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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 othe

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.

alphanullmeric 3y ago
[flagged]
getmeinrn 3y ago
I don't know much about the Unabomber's victims. Where can I read about your friend's dad?
- searealist 3y ago
  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.
  - 4gotunameagain 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - californiadreem 3y ago
      They did PR for Union Carbide following Bhopal, so not hypothetical: "Considered the world's worst industrial disaster, over 500,000 people in the small towns around the plant were exposed to the highly toxic gas methyl isocyanate (MIC). Estimates vary on the death toll, with the official number of immediate deaths being 2,259. In 2008, the Government of Madhya Pradesh paid compensation to the family members of 3,787 victims killed in the gas release, and to 574,366 injured victims. A government affidavit in 2006 stated that the leak caused 558,125 injuries, including 38,478 temporary partial injuries and approximately 3,900 severely and permanently disabling injuries. Others estimate that 8,000 died within two weeks, and another 8,000 or more have since died from gas-related diseases."
    - searealist 3y ago
      [flagged]
    - williamcotton 3y ago
      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?
      - salawat 3y ago
        There is a consolidation of culpability in the industrial of corporate actor because it is they and they alone who make the decisions they do. People will buy whatever is made. "The customers made me do it" has always been a misdirection, and arguably a straight up fallacy. Executives lay the road for what gets made. Not once has the public said "Hey, poison our air/water/lungs".
      - Dylan16807 3y ago
        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.)
        williamcotton 3y ago
        The logic is really simple: someone can come up with almost any reason to justify murder if they believe themselves solely capable of such judgment. 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?
        Dylan16807 3y ago
        > The logic is really simple: someone can come up with almost any reason to justify murder if they believe themselves solely capable of such judgment. I think if you do a survey you'll find lots of people agreeing that major oil executives and PR should be judged harshly. Not murder, but definitely being judged as bad in a way that everyday people pass. I don't think your argument works at all. Harshly judging some people is not even close to harshly judging almost everyone. The former does not beget the latter. > If someone recognizes the failings of every human then they are less prone to pass judgment. Less, sure, but these are pretty egregious cases. > 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? You definitely don't have to think you're free of sin to target sinners.
    - paulryanrogers 3y ago
      Vigilantism isn't justice. There was no trial or finding of guilt or responsibility before the 'accused' were attacked. While I'd like executives to be more personally liable, the answer to stopping the corruption is judicial, legislative, and/or executive reform.
- dpflan 3y ago
  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 https://www.netflix.com/title/81002216
  - FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
    > 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 3y ago
      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.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- HL33tibCe7 3y ago
  Wikipedia?
basisword 3y ago
Thanks for posting. Far too much support and excusing of a deranged murderer in these comments.
- tonetheman 3y ago
  [dead]
- spurgu 3y ago
  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.
  - dendriti 3y ago
    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.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - bbor 3y ago
    >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…
    - spurgu 3y ago
      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).
californiadreem 3y ago
[flagged]
- HL33tibCe7 3y ago
  And that makes it acceptable to execute a random executive from the firm?
  - williamcotton 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - medellin 3y ago
      Yes… its the bible quote not justifying the execution of a person. It’s beyond amazing to me how dense some people are.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - williamcotton 3y ago
        See my other comment in this thread as you’ve misinterpreted what I’ve said. I’m still trying to figure out how, but perhaps I’ve internalized Christian ethics to a point where my stance seems obvious to me but not to you!
    - onethought 3y ago
      They could be for the pro extra-judicial killing position you are presenting. There is sorrow in the world in almost every walk/product/political position. If you can’t recognise your culpability, then we are all doomed to be righteously murdered according to you. No one can sanely support that position. It’s irrational and borderline crazy.
      - williamcotton 3y ago
DyslexicAtheist 3y ago
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/TheBetrayalByTechnologyAPortraitOfJacquesEllul1992 https://archive.org/details/TheBetrayalByTechnologyAPortrait... [2] https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Ellul%2C+Jacques%22 https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Ellul%2C+Jacqu... [3] https://www.npr.org/2019/08/01/747368557/the-story-behind-john-allen-chau-an-american-missionary-who-was-killed-while-wor 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
tptacek 3y ago
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.
- fsckboy 3y ago
  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?
  - ars 3y ago
    > 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 3y ago
      > 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.
joemazerino 3y ago
Chilling to read your post. I hope they have recovered, forgiven and moved on.
JshWright 3y ago
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.
- rlt 3y ago
  “My good friend’s dad was brutally murdered” “My delivery was delayed” Maybe not the place for it.
  - xorbax 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      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 3y ago
    Not great reading comprehension, friend - they’re not complaining, but reminiscing.
  - 31337Logic 3y ago
    He said the connection was super trivial. I think you're mistaken - I think it's precisely the right place for such a comment.
    - 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
asveikau 3y ago
> 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.
- dudeinjapan 3y ago
  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-of-fools https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-ship-o...
  - goldenkey 3y ago
    That was a better analogy to reality than the drivel I've read in the last 30 years.
  - LouisSayers 3y ago
    I never read anything he wrote and just started reading his manifesto https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm 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.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - 3y ago

