5 ms·

Kaczynski was a loser. He couldn't manage to turn a Harvard degree into a productive role in society so he waged a cowardly war on people who did nothing to ha

Kaczynski was a loser. He couldn't manage to turn a Harvard degree into a productive role in society so he waged a cowardly war on people who did nothing to harm him. The detailed list of specific injuries to victims here is sad... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski

ok123456 3y ago
He did less damage than a Harvard grad who went on to run a hedge fund, or went on to work in private equity, or work for McKinsey, or become a lobbyist. Where's the detailed list of victims of globalization and finance?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- infamouscow 3y ago
  Or invading another country and killing somewhere on the order of 100K-1M innocent civilians. If we're going to make a rank order list of genocidal maniacs, Ted Kaczynski isn't anywhere near the top.
- wellthisisgreat 3y ago
  that's some rich whataboutism
  - ok123456 3y ago
    It's not "whataboutism." It's proportionality and universality.
  - infamouscow 3y ago
    Whataboutism is slang for not having a coherent argument.
  - anm89 3y ago
    You can always tell weak thinkers when they need to throw out pre-labeled idea placeholders instead of making their point
  - petsfed 3y ago
    In the context of "having a harvard degree implies a certain amount of skill and capability of to improve the world", I think its fair to honestly look at who he's being held up to in comparison. There a lot people in the world who, if you asked them who was the most dangerous person to graduate from Harvard, they'd pick George W. Bush over some guy who killed 3 and injured not quite 2 dozen. Getting into or graduating from Harvard as an undergrad doesn't mean much. Granted, Kaczynski didn't buy his way in, but the comment as written doesn't differentiate between some rich kid buying their way in and some genius earning their way in.
    - ok123456 3y ago
      The introduction of the SAT kept Jeb from going there.
    - wellthisisgreat 3y ago
      I am not defending Bush (a Yale grad, but that's beside the point) and the like. Unabomber was a psychopath who purposefully murdered people. "he did less damage" - "then a lobbyist or McKinsey" is a wild statement. He was a purposeful murderer. Trying to lump McKinsey consultants and politicians (horrible people, most of them, I am sure) with a serial killer is normalizing murder. Murder is a line that, I imagine, is drawn in concrete for any person who expects to be welcome in the modern society. I will take my chances in being the subject to damage done by any randomly picked lobbyist vs Unabomber. Won't you? What is going on with HN if this is the kind of discourse that's getting upvoted and approved.
      - ok123456 3y ago
        Which is worse for the world: an lone sociopath who does a short spree of destructive acts, or a ruling class of organized psychopaths with all the levers of power with the ability to use the national security state to kill anything that gets in their way? I think half a million dead Iraqis would say the latter.
        wellthisisgreat 3y ago
- throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
  Kill ten people and you're a serial killer. Kill ten million and you're a politician.
  - rc5150 3y ago
    Kill em all... YOU'RE A GOD! (Megadeth - Captive Honour, by way of Jean Rostand)
- soupfordummies 3y ago
  For the sake of argument, 100% agreed. However, that's still irrelevant and does nothing to alleviate the fact that he killed many innocent people. Two wrongs don't make a right, as they say.
  - anm89 3y ago
    Who says that? Parent's talking to toddlers? Surely no one making decisions of consequence in our world. They certainly prefer tit for tat.
    - dang 3y ago
      Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
    - soupfordummies 3y ago
      I personally say that to myself as I make decisions in our world. My path-of-least-resistance monkey brain certainly prefers tit-for-tat also, but I don't think that's a good way to be. I fail at this often though of course
SilasX 3y ago
What? Didn’t he get an associate professorship, and at a pretty young age? That’s not productive? Not to mention the doctoral dissertation itself.
- richbell 3y ago
  Everything that I've read about him indicates he was a rising star that willingly chose to withdraw from society, possibly due to mental illness. Far from the "vengeful deadbeat" that GP is claiming he was.
  - kneebonian 3y ago
    Partially that mental illness was the result of the CIA involving him in the MkUltra experiments as a subject.
  - waboremo 3y ago
