]

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 be.

Someone could say, but his mental illness made him believe he has to kill those people for the good of humankind. Firstly, how do we truly know this as true? Perhaps he just loved the feeling of power it gave him so he came up with the justification. Being an intelligent man he came up with a convincing story.

[PartiallyTyped]

I don’t think it’s an excuse or justification, but rather an explanation or motive.

Unfortunately the brain is rather complex and can break in surprisingly many ways. One such example is the shooter who had cancer that pressed against his [iirc] amygdala.

For Ted, we know that he was a subject of mkultra experiments, and that he was tortured. We know that he was deeply troubled and had communication issues. Perhaps he felt that the bombings were the only way he could garner focus on the problems he saw; but that is likely rationalisation on my end. It should also be noted that Ted lived very isolated, and that can cause severe damage to the brain. If you find yourself alone in a foreign country that you work in and no social support system or many interactions, you might experience this and see yourself changing.

In Greek αιτιολογώ and δικαιολογώ exist, where the former identifies causality and uses that to reason on the events and the latter is the same as justifying. To my knowledge the former doesn’t have a translation in English.

[SllX]

> In Greek αιτιολογώ and δικαιολογώ exist, where the former identifies causality and uses that to reason on the events and the latter is the same as justifying. To my knowledge the former doesn’t have a translation in English.

In an effort to understand your post, I ran those through the English Wiktionary which some may not know, also has foreign words.

αιτιολογώ: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%B1%CE%B9%CF%84%CE%B9%CE%B...

δικαιολογία: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%B4%CE%B9%CE%BA%CE%B1%CE%B...

My personal interpretation is that this like the difference between an explanation and an excuse, but perhaps someone here has a better interpretation.

[stavros]

No, you (and PartiallyTyped) are right, αιτιολογώ is more or less "to explain" (but in a sense of trying to find the causes for), δικαιολογώ is basically exactly "to excuse".

[PartiallyTyped]

Αιτιολογία and Αιτιολογώ are a noun and a verb derived from αίτιo (αίτια for plural) and λογος, which roughly speaking mean a [set] of identified cause(s) and “reason” respectively.

So this is purely causal without imposing the person’s subjective judgement onto the action or event; simply expressing that given the circumstances, it makes sense that the events occurred, whether the person was right or justified in acting as they did is a different story. So given the events I can reason why the action occurred.

For δικαιολογία / δικαιολογώ, the words are derived from δίκαιο and λόγος again; the former meaning the person is in the right, or is morally correct from the perspective of the person expressing it. Thus, justifying is closer to δικαιολογώ.

For an example; chores are boring, so I didn’t do them even though I promised I would. You can reason why I didn’t do them but you can’t claim I was justified in not doing them. I promised I would and breaking promises is generally immoral without s good justification or a reason.

[spiralx]

Are you talking about the difference between proximal and ultimate causes? As in the proximal cause of these people dying was an explosion from a bomb set by Kaczynski, while the ultimate cause was that the things that caused Kaczynski's poor mental health that led him to those actions.

Separately I like the phrase "a reason is not an excuse" quite a lot. I can empathise with people who make terrible decisions and understand their reasoning, but that doesn't make me excuse the choices that they made.

[ramblerman]

It's not an excuse, but at some point there is little else to be done. The benefit of society as a whole must be considered.

Take as an example pedophiles. There is a movement in the netherlands which tries to implore them to speak up about their "dark" desires and seek help. In which case they should be helped. But once they have acted on their inner demons I don't see how we should just say well they weren't themselves.

[egorfine]

> mental illness as an excuse for simple evil

It's not an excuse, it's an explanation for simple evil. At times I feel like people confuse these two.

[denton-scratch]

> an excuse for simple evil

What sort of thing does this word "evil" refer to? Is it simply the wish to do harm? Is it evil to want to harm someone that is harming you?

I think the word only makes sense in the context of religious (or pseudo-religious) beliefs about metaphysical forces that drive events. I don't believe in such forces. Believing in evil is like believing in God.

One problem I have with the word is that once you define a person as evil, you've placed them beyond the reach of reason or persuasion. The only reasonable response becomes to remove them completely.

[dudeinjapan]

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.)

[inferiorhuman]

  Surely Ted believed what he was doing was a great good

Hardly.

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".

[11235813213455]

When you target a plane, it's quite symbolic for the pollution and destruction of the environment

[JKCalhoun]

I'm not so sure. It's hard to take a murderer at their word — especially one who is trying to justify their crimes.

[11235813213455]

Aren't many aspect of this society, like overconsumerism, overpollution, waste, disrespect for the environement, air flights and other kind of avoidable impactful leisures pure evil too?

