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Letter from Unabomber to Dr. David Gelernter (1995)
- aluhut 9y agoThere is an interesting documentary about Kaczynski and the philosophy behind him by Lutz Dammbeck called "The Net": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLqrVCi3l6E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLqrVCi3l6E Featuring a pretty pissed David among others.
- pmarreck 9y agoIt looks like the Unabomber's fears have come true... and surprise, we're still mostly OK!
- onion2k 9y agowe're still mostly OK There are a lot of people who are definitely not OK. Arguably the majority of people live in a state of at least uncertainty about their future, if not outright fear for their security and safety. This is true at both a local and a global scale.
- kps 9y agoWe're down to just a majority, from pretty much everybody for pretty much all of human existence. Good work, folks! Let's not stop now.
- pmarreck 9y ago> Arguably the majority of people live in a state of at least uncertainty about their future, if not outright fear for their security and safety. This is true at both a local and a global scale. I think that this has always been the case? Do you have evidence that this has grown significantly (and not in a way that has simply been fueled by eyeball-grabbing FUD from news organizations?)
- paulvs 9y agoIf the Unabomber had been smart enough he would have realized that these fears are actually contemplated by others and regarded as known risks.
- icebraining 9y agoWhy do you say he didn't realize? Maybe he just thought those others didn't give enough weight to those risks?
- pmarreck 9y agoIf his fears were rational (based on actual evidence) instead of irrational (based on mere belief), then perhaps he would have had a legitimate point to make... but as it stands, until there's evidence that he was correct, he was just a baseless violent offender
- icebraining 9y agoHe does cite some evidence for his fears. Of course, what he fears is based on speculation to where he sees technology taking us in the future, but that's also true of, for example, Musk's and Hawking's fears of AI, and of many other works, or works like Brave New World.
- pmarreck 9y agoThe difference is that Hawking and Musk are not bombing machine-learning companies based on this fear, sans actual evidence
- wu-ikkyu 9y ago>invasion of privacy (through computers)... environmental degradation through excessive economic growth (computers make an important contribution to economic growth) Is there not evidence of those things?
- 9y ago
- foxhop 9y agoIf you read his manifesto it goes much deeper into his thought process. There are also quite a few documentaries out there that give more insight into how he gets caught.
- mynameishere 9y agoIt's astonishing, the seriousness with which the media takes a terrorist's opinions, if that terrorist has the correct politics.
- throwanem 9y agoOf which mainstream American media organization am I to believe radical anarchoprimitivism is the secret agenda?
- eli_gottlieb 9y agoWell, most mainstream media organizations actually do have a deeply reactionary attitude towards technology and a deeply naively optimistic view towards Nature, in fact routinely committing the naturalistic fallacy... so... almost all of them, on some level?
- abiox 9y agoseems almost comically reductive just to get to the 'all of them' zinger.
- eli_gottlieb 9y agoIt's not a zinger. Almost all major media organizations are techno-reactionary and bio-conservative. They regularly run stories trying to convince people that, for instance, selectively-bred food crops are a Really Bad Idea.
- abiox 9y ago> techno-reactionary yet they have pervasive technology use including new and emerging technologies, so this is reductive. > selectively-bred food crops humans have been doing this for ages, from bananas to cows... are they telling people to not eat bananas? this too seems reductive.
- timwaagh 9y agoi flagged this because its essentially terrorist propaganda because of what the guy did. i dont know what the guidelines are regarding such things but i don't think this belongs in a civil place like this.
- aluhut 9y agoSo his ideas could radicalize us here? Is this what you think? Like ISIS propaganda? He did math too. Do you want to ban math here also?
- timwaagh 9y agoterrorism is sort of like speading your ideas by inflicting violence to make headlines. i would not want such tactics to be rewarded in any way. i believe in arguing for your ideas without the use of violence to 'market' them. I would not like to endorse a math publication written by a terrorist. but in addition, this document explicitly references the violence he inflicted on his victim.
- aluhut 9y agoMany people back then read his manifesto. However even then there was no wave of terror based on his core writings and the most radical ones are still popular on conspiracy boards. Still nobody is getting radicalized by it. This is not a conspiracy board here. People here would me the enemies of this guy and we all see that he was wrong now. So what are you afraid of?
- throwanem 9y agoThis is the second time in recent days that Kaczynski's writings have been the subject of HN discussion. Rather than rehearse what I had to say then, I'll just link it: https://aaron-m.com/2017/07/09/on-kaczynski https://aaron-m.com/2017/07/09/on-kaczynski
- arnioxux 9y agoTaking "technology" to its logical end, you will probably arrive at AGI. And despite being decades off away from it, there are already many people making sure that it will be "safe" since the default otherwise will most likely lead to human extinction. https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revol... https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html EDIT: I am getting a lot of downvotes for this comment. And just to clear up intention, all I am trying to say here is that yes, technology could be deleterious but we can prevent it in ways other than concluding “and that’s why we have to start blowing shit up and killing people”. I don't see why that's offensive.
- throwanem 9y agoI think it's very optimistic to imagine that we're only decades away from inventing God! But I'm also glad there are people taking the time to consider how we might do so without too gravely regrettable a result.
