[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.