    The best account I remember of him was someone drawing a lot of parallels between the general gifted/high functioning autistic person and his life. There is just so many similarities that it's difficult to process it another way. Right down to the really intense desire to uphold what their idea of justice was. Note this isn't a diagnosis or an excuse (people often confuse explanations for excuses a lot), but it was a very interesting comparison that illuminated a lot of things. It provides a lot of potentials as to why for the steps in his life, opposed to the narratives which tend to be "prodigy turned evil" or "vengeful deadbeat" that are common in public narratives. I get why people like those narratives though, it's far less to process when we can paint someone in absolute ways.
Eumenes 3y ago
There are many ivy league legacy graduates doing absolutely nothing with their pampered lives.
tptacek 3y ago
Yes. Repetitive, I know, but the standard reminder applies: we are talking about a man who deliberately attempted to down a commercial jetliner, and almost succeeded. There's no rationalizing to do here. People cheerleading Kaczynski tend not to know this, and I think that's because for the most part they're not really engaged with the story; rather, it's just much more interesting, for Internet conversation purposes, if there are buried intellectual gems to unearth from Kaczynski's project. Because of the powerful bias towards "fun to talk about", there will always be people around to say "Mail bombs are mostly always bad, but what about Iraq, maybe he was right about some things."
Convolutional 3y ago
[flagged]
- kemotep 3y ago
  Ukraine getting support in defending their territorial integrity from Russian separatists seems really out of place in your list.
  - pcwalton 3y ago
    The inclusion of Ukraine's territorial defense does a good job of showing that what really animates these types of discussions is anti-Americanism, not any sort of principled opposition to violence.
- norir 3y ago
  One important difference between Kaczynski and political leaders is that Kaczynski acted on his own autonomy. Political and military leaders require others to carry out their violence which defuses the moral stain by making so many others complicit (including the voters in democracies). Even an autocratic leader like Putin relies on his citizenry to carry out his will in such a way that it is difficult to even make sense of how the will of Putin differs from the will of the Russian nation.
  - petsfed 3y ago
    I think the indirection is important in that it obscures who is ultimately responsible, but I don't think it actually diminishes the responsibility. It's less that the stain is spread out, so much as the darkest part of it doesn't look as bad in contrast to those around it. That is, if I hold a gun to your head and tell you to kill your family or else I'll kill you, you are not absolved of guilt if you do so, but you're also not the most evil person in the room. Put another way, its worth asking (in this strawman I've constructed) "would you have killed your family if I hadn't made you?". The brilliance of strongmen is that they engineer this culture where everyone around them depends on the strongman for protection from worse evils. I've read repeatedly that in Russia, everybody knows that the propaganda issued by the Putin regime is just that, but they are also convinced that every bit of news they hear from the outside world is also propaganda, so its a question of the devil you know vs. the devil you don't. Basically, "if you think Russian oligarchs are bad, let me tell you about American oligarchs..."
chriscappuccio 3y ago
Agreed, Kaczynski was a loser. Why anyone sees fit to try and promulgate his ideas is far beyond my reasoning. Not as violent as war? Seriously? That's the best you can do?
the_lonely_road 3y ago
He was a sympathetic villain. Hollywood writers would struggle to develop one as good. Like all sympathetic villains you are supposed to read the first half of his story (what happened to him) and come away feeling bad for him and understanding his desire for revenge. You are then supposed to look at what he did to achieve that vengeance and hate him. It’s a step over the line from an anti-hero. Had he targeted CIA offices and politicians that supported them we would consider him an anti hero more like the punisher, Gerald Butler in Law Abiding Citizen, or John Wick. Instead he chose to kill random people that had nothing to do with his tragic origin story so he is just a sympathetic villain that needed to be put down. Of course there is a segment of society that would put down anti heroes as well as sympathetic villains so your position on the topic it really more a judgement statement about your moral stance than an objective statement.
aio2 3y ago
I know this is off-topic, but wow, he died not too long ago (June 10)
hindsightbias 3y ago
I’d forgotten about the airliner. I wonder how Ted’s Cultural Revolution would have worked out. Imagine how HN would feel if he’d gone after Ritchie, Kernigan or Linus.