[saberience]

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 enough times and you can end up murdering your wife and children, evil doesn't come into it.

[yawboakye]

i really don’t know what to count as mental illness now. is it when people make decisions that aren’t consonant with expectations of a reasonable person? are stupid people mentally ill? what about religious believers who believe, for example, that muhammad ascended to heaven on horseback?

coherence of thought may be a yardstick, and if so ted is as coherent and articulate as it can be. was he wrongly inspired? did he hate so much the current political organization that emasculates any single individual from achieving much? or causing a consequential national debate? did he take his anger too far? thinking about these, and having read all his material, i think we shouldn’t consign him to mental illness. it’s too convenient, it’s a worthless external judgement, and one that he vehemently rejected.

ted was a sane man acting on his belief. no different than me praying every morning and going to church every sunday to thank god for how far he has brought me.

[inferiorhuman]

  Our cities are full of mentally ill people living on the streets. Are
  they a ticking time bomb? was Kaczynski?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65867291

  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. 

Perhaps we should watch out for socially inept STEM graduates.

[spiralx]

Engineers are famously over-represented amongst terrorists, so probably.

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/magazine/12FOB-IdeaLab-t....

[Broken_Hippo]

Many, many people have severe mental illnesses and don't murder others. Mental illness is not an excuse.

Most folks with mental illness simply suffer. This is the real reason we should "get serious" about treating mental illness.

[11235813213455]

and treating the whole society and its extreme impact on environment. Someone who's overpolluting looks absolutely crazy and irresponsible to me

[jdkoeck]

He was not a terrorist because of his mental health issues, he was a terrorist because of his convictions. No excuses.

[9991]

Can you cite a reference for that?

[rgrs]

The sprectrum for mental illness is too broad that anyone can fit into it one way or another.

Not all mentally ill person are movitvated as these evil few.

[valval]

Can you cite a reference for the morality between good and evil?

[9991]

No. Good and evil are labels people attach to the emotions people feel about others' actions. They have surprisingly little predictive power on the hows and whys of behavior.

[kevincrane]

> We can agree that killing people or trying to kill people is terrible, but

That last word in this quote should’ve been a red flag.

[ars]

> And we're talking about stochastic processes.

No we aren't, because that's not a real thing.

That's just something people make up when they want to demonize someone for their words, but don't have any actual evidence that their words are causing harm.

People aren't random agents of evil, that may or may not trigger. That's simply not a description of reality.

[PartiallyTyped]

> People aren't random agents of evil, that may or may not trigger. That's simply not a description of reality

That is not what stochastic terrorism means.

Stochastic terrorism is the observation that while you can not express specifically, where and how terror will occur, you know that with prob 1, it will occur and is a consequence of people rallying and exploiting crazy people.

Of course, anyone can deny that they explicitly told people to commit acts of terror, because they didn’t, and therefore they can not be held responsible for what the mentally ill did; that doesn’t mean there isn’t a cause and effect.

A constant barrage of people expressing “think of the children”, or blaming minorities for the perils of society is going to slowly but surely deteriorate and rally people into supporting murder and other heinous acts by distorting their reality and allowing them to justify atrocities.

Expressing that some [hero] needs to do something, nudge nudge wink wink doesn’t mean you did not cause an event, people don’t exist in vacuums, and all of our interactions provably matter.

[PartiallyTyped]

I really fail to see why my response is deemed inappropriate by HN standards. Apparently I have also been flagged and I can't even comment. I really don't understand what I am doing wrong and would appreciate some feedback.

[JshWright]

Your friend’s dad’s death is also my (very trivial) connection to Kaczynski. That morning our family had gone Christmas tree shopping, and the tree was scheduled to be delivered later that day. As it turned out, the delivery driver was also a Verona volunteer firefighter and ended up responding to the explosion, delaying our tree to the next day. It’s a super trivial connection, but it has always stuck with me.

[MavisBacon]

This surely would stick with me. Wild story.

[rlt]

“My good friend’s dad was brutally murdered”

“My delivery was delayed”

Maybe not the place for it.

[31337Logic]

He said the connection was super trivial.

I think you're mistaken - I think it's precisely the right place for such a comment.

[firecall]

I liked it - it shows how we are all connected.

[xorbax]

It's not that big a transgression

It also makes a map of human affect. We can all pretend such a thing matters, but most horrors never touch our life and would never be known without the news.

The fact that a random guy gave his spare time to help others is notable. The key point is the Christmas tree deliverer being a first responder. It's a hell of a thing.

