Topic: Ted Kaczynski - The Unabomber | Was he right? (Read 272 times)

It might be hard for people here to admit he was right given the emotional investment in things Kaczynski would deem worthless... cryptocurrencies, programming, sitting at a computer writing about possibly irrelevant, artificial things. I think many people understand at some level what he was concerned about, it's just we're enthralled by the artificial and novel things.

No. Indeed he was concern with technological development because he foresaw times when an elite would create mass unemployment by means of mechanization. This elite could then control everyone in society. Read his manifesto. More or less what is happening now and is going to happen even more with the massive utilization of robots.

kazinsky wasnt about the rich and their power

it was about human live the theoretisism crazyness its why he lived lonley in the wilderness, in a hut out of wood made by himselves.

despite being a mathematician

regards

Yeah. I can't think of any time when such extreme methods worked in any "positive" way. People will most likely turn away from the person doing it. Even IF he made very good points.

But this goes a bit further than lacking EQ. However I think we're more in agreement than not. You could expand the definition of "crazy" to include him, and I could shrink it to exclude him.

Would be much more interesting to hear his thoughts these days, as the surveillance and cryptography has spread and are battling it out. He's made a lot of good points, although, obviously, his methods were disgusting and useless...

I don't think he was crazy, its typical to see these highly motivated intelligent people to lack EQ.. they lose sight of why we form a society, and become very asymmetrical and polarised to other peoples emotional needs, this is often expressed in the way they might express themselves.

Totally Agree with you on that man! But we should harness these theoretical thinkers; Id like to see Ted give debates today over the internet on the effects the technological age has brought to the downfall of man.. Its shame people with such passion and constructive argument will never be heard again.

kaczynski was high end educated mathematitian, that started to doubt highly his way of live and that of many other people around him

his main point of view was that humans are supposed to interact with this world not constantly thinking and theoretisising about it.

thats indeed correct to a certain extent of course. he tried to send a beacon to point is point of view out, by doing those mail bombs.

but it doesnt justify his deeds.

regards

I have read it.

The manifesto is indeed interesting and has certain "good ideas," then it descends abruptly into madness.

Which is exactly what one would expect, given the writer's mental state.


There are any number of places you can go test the hypothesis that you'd rather live that way. Go try it for three days and report back on how you like it.


These facts do not matter. There are any number of people with IQ of >167 whom one would not read because they were boring or wrong, many reasons. In this case the guy was crazy.

 The problem with Kaczynski wasnt his ideas but the way he used to implement them. His fears about a technological and rich elite dominating the rest are more real than ever. His ideas have been quoted (with some natural distance about his methods) by many respected thinkers.

I'm not sure the 'we' part if he means in the literal sense of 'we' the people, society or if he used the phrase 'we' as a way to throw the FBI who was hot on his trail once they published the manifesto off the scent.

The FBI stated during his arrest he was a lone wolf conducting these bombings.  

He was a smart guy at trying to cover his tracks, he would buy shoes one or two sizes smaller than his own shoe size and fix the soles of these shoes on the bottom of his own. Finding samples of hair and putting them in the bomb to throw the FBI off the scent.

It also took ten years for the FBI to 'crack' his codebook which he documented certain events which helped convict him. But the truth is he left another book lying around in his cabin which was the cypher key. So it wasn't really 'cracked'.

My own opinion is that people like him are important to the argument of how we should temper technology; yes he should see out his sentence in prison, for the crimes he committed but I think he should also be allowed to write papers from prison, form his arguments and have those arguments heard, studied and reviewed. I bet his social critique would be much more eloquent. I personally would love to hear his opinion of 2018, he published his manifesto in 1995. The world has dramatically changed since then. Let him be heard! I think he was a modern day Guy Fawkes, its just his method wasn't an inappropriate way to get the publics attention.

Quick fact!
Ted Kaczynski had an I.Q. of 167, Kaczynski was a certified genius. He was born in Illinois in 1942, graduated high school and entered Harvard at age 15, completed his PhD in Mathematics at 25, and became the youngest professor to be hired by the University of California, Berkeley that same year.

It has been written by a group I guess so. That "we" is the hint, he are correct with what are happening by now imagine it's a 1995 article.

I've read up to paragraph 50 so far, and I agree with a lot of what he/they write.

Who is the "we" that the text refers to. Did he write this himself or with other people. This is some very interesting material.

That's the saddening truth even though in conscious sense no one really can own the land we have on earth there is no human capable of making a land or soil.


It's for the whole world to act about the population growth problem but with no real coordination on almost all countries I don't think it is achievable. I know it may start domestically but I think unity is the key.

I would rather live in hunter gatherer times, but unfortunately I'm forced to live with all this technology which stresses me out a lot and makes my life really hectic.  There is no where I can go to live off the land because every piece of earth is supposedly owned by someone.

Of course he was right.  Technology is a two edge sword.  On one hand, it helps save and prolong lives, improves the quality of our lives and on the other, it provides for a more efficient way to extract natural resources, change the natural landscape, kill and eradicate other species of plant and animals faster than ever before in our human history. 

I agree with him on the symptoms of the problem.  I do not think technological progress is to blame though.  It is a means not the actual root cause.

The root cause of our issues is the human population growth.  If we had zero or negative population growth in all countries around the globe, we would not have these issues.  We could actually get a handle on recycling, reducing our impact on the natural environment.

Our human civilization will not survive if we continue on this path.  The efforts to consume less, renewable energy, recycling etc. will not work if the global population doubles every 60-70 years.

To solve this problem, we would need to change our natural instincts to reproduce, something that helped us to be where we are now.

Population growth is the inconvenient truth.

I would love to know the opinions of people who are interested in this very cutting edge field of blockchains and decentralisation. A lot of people who I often speak with believe that Ted Kaczynski was ahead of his time. And a lot of the ideas in his manifesto are becoming true...

Do you agree with Ted's Manifesto? and could there of been a better way today for him to have got the attention he needed for this important debate?

For anybody who's interested in his manifesto its available here.
http://editions-hache.com/essais/pdf/kaczynski2.pdf