ok123456 3y ago

He did less damage than a Harvard grad who went on to run a hedge fund, or went on to work in private equity, or work for McKinsey, or become a lobbyist. Where's the detailed list of victims of globalization and finance?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
infamouscow 3y ago
Or invading another country and killing somewhere on the order of 100K-1M innocent civilians. If we're going to make a rank order list of genocidal maniacs, Ted Kaczynski isn't anywhere near the top.
wellthisisgreat 3y ago
that's some rich whataboutism
- ok123456 3y ago
  It's not "whataboutism." It's proportionality and universality.
- infamouscow 3y ago
  Whataboutism is slang for not having a coherent argument.
- anm89 3y ago
  You can always tell weak thinkers when they need to throw out pre-labeled idea placeholders instead of making their point
- petsfed 3y ago
  In the context of "having a harvard degree implies a certain amount of skill and capability of to improve the world", I think its fair to honestly look at who he's being held up to in comparison. There a lot people in the world who, if you asked them who was the most dangerous person to graduate from Harvard, they'd pick George W. Bush over some guy who killed 3 and injured not quite 2 dozen. Getting into or graduating from Harvard as an undergrad doesn't mean much. Granted, Kaczynski didn't buy his way in, but the comment as written doesn't differentiate between some rich kid buying their way in and some genius earning their way in.
  - ok123456 3y ago
    The introduction of the SAT kept Jeb from going there.
  - wellthisisgreat 3y ago
    I am not defending Bush (a Yale grad, but that's beside the point) and the like. Unabomber was a psychopath who purposefully murdered people. "he did less damage" - "then a lobbyist or McKinsey" is a wild statement. He was a purposeful murderer. Trying to lump McKinsey consultants and politicians (horrible people, most of them, I am sure) with a serial killer is normalizing murder. Murder is a line that, I imagine, is drawn in concrete for any person who expects to be welcome in the modern society. I will take my chances in being the subject to damage done by any randomly picked lobbyist vs Unabomber. Won't you? What is going on with HN if this is the kind of discourse that's getting upvoted and approved.
    - ok123456 3y ago
      Which is worse for the world: an lone sociopath who does a short spree of destructive acts, or a ruling class of organized psychopaths with all the levers of power with the ability to use the national security state to kill anything that gets in their way? I think half a million dead Iraqis would say the latter.
      - wellthisisgreat 3y ago
throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
Kill ten people and you're a serial killer. Kill ten million and you're a politician.
- rc5150 3y ago
  Kill em all... YOU'RE A GOD! (Megadeth - Captive Honour, by way of Jean Rostand)
soupfordummies 3y ago
For the sake of argument, 100% agreed. However, that's still irrelevant and does nothing to alleviate the fact that he killed many innocent people. Two wrongs don't make a right, as they say.
- anm89 3y ago
  Who says that? Parent's talking to toddlers? Surely no one making decisions of consequence in our world. They certainly prefer tit for tat.
  - dang 3y ago
    Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
  - soupfordummies 3y ago
    I personally say that to myself as I make decisions in our world. My path-of-least-resistance monkey brain certainly prefers tit-for-tat also, but I don't think that's a good way to be. I fail at this often though of course

SilasX 3y ago

What? Didn’t he get an associate professorship, and at a pretty young age? That’s not productive? Not to mention the doctoral dissertation itself.

richbell 3y ago
Everything that I've read about him indicates he was a rising star that willingly chose to withdraw from society, possibly due to mental illness. Far from the "vengeful deadbeat" that GP is claiming he was.
- kneebonian 3y ago
  Partially that mental illness was the result of the CIA involving him in the MkUltra experiments as a subject.
- waboremo 3y ago
  The best account I remember of him was someone drawing a lot of parallels between the general gifted/high functioning autistic person and his life. There is just so many similarities that it's difficult to process it another way. Right down to the really intense desire to uphold what their idea of justice was. Note this isn't a diagnosis or an excuse (people often confuse explanations for excuses a lot), but it was a very interesting comparison that illuminated a lot of things. It provides a lot of potentials as to why for the steps in his life, opposed to the narratives which tend to be "prodigy turned evil" or "vengeful deadbeat" that are common in public narratives. I get why people like those narratives though, it's far less to process when we can paint someone in absolute ways.