[ryanisnan]

Be careful, the virtue cops are out in full force these days. Heaven forbid you share an anecdote on the internet and someone disagrees with you.

[bbor]

Not great reading comprehension, friend - they’re not complaining, but reminiscing.

[asveikau]

> Kaczynski May have said some interesting things

That take is strange to me.

He reminds me a lot of people I've been close to who suffered mental illness. He didn't want to be considered mentally ill, and his apologists don't like it either, and further, many who focus on his victims and crimes don't like it. But for me, that's the major story about him. It was clear to me the first time i tried to read the manifesto many years ago.

From that, his story is sad. He didn't need to go insane and start bombing people. He had potential to do other, better things.

I watched the Netflix documentary, and the commentary from his brother and sister in law was very moving. The brother, because he still loved him, but had to come to terms with what he did and do the right thing. The brother's wife, who it seemed flagged him as mentally ill from nearly the beginning.

[csydas]

I think this is an unkind assessment to Kaczynski. What he did was wrong, there isn't denying that, but I think people forget he really was a very good mathematician and that he very likely was a subject in the MK-Ultra experiments without realizing it.

This is not to excuse all his actions as we cannot know really the full extent of the experiment he participated in without a proper understanding of what was going to happen to him and the potential outcomes.

His positions in his manifesto aren't exactly bad positions to take, his actions in bringing attention to it were bad and hurt many innocents.

I think it's possible to condemn his actions while also recognizing his non-violent contributions and the elements in his life that may have contributed to the creation of the Unabomber. After reading about the experiments he attended, it's very hard for me to remove those as a contributor to the Unabomber; they weren't the sole contributor, but I can't imagine having such derision and psychological abuse for 200+ hours without walking out of it maladjusted.

The purpose of such statements I think isn't to excuse Kaczynski's actions, but instead to ensure that we aren't just imagining some video game or movie villain that appeared and the FBI heroically stopped; he was a human being who lived a pretty normal life, and then he changed and became the Unabomber. The latter is extremely sad and appalling given the damage, and I think the latter is made even worse by remembering the former; he used to be a pretty smart guy and contributed well to society.

It's a sad story no matter how you view Kaczynski, but I think that we are worse off if we don't recognize that he was at some point a fairly normal human being, teaching maths and studying maths, who went through a lot of psychological issues, and came out as the Unabomber.

[asveikau]

> I think this is an unkind assessment to Kaczynski.

Only if you have a stigmatizing view of mental illness.

> but I think people forget he really was a very good mathematician

Famously, so was John Nash, who was schizophrenic. To say nothing about the large number of very accomplished people in many fields. Mentally ill people can be very smart and talented.

> and that he very likely was a subject in the MK-Ultra experiments without realizing it.

The onset of schizophrenia tends to happen in late adolescence. This lines up with his time at Harvard. I think it's wrong to blame the psychological experiment thing for this. It's like people who blame drugs for making people schizophrenic, without understanding that they may have had the condition before.

I would recommend the Netflix doc.

[dudeinjapan]

I'm sure someone else has posted this but... rather than a mentally ill screed I'd say it's a pretty lucid diagnosis of the last 30 years: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-ship-o...

[LouisSayers]

I never read anything he wrote and just started reading his manifesto https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unab...

It's actually a pretty interesting read so far. His thoughts on "leftism" and general society conformance seem to me to be quite well thought out.

I guess mental illness, and logical, rational thoughts aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

[asveikau]

So this allegory tells us that humanity faces existential threats and that the answer is violence towards anybody who want to focus on another problem beyond his pet project. I read it as pretty deranged and unjustly angry. Along with the other articles on that site by Kaczynski.

[goldenkey]

That was a better analogy to reality than the drivel I've read in the last 30 years.

[basisword]

Thanks for posting. Far too much support and excusing of a deranged murderer in these comments.

[spurgu]

The positive comments are mostly in response to his view/ideas/philosophy, as in Industrial Society and Its Future and his subsequent books - I don't think there's a single person here condoning the bombings.

If you were to read his works you might find that he wasn't so deranged after all, quite the opposite.

Edit: In terms of the philosophy/view I mean. The bombings were made out of bitterness and anger and are inexusable.

[notjulianjaynes]

Had Kaczynski not conducted his campaign of bombings he would have had no leverage to get the Washington Post to publish his manifesto.

I re-skimmed the manifesto earlier today. It's not uninteresting, but I don't think it's the sort of thing which can be considered or appreciated outside the context of his violent acts. For one, no one would have read it if Kacynzski had been a nonviolent academic.

As for bitterness and anger, well, here's a quote I pulled somewhat randomly from the text.