- throwanem 9y agoSingularitarianism tends to polarize opinion here, I think, in ways that tend to find stronger expression via the voting buttons than the reply option. I wouldn't worry too hard about it.
- eli_gottlieb 9y agoI know I'm revoking it by commenting here, but I did give you a downvote. It wasn't that you said something ridiculous. It was that you started from Kacyznksi and segued into a topic that's only tangentially related.
- 9y ago
- arca_vorago 9y agoWhat most people don't know is that the US government experimented on him at the age of ~16 when he was a math undergrad at Harvard in project artichoke offshoot MK Ultra.
- JohnStrange 9y agoDo you have a reference for that?
- aaron-lebo 9y agoThis is what he's referring to: In his sophomore year at Harvard, Kaczynski participated in a personality assessment study that was conducted by Harvard psychologists and led by Henry Murray. Students in Murray's study were told they would be debating personal philosophy with a fellow student. Instead, they were subjected to "vehement, sweeping, and personally abusive" attacks in a "purposely brutalizing psychological experiment".[28] During the test, students were taken into a room and connected to electrodes that monitored their physiological reactions, while facing bright lights and a one-way mirror. Each student had previously written an essay detailing their personal beliefs and aspirations: the essays were turned over to an anonymous attorney, who would enter the room and individually belittle each student based in part on the disclosures they had made. This was filmed, and students' expressions of impotent rage were played back to them several times later in the study. According to author Alston Chase, Kaczynski's records from that period suggest he was emotionally stable when the study began, and Kaczynski's lawyers attributed his deep-seated hostility towards mind control techniques to his participation in this study.[28] Furthermore, some have suggested that this experience may have been instrumental in Kaczynski's future actions.[29][30] Dunno about all the mkultra stuff, but they psychologically abused the hell out of a 17 year-old kid.
- j_s 9y ago[29] RadioLab (June 28, 2010). "Oops". http://www.radiolab.org/story/91721-oops/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/91721-oops/ [30] Jump up ^ Cockburn, Alexander (October 18, 1999). "CIA Shrinks & LSD". CounterPunch. Retrieved August 7, 2015. https://www.counterpunch.org/1999/10/18/cia-shrinks-lsd/ https://www.counterpunch.org/1999/10/18/cia-shrinks-lsd/ source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski
- wolfgke 9y agoThe German director Lutz Dammbeck made an interesting documentary "Das Netz" (the net) about strange parallels in the development of the internet, the counterculture and the terrorist attacks of the Unabomber: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Netz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Netz
- paulie_a 9y agoI read his manifesto in middle school because it had just came out in the papers. Previously I thought it was incredibly repetitive to disguise the simplistic ideas. Reading this I change that opinion, he was an angry "loser" with delusions of his own intellect that overcompensates with a lot of words.
- celticninja 9y agoPerhaps you should look at how he became what he became, the CIA and the MKULTRA project were probably a huge factor in the creation of his persona. So calling him a loser is probably an unfair assessment.
- Jtsummers 9y agoCalling him a loser also means largely discarding anything he says without any consideration. The fact is, we've done that with large classes of people (in every country, in every time) who feel that the "current" (whatever it is at the time) system or progress is harming them. Eventually, they boil over to become either the majority or mobilized minority army and we have chaos in a country, region, or globally. This letter speaks rather directly to our contemporary issue of technology displacing non-degreed workers. Either by exporting the jobs (cheaper transport, better logistics), eliminating or reducing the number of people required (increased automation), or increasing the technical sophistication required (again, automation but also increasing presence of computer systems and more complex tooling). It's pretty obvious in the present discussions (and the most recent US presidential election) that people are feeling a great deal of fear and hardship because of our direction over the past 30-40 years (in particular). We have to confront these issues. Otherwise, a lack of consideration or deliberation (publicly) is a tacit endorsement of the current direction and its negative effects on large blocks of our fellow humans and citizens.
- oliveshell 9y agoIt really is a sad and fascinating story. For those who don't know and are curious: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/06/harvard-and-the-making-of-the-unabomber/378239/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/06/harvard...
- irln 9y agoMaybe I'm cynical but does a connection exist between sudden renewed interest in Kacynski and a discovery channel docudrama being released?
- someguydave 9y agoAdvertising? In my HN feed? Say it ain't so!
- kodt 9y agoOf course, seeing commercials brings him to front of mind. Is Discovery behind the posts? Could be, on reddit I would have no doubts.
- crb002 9y agoI would like to see Kaczynski and Manson appear by Snowdenbot for a roundtable. Both share dystopian views that inspired them to violent tragedy. I'm curious what their thoughts are on legislation to address regulation of genetic engineering etc.
- abiox 9y agosnowdenbot?
- eliwjones 9y agoDoesn't anyone remember that it's "UNABOMer"?
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Doesn't anyone remember that it's "UNABOMer"? No, the FBI investigation was named “UNABOM”, the popular media name assigned to the perpetrator before he was identified, inspired by that, was “Unabomber”. “UNABOMer” seems to be an attempt to preserve the sound of the latter while making it more consistent with the former, but is historically inaccurate.
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- abiox 9y agoi presumed this would be something at least... quasi-intellectual, but this is just a slimy letter from a terrorist harassing a (soon to be?) victim. kind of gross.
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