alphanullmeric 3y ago

[flagged]

getmeinrn 3y ago

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

searealist 3y ago
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.
- 4gotunameagain 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - californiadreem 3y ago
    They did PR for Union Carbide following Bhopal, so not hypothetical: "Considered the world's worst industrial disaster, over 500,000 people in the small towns around the plant were exposed to the highly toxic gas methyl isocyanate (MIC). Estimates vary on the death toll, with the official number of immediate deaths being 2,259. In 2008, the Government of Madhya Pradesh paid compensation to the family members of 3,787 victims killed in the gas release, and to 574,366 injured victims. A government affidavit in 2006 stated that the leak caused 558,125 injuries, including 38,478 temporary partial injuries and approximately 3,900 severely and permanently disabling injuries. Others estimate that 8,000 died within two weeks, and another 8,000 or more have since died from gas-related diseases."
  - searealist 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - williamcotton 3y ago
    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?
    - salawat 3y ago
      There is a consolidation of culpability in the industrial of corporate actor because it is they and they alone who make the decisions they do. People will buy whatever is made. "The customers made me do it" has always been a misdirection, and arguably a straight up fallacy. Executives lay the road for what gets made. Not once has the public said "Hey, poison our air/water/lungs".
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      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.)
      - williamcotton 3y ago
        The logic is really simple: someone can come up with almost any reason to justify murder if they believe themselves solely capable of such judgment. 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?
        Dylan16807 3y ago
        > The logic is really simple: someone can come up with almost any reason to justify murder if they believe themselves solely capable of such judgment. I think if you do a survey you'll find lots of people agreeing that major oil executives and PR should be judged harshly. Not murder, but definitely being judged as bad in a way that everyday people pass. I don't think your argument works at all. Harshly judging some people is not even close to harshly judging almost everyone. The former does not beget the latter. > If someone recognizes the failings of every human then they are less prone to pass judgment. Less, sure, but these are pretty egregious cases. > 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? You definitely don't have to think you're free of sin to target sinners.
  - paulryanrogers 3y ago
    Vigilantism isn't justice. There was no trial or finding of guilt or responsibility before the 'accused' were attacked. While I'd like executives to be more personally liable, the answer to stopping the corruption is judicial, legislative, and/or executive reform.
dpflan 3y ago
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 https://www.netflix.com/title/81002216
- FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
  > 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 3y ago
    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.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
HL33tibCe7 3y ago
Wikipedia?

basisword 3y ago

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

tonetheman 3y ago
[dead]
spurgu 3y ago
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.
- dendriti 3y ago
  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.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- bbor 3y ago
  >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…
  - spurgu 3y ago
    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).

californiadreem 3y ago

[flagged]

HL33tibCe7 3y ago
And that makes it acceptable to execute a random executive from the firm?
- williamcotton 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - medellin 3y ago
    Yes… its the bible quote not justifying the execution of a person. It’s beyond amazing to me how dense some people are.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - williamcotton 3y ago
      See my other comment in this thread as you’ve misinterpreted what I’ve said. I’m still trying to figure out how, but perhaps I’ve internalized Christian ethics to a point where my stance seems obvious to me but not to you!
  - onethought 3y ago
    They could be for the pro extra-judicial killing position you are presenting. There is sorrow in the world in almost every walk/product/political position. If you can’t recognise your culpability, then we are all doomed to be righteously murdered according to you. No one can sanely support that position. It’s irrational and borderline crazy.
    - williamcotton 3y ago

DyslexicAtheist 3y ago

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/TheBetrayalByTechnologyAPortraitOfJacquesEllul1992 https://archive.org/details/TheBetrayalByTechnologyAPortrait... [2] https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Ellul%2C+Jacques%22 https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Ellul%2C+Jacqu... [3] https://www.npr.org/2019/08/01/747368557/the-story-behind-john-allen-chau-an-american-missionary-who-was-killed-while-wor 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

tptacek 3y ago

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.

fsckboy 3y ago
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?
- ars 3y ago
  > 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 3y ago
    > 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.

joemazerino 3y ago

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

JshWright 3y ago

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.

rlt 3y ago
“My good friend’s dad was brutally murdered” “My delivery was delayed” Maybe not the place for it.
- xorbax 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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 3y ago
  Not great reading comprehension, friend - they’re not complaining, but reminiscing.
- 31337Logic 3y ago
  He said the connection was super trivial. I think you're mistaken - I think it's precisely the right place for such a comment.
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asveikau 3y ago

> 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.

dudeinjapan 3y ago
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-of-fools https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-ship-o...
- goldenkey 3y ago
  That was a better analogy to reality than the drivel I've read in the last 30 years.
- LouisSayers 3y ago
  I never read anything he wrote and just started reading his manifesto https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm 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.
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