"We have no illusions about the feasibility of creating a new, ideal form of society. Our goal is only to destroy the existing form of society."

[jxramos]

very interesting, essentially riding the coattails of the notoriety in derangement, what a concept.

[bbor]

>He justifies the trade-offs that come with losing industrial society as being worth the cost.

That is fucking deranged. Describing it as deranged is an understatement, and it blows my mind that you’re defending it _on an internet forum_. Only someone who’s never seen someone die of violence or disease could ever say some shit like that.

Today is reminding me that I need to take hacker news commenters much less seriously…

[resolutebat]

His argument is basically that industrial society increases net suffering from violence and disease, because large populations are unsustainable and rely on the exploitation of the third world's poor. So instead of having one person die from a curable infection because nobody has antibiotics, you have five dying of infections because the population has exploded and antibiotics exist but they can't afford them.

[inpdx]

Someone who claims to care about humans while murdering them really has zero credibility.

[ersatzz]

Kaczynski would've probably said the same thing honestly.

[bbor]

The proof for that being vibes? Your specific example is quite obviously false in my eyes, but maybe I’m missing something obvious. How is some antibiotics worse than no antibiotics?

I mean unless his stance was that a higher population is inherently bad because there’s more people to experience suffering? But surely all these people in this thread don’t support something THAT dumb.

I’m so lost and his wiki page isn’t helping

[resolutebat]

As far as I can tell, yes, that is exactly his stance: each suffering person is a net negative, regardless of others who are not. So five people suffering is always worse than one person suffering.

And please don't mistake people explaining his theories with supporting them.

[nehal3m]

I think the Unabomber would posit that a society that is complex enough to produce something as advanced as anti-biotics inherently causes human beings to lose their local autonomy and freedom (and by extension their dignity and happiness) due to the rigid organization such a system requires. To me it sounds like a trolley problem and reading his manifesto it seems he erred on the side of flipping the switch to the track with one person on it.

[spurgu]

Wait, whom are you quoting (and responding to) here?

In any case it sounds like you're describing a trolley problem (where people die whatever option you choose and you might pick the one killing less).

[bbor]

I think the parent comment was deleted? And I’m quoting the wiki on his manifesto.

I don’t see “no action or choice is perfectly good” as an excuse to take bs like “what if disease and famine and ignorance are good for us” seriously.

And that’s not really what the trolley problem is about, AFAIU it’s about agency and culpability - I think you’re more discussing basic utilitarianism?

[dendriti]

There are PLENTY, certainly thousands and probably tens of thousands, of works which represent this monster's "view/ideas/philosphy" and weren't written by a deranged murderer. So you can understand the concern.

[mistermann]

Considering the context (planet Earth) and the history of "righteous" actions of the department of "defense" of the nation he hails from, I believe it to be at least debatable.

Now, one can say "No, that's wrong!", but that doesn't make it wrong, though it can certainly cause it to appear that way.

If Ted is bad for his body count of innocent people, then what of us?

[msla]

His views were White Supremacy and Fascism.

[DyslexicAtheist]

thanks for posting and sorry for your loss.

I've heard the name TK first when reading Bill Joy's "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us".

15 years later I was burnt out and increasingly aware that Tech was not a force of good. I went on a 3 year journey trying to understand what made TK chose violence. It can't just be the struggle of a Pollak getting people to pronounce his name correctly, however hard that is. I started by studying his manifest. I dissected it like a surgeon, then read every book/reference that he gave. What would happen if I read every book he read. How does a bright young man go from reading philosophy and science conclude that men can't be saved.

How does a person go from being at Harvard to concluding the only way to make it better is to first make it worse. TK was an accelerationist who believed the means justifies the end. TK felt that it was a necessary evil to collaborate with those he disagrees with (fascists, neo-nazis etc) as long as they can help bring down the current world order.

One dominat figure that kept popping up repeatedly when going through TK ramblings was Jaques Ellul, a French philosopher, not too well known outside France[1][2]. Ellul must have left quite the impact because even his manifesto is a homage on Ellul's biggest work: The Technological Society (La Technique)[1].

Ellul doesn't just talk about Technology but the whole domain of what we today call Systems Thinking. And he opens your eyes about edge cases and the victims of this thinking in ways even heavyweights like Nassim Taleb will seem like a rookies in comparison.

Ca 2018 I've read everything Ellul wrote and also read multiple times what TK wrote. I was depressed, like really really bad. There is no way out. I still wasn't criminally insane though. There had to be more than just "self-radicalization by information". Something was missing. It was isolation!