Eumenes 3y ago

There are many ivy league legacy graduates doing absolutely nothing with their pampered lives.

tptacek 3y ago

Yes. Repetitive, I know, but the standard reminder applies: we are talking about a man who deliberately attempted to down a commercial jetliner, and almost succeeded. There's no rationalizing to do here. People cheerleading Kaczynski tend not to know this, and I think that's because for the most part they're not really engaged with the story; rather, it's just much more interesting, for Internet conversation purposes, if there are buried intellectual gems to unearth from Kaczynski's project. Because of the powerful bias towards "fun to talk about", there will always be people around to say "Mail bombs are mostly always bad, but what about Iraq, maybe he was right about some things."

Convolutional 3y ago

[flagged]

kemotep 3y ago
Ukraine getting support in defending their territorial integrity from Russian separatists seems really out of place in your list.
- pcwalton 3y ago
  The inclusion of Ukraine's territorial defense does a good job of showing that what really animates these types of discussions is anti-Americanism, not any sort of principled opposition to violence.
norir 3y ago
One important difference between Kaczynski and political leaders is that Kaczynski acted on his own autonomy. Political and military leaders require others to carry out their violence which defuses the moral stain by making so many others complicit (including the voters in democracies). Even an autocratic leader like Putin relies on his citizenry to carry out his will in such a way that it is difficult to even make sense of how the will of Putin differs from the will of the Russian nation.
- petsfed 3y ago
  I think the indirection is important in that it obscures who is ultimately responsible, but I don't think it actually diminishes the responsibility. It's less that the stain is spread out, so much as the darkest part of it doesn't look as bad in contrast to those around it. That is, if I hold a gun to your head and tell you to kill your family or else I'll kill you, you are not absolved of guilt if you do so, but you're also not the most evil person in the room. Put another way, its worth asking (in this strawman I've constructed) "would you have killed your family if I hadn't made you?". The brilliance of strongmen is that they engineer this culture where everyone around them depends on the strongman for protection from worse evils. I've read repeatedly that in Russia, everybody knows that the propaganda issued by the Putin regime is just that, but they are also convinced that every bit of news they hear from the outside world is also propaganda, so its a question of the devil you know vs. the devil you don't. Basically, "if you think Russian oligarchs are bad, let me tell you about American oligarchs..."

chriscappuccio 3y ago

Agreed, Kaczynski was a loser. Why anyone sees fit to try and promulgate his ideas is far beyond my reasoning. Not as violent as war? Seriously? That's the best you can do?

the_lonely_road 3y ago

He was a sympathetic villain. Hollywood writers would struggle to develop one as good. Like all sympathetic villains you are supposed to read the first half of his story (what happened to him) and come away feeling bad for him and understanding his desire for revenge. You are then supposed to look at what he did to achieve that vengeance and hate him. It’s a step over the line from an anti-hero. Had he targeted CIA offices and politicians that supported them we would consider him an anti hero more like the punisher, Gerald Butler in Law Abiding Citizen, or John Wick. Instead he chose to kill random people that had nothing to do with his tragic origin story so he is just a sympathetic villain that needed to be put down. Of course there is a segment of society that would put down anti heroes as well as sympathetic villains so your position on the topic it really more a judgement statement about your moral stance than an objective statement.

aio2 3y ago

I know this is off-topic, but wow, he died not too long ago (June 10)

hindsightbias 3y ago

I’d forgotten about the airliner. I wonder how Ted’s Cultural Revolution would have worked out. Imagine how HN would feel if he’d gone after Ritchie, Kernigan or Linus.