So I went on to teach myself bushcraft living off grid for a year in a similar way as TK. "Living off the land" as we call it in infosec (only it's the literal land :)). And this made me understand why TK had so much hate for civilization. It's the same hate the Sentinelese people must have for those visiting their shores[3].

Although I had no guns to feed myself with game meat as TK did. And I did not spend the same time out there. But after a few months without human contact I did understand what humanity has lost and how our connection to mother Earth has been severed.

While I never turned criminally insane and always disagreed with violence, I managed to understand what radicalized TK. It was being isolated. It happens in less severe ways to all of humanity via algorithm and screen time.

If you really want the full TK experience I implore you to live in the woods for a decade and see how you feel about humanity. No laptop instagram or electricity. Will you have any empathy left for the rest of society upon your return?

Jacques Ellul is not an easy read when you're vulnerable and searching for answers. Ellul will push you off the cliff of society and do something that today is unthinkable: to question technology and technological progress itself.

TK is not comprehensible to anyone functioning and depending within society because he hated society and he believed it needed to be destroyed. It's pretty hard to have any empathy with this. Because he caused a lot of pain and suffering he robbed himself of leaving a legacy or a lesson.

[1] The technological society https://archive.org/details/TheBetrayalByTechnologyAPortrait...

[2] https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Ellul%2C+Jacqu...

[3] https://www.npr.org/2019/08/01/747368557/the-story-behind-jo...

Edit: yes heavily edited, lots of typos, lots of context cleared up. It still has potential to be misunderstood ofc

[sam2426679]

> How does a person go from being at Harvard to concluding the only way to make it better is to first make it worse

Harvard is where TK racked up hundreds of hours across several years as a participant/victim of an MKULTRA experiment investigating how to break down someone's belief system.

'In his second year at Harvard, Kaczynski participated in a study described by author Alston Chase as a "purposely brutalizing psychological experiment" led by Harvard psychologist Henry Murray. Subjects were told they would debate personal philosophy with a fellow student and were asked to write essays detailing their personal beliefs and aspirations. The essays were given to an anonymous individual who would confront and belittle the subject in what Murray himself called "vehement, sweeping, and personally abusive" attacks, using the content of the essays as ammunition. Electrodes monitored the subject's physiological reactions. These encounters were filmed, and subjects' expressions of anger and rage were later played back to them repeatedly. The experiment lasted three years, with someone verbally abusing and humiliating Kaczynski each week. Kaczynski spent 200 hours as part of the study.'

^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski#Psychological_st...

(He was 17 years old during his second year at Harvard).

[themaninthedark]

I find it very interesting that the news covering his life neglects to mention the MKULTRA part...

[sbuk]

It boggles the mind how a psychologist could have thought that the experiments were even remotely ethical. TK was an evil man, no doubt, but Henry Murray is equally as evil IMHO, and somewhat culpable for the outcome.

[lelanthran]

>> How does a person go from being at Harvard to concluding the only way to make it better is to first make it worse

> Harvard is where TK racked up hundreds of hours across several years as a participant/victim of an MKULTRA experiment investigating how to break down someone's belief system.

"Because Mkultra" is not a valid mitigation or explanation of TK's mental health or lack of it. After all, the other participants didn't turn into serial murders, now did they?

Sometimes a sausage is just a sausage, and sometimes an evil murderer is just an evil murderer.

There's often no point in attempting to find reasons for why someone is evil.

[hutzlibu]

"There's often no point in attempting to find reasons for why someone is evil. "

You mean it is easier to just jail or execute them?

Short term, sure, but if we want to solve murder in the long term, or just enjoy a stable society, held together by free choice and not fear or domination - then there is really no other choice in trying to understand what makes people go boom, so we can prevent that.

The alternative would be living in fortresses and going out only heavily armed.

Also, do you have a clear definition of "evil" at all?

I don't and I think it is kind of complicated. Starting with the old paradoxon: murder many people while you are in a army and you are a hero. Murder them on the street and you are a villain. So some say, all soldiers are evil murderers (and leave open the question on how to deal with the situation when they come for them or their children). Some say states are the evil. Others say stateless is the root of evil, etc.

And the Unabomber believed he did god, as he tried to end suffering. From a pure philosophical point of view, I can accept that there is a hypothetical chance, that he might be right. But in all practical matters he was a crazy, dangerous fanatic (something I translate to "evil").

But the thing is, many people think actually like him, even though most don't act on it. But they might soon. So now is a time, when one can still reach them. But that only works, when you try to understand their motivations.

And understand why they got there.

[lelanthran]

>> "There's often no point in attempting to find reasons for why someone is evil. "

> You mean it is easier to just jail or execute them?

No, I did not. That's you reading something that was never said.

My point is that you cannot say, as you are saying right now, that there is always an environmental reason for why someone is the way they are.

That certainly isn't true. What I've found is that people who go looking for an environmental reason always find one!

What these people don't explain is why all those other people with a virtually identical environment didn't become mass murderers!

[hutzlibu]

"What these people don't explain is why all those other people with a virtually identical environment didn't become mass murderers!"

I am curious how you conclude that their environment is "virtually identical". I seriously doubt that. What is a paradise for someone can be hell for someone else and to the observer it looks the same.

So this would rather be an indication that the modelling is flawed.

And in the Unabombers case we have among ideological things the actual MKUltra experiment(I think no participant enjoyed it). A experiment designed to break someones mind. But to me it sounds you just concluded that he is evil and this wasn't a factor because other participants did not became mass murderers?

Side question, do you consider the designers of MKUltra as evil?

[kergonath]

> “Because Mkultra" is not a valid mitigation or explanation of TK's mental health or lack of it. After all, the other participants didn't turn into serial murders, now did they?

Cigarettes cause cancer, and someone’s cancer can be directly linked to smoking even if not everyone who smokes gets cancer. There is no point diagnosing a dead person we don’t know personally, but dismissing the effect of an organised and long period of psychological torture just because not every participant ended up a terrorist sounds a bit myopic. For example, we don’t know about the raving lunatics that don’t make headlines.

[lelanthran]

> but dismissing the effect of an organised and long period of psychological torture just because not every participant ended up a terrorist sounds a bit myopic.

And dismissing the fact that the environment didn't produce the same outcome for all the other individuals isn't myopic?

There's more nuance here than "Well, it was the environment". All the participants in that environment had the same agency, but it was only TK that went down this particular path.

TBH, if the sample size was small (a dozen or two mkultra subjects), then there's not enough data to tell if it was the environment or the individual.

If the sample was large (more than a few hundred), then it becomes more probable than the environment was not the deciding factor in TKs state of mind.

Simply dismissing all the agency TK had is specious.

[kergonath]

> And dismissing the fact that the environment didn't produce the same outcome for all the other individuals isn't myopic?

That’s just his statistics work… Making a rare event more common does not make it a certainty. Again, we don’t know about any possible other people who might have been seriously disturbed in other, less attention-grabbing ways.

Nobody said that it was the only reason, but let’s be honest: if you take unstable people and condition them that way, such outcomes are not inconceivable. Saying that the experiment (weekly hours of psychological torture) did not affect this is not really believable.

> There's more nuance here than "Well, it was the environment".

It’s a good thing nobody said that, then…

> If the sample was large (more than a few hundred), then it becomes more probable than the environment was not the deciding factor in TKs state of mind.

Regardless of sample size, people who go full rogue that way are exceedingly rare in the first place. You’d need thousands upon thousands of subjects to detect increases over a baseline chance of 1:10000000.

> Simply dismissing all the agency TK had is specious.

Again, nobody said that. In any case, I certainly did not. I think we can have a rational discourse between “he was inhuman and absolutely evil” (he was not) and “he was actually right” (he was not either). In the end, he was just a human. His nature, upbringing, and environment all played roles.

[bondarchuk]

>After all, the other participants didn't turn into serial murders, now did they?

I've seen this argument a few times in this thread, and I hope I can explain my disagreement here. Even if not everyone subjected to this experiment becomes a terrorist, and even if there is something specific to Ted K.'s psychological makeup that made him become a terrorist after undergoing the experiment, that does not mean we can totally shift the blame away from the experimenters. Suppose that in the parallel world where he did not get experimented on, he would not have become a terrorist, we can still blame Murray (and/or the CIA) for taking (abnormal and extreme) actions that turned him into a terrorist.

[nine_k]

Thank you; this elucidates a lot.

So it boils down to a question: would you exchange the life of a lone top predator (in a forest with a firearm) to any other kind of life?

For some people the answer would be in favor of the top predator life. To choose the life of a tiger, one just should stop loving anyone. After this, killing becomes mere killing (predators do not "murder"), and the whole idea of destroying everyone else, or at least reducing them to a comparable state of a worthy adversary, becomes pretty natural. Of course technology becomes an enemy, because it gives the rest of humans an unfair advantage; first of all, the key human technology, the society. Certainly a city is an uninhabitable place for a lone tiger, and of course it limits the tiger's freedom in uncomfortable ways.

Some people just really want to see the world burn.

[jaredhallen]

I think characterizing the contempt for technology only in terms of the advantage it conveys to the "adversary" is kind of an incomplete analysis. There are true and valid reasons outside that. I'm in the camp that it (technology) is a double edged sword. It's hard to argue with the improvements in medicine, reduction in basic suffering, etc. But it wreaks a lot of havoc in its own right. The question is whether the good outweighs the bad. At one point that was a resounding yes. Currently? Harder to say. And if the answer to that question is no longer yes, then is there any meaningful way for a group of billions to coordinate conscious decisions and limitations about how technology should be approached, developed, and applied? Heavy stuff. Especially for a bunch of tech geeks.

[goatlover]

Are there any human groups in history which were not technological? Where do you draw the line? Where the Amish did? Earlier? Was writing bad? Architecture, math, running water, clothing, fire?

[jaredhallen]

I suppose ideally you don't draw a hard line, but look at each specific technology separately. Get out your crystal ball and do your best to anticipate downstream impacts. Or at least be willing to backpedal or adjust when something doesn't work out like we thought.

[nine_k]

Is there anything in the world which is not a double-edged sword, something completely devoid of downsides? AFAIK only certain transcendent entities are declared to have this property.

[Eisenstein]

Do you mean personal downside or societal downside? It could be argued that a well developed persona covering up innate sociopathy would be highly beneficial to a person and have no personal downsides, as long they as truly didn't care about others.

[pyrale]

Just because anything has drawbacks if you look hard enough doesn't mean that it's impossible to differentiate innovations on that criterion. Surely you can see how aspirin is not as concerning as leaded gasoline.

[natmaka]

Each and every parameter (even "population size") has an interval of 'adequate' values. Too few of anything, or too much of it, leads to major downsides.

[natmaka]

> To choose the life of a tiger, one just should stop loving anyone

Tigers live lonely and avoid fighting other tigers to death (even the extreme case of males both courting the same female rarely leads to such an issue), probably in order to preserve their genus.

Lions live in 'societies' (well-structured prides) and routinely kill other lions (even cubs).

The average lion, albeit way less physically formidable than a tiger, is a very dangerous contender against a tiger: he hits to kill.

[nine_k]

This is correct. I only chose the tiger as a metaphor because tigers are top predators and are solitary. They rarely meet other tigers.

If we need an example of a highly social predator species that rarely kill each other in conflicts, that'd be wolves.

[pixl97]

I expect we'll see more people take up TK's manifesto if generational AI starts taking over jobs and causing displacement in the next few years. Technology won't even give other people the power to become the enemy, it will be the direct enemy.

[nine_k]

I'd take a Butlerian Jihad over Unabomber's activity any day.

[Thorrez]

>If you really want the full TK experience I implore you to live in the woods for a decade and see how you feel about humanity. No laptop instagram or electricity. Will you have any empathy left for the rest of society upon your return?

There's a name for people who go into the woods and live all alone: hermits. They don't tend to lose all empathy for others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermit

[tsimionescu]

> If you really want the full TK experience I implore you to live in the woods for a decade and see how you feel about humanity. No laptop instagram or electricity. Will you have any empathy left for the rest of society upon your return?

It's important to remember that living alone for any significant period of time is not natural for human beings. It's not something that brings you closer to yourself, it is a stress on your mind that distorts your real, social self into something else.

Some people will be able to stay healthy after such an experience, some will not - just like any other stressor on our bodies. But losing empathy is a mental illness in itself, not some rediscovery of a bond with nature.

[MisterTea]

> Ellul will push you off the cliff of society and do something that today is unthinkable: to question technology and technological progress itself.

I don't think this is as radical of an idea as you think as I think about this quite often. Basically the grim realizations of the harm I bring upon the earth in pursuit of my career, hobbies, and other lifestyle choices. It honestly bothers me regularly enough to make me question myself and my identity.

As for trying to understand TK - Did at any point you acknowledge - "I neither have his unique psyche and the lifetime of unique input that shaped it?" You didn't turn to criminality because you aren't TK. No amount of cosplaying will make you think like TK.

[ZeroGravitas]

I think the detail that he was financially supported by his family while "escaping society" is relevant.

Don't want to be that meme guy who criticizes the person complaining about modern society via an iPhone, but it feel a touch hypocritical to be a genius planning to actively destroy modern society while living on handouts from that society while cosplaying at being an independent self-made man.

[always2slow]

How did you do all that research into TK and not realize his mind was broken by MKUltra? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski#Psychological_st...

[armitron]

His manifesto is anything but the product of a broken mind. Go ahead and read it, maybe you'll reconsider the MKUltra superficialities that in all likelihood had no connection whatsoever to TK's philosophy and later actions.

[sizzle]

This is incredible, do you have a blog documenting this journey? You must be one of the few people on earth, if not only person, to have done this.

What are you up to nowadays after this profound experience? Ever tried psilocybin?

[xorbax]

> This is incredible, do you have a blog documenting

This feels like a joke. Even more than "I lived in the woods for years so I could figure out a mailbomber"

TK was mentally ill. Cutting himself off from society was a symptom, not the cause. Being a mimic doesn't give insight into the original aside from the act.

[DyslexicAtheist]

thanks. I try not to spend too much time online anymore and no longer have a blog.

As TK complained himself (paraphrasing) "you can not learn from academic papers or books about how to thrive in the wilderness. it's something you need to pick up out there.", and I too think it is pointless to put this in a blog.

Never tried psilocybin but once ate some shit mushrooms by accident that gave me the runs and resulted in some pretty bad dehydration. No fun when you need to go every 15 minutes and it's 3 AM and all you have for a toilet is a shovel to dig a ditch and leaves from a tree to wipe :D

never tied psilocybin and generally don't experiment with drugs when in nature. always wanted to try it though. but I'm too old for such things now

[natmaka]

Too much or too few of anything isn't (by definition) adequate.

By craving for material comfort we want: to possess more => better yield => economies of scale.

This leads us to live in conditions which aren't appropriate to our current 'nature': large urban areas (where we often interact with people we don't know: this is stress-inducing esp. for males), specialization (we aren't ants), centralization and bureaucracy (we aren't cogs)...

Pertinent views: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kohr#The_Breakdown_of_...

[tymekpavel]

I’m sure you didn’t mean it, but in the English language “Pollak” and its variations are derogatory terms for people of Polish descent. The preferred term is “Pole.”

[xorvoid]

I also came here to say this. Thank you! It’s a slur and not everyone seems to realize that…

[eptcyka]

Because it isn't a slur in all English speaking cultures.

[ETH_start]

I suspect the isolation misleads the subject. The subject loses their modes of interaction with civilization, that make civilization so far superior to the low-population density existence of prehistoric hunter gatherers.

Without those modes, the subject returns to civilization seeing only what civilization deprives one of: the great expanses of unspoiled wilderness.

And that produces the existential crisis and criminal insanity of TK.

[JackFr]

> And he opens your eyes about edge cases and the victims of this thinking in ways even heavyweights like Nassim Taleb will seem like a rookies in comparison.

Nassim Taleb is not a heavyweight by any stretch.

[inglor_cz]

Well, he lifts a lot ...

[fsckboy]

> It still has potential to be misunderstood ofc

> It can't just be the struggle of a Pollak getting people to pronounce his name correctly

I just happened to research this recently, rabbit hole a propos nothing: (1) in English, "Polack" is an ethnic slur for a Polish person; (2) in a handful of unrelated European languages, Polak is just the word for a Pole; just so y'all know.

[inglor_cz]

It is interesting that the native word (because in the Polish language, "Polak" is a neutral standard word for a male Pole; a female would be Polka, just like the dance) mutated to a slur an ocean away.

[Thorrez]

>TK was an accelerationist who believed the means justifies the end.

Is this a typo? Do you mean instead that the ends justify the means?

[gverrilla]

what a stupid endeavor.

[bondarchuk]

If you don't mind, what would you say is the most worthwile of Ellul's books after The Technological Society and Propaganda?

[roeles]

Anyone interested in this material might also enjoy the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.

[perfmode]

thank you

[getmeinrn]

I don't know much about the Unabomber's victims. Where can I read about your friend's dad?

[searealist]

There are only 3 victims to narrow down.

edit: Only one of 3 victims was killed in his home:

> In 1994, Burson-Marsteller executive Thomas J. Mosser was killed after opening a mail bomb sent to his home in New Jersey. In a letter to The New York Times, Kaczynski wrote he had sent the bomb because of Mosser's work repairing the public image of Exxon after the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

[dpflan]

This Netflix documentary on the Unabomber was pretty interesting; there are other sources I'm sure, but this seemed good. His participation in a multi-year Harvard psychology study was a fascinating facet to the story and his development.

Unabomber: In His Own Words

https://www.netflix.com/title/81002216

[FooBarBizBazz]

> His participation in a multi-year Harvard psychology study was a fascinating facet to the story and his development.

There's an angle where this whole tragedy is just blowback from MK ULTRA.

[frankfrankfrank]

There’s an interesting book called Poisoner in Chief. I’m just not sure if it’s not an attempt to control/smoke and mirror the narrative.

[HL33tibCe7]

Wikipedia?

[joemazerino]

Chilling to read your post. I hope they have recovered, forgiven and moved on.