4 ms·

It's really too bad that Kaczynski was trying to publish his work back in the 1970s and 1980s. These days, he could have just published it on the internet, and

It's really too bad that Kaczynski was trying to publish his work back in the 1970s and 1980s. These days, he could have just published it on the internet, and that way plenty of people would have been able to read it.

keithpeter 14y ago
I can see where you are going; an email address, a dropbox account, post onto hostile forums with public links to the latest essay, resulting hullabaloo gives mentally ill but very clever person the feeling of involvement, being the centre of something, action. Perhaps saving some injury and lives. Perhaps the valuable arguments get separated from the odd and obsessive context and get taken up more widely, or at least not associated with destructive acts. The teacher in the article has certainly got his students interested, they meet before the session to work out the arguments to use. Excellent! The journalist Gitta Sereny writes about evil people to try to understand where the evil comes from, this struck me as similar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gitta_Sereny http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gitta_Sereny
J3L2404 14y ago
His last two bombs were in '94 and '95 and both were fatal. So he could have published on the net, but he chose violence. He chose wrong.
- keithpeter 14y ago
  Yes, but perhaps he did not see the 'net/Web as natural? Perhaps a new unabomber now would? Technology gets naturalised over time, as the teacher in the original article was saying about Plato and writing. A modern maths textbook is a pretty sophisticated piece of technology.
  - zbuc 14y ago
    Which is a very good reason that his argument doesn't make sense. Naturalism is silly, as is separating things as "human-created" or "man-made" versus "natural". It all comes out of the same matter of the universe. I really don't understand the allure this professor feels for his luddite ideals. > "It's always around the same theme of, This system is irreconcilable, it has to be ended," Skrbina says. "How can we make this clear? How can we convince people that technology is the root cause of the problem? It's not bad government. It's not the capitalists. It's not minorities. It's not illegal immigrants. He really wants to get away from blaming anything else or anybody else." Maybe he has difficulty convincing anyone of that because it's not a particularly compelling argument?
    - keithpeter 14y ago
      "Which is a very good reason that his argument doesn't make sense. Naturalism is silly, as is separating things as "human-created" or "man-made" versus "natural". It all comes out of the same matter of the universe." And it is part of the human story to use tools/manipulate their environment. However, when you abandon the idea of 'natural' you also loose the reassurance of some kind of limit to our particular random walk. The human journey could lead to our destruction, or to a life among the stars. We have to work on internal evidence and read the data we have effectively.
WiseWeasel 14y ago
Destroy your computers, after you like and retweet my blog post! It's the extremist version of the Alt-F4 prank.
canders 14y ago
Kaczynski addresses this possibility explicitly in his 1995 essay "Industrial Society and its Future": "Anyone who has a little money can have something printed, or can distribute it on the Internet or in some such way, but what he has to say will be swamped by the vast volume of material put out by the media, hence it will have no practical effect. To make an impression on society with words is therefore almost impossible for most individuals and small groups. Take us (FC) for example. ... Even [if] these writings had had many readers, most of these readers would soon have forgotten what they had read as their minds were flooded by the mass of material to which the media expose them. In order to get our message before the public with some chance of making a lasting impression, we’ve had to kill people." [1] [1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabo...

keithpeter 14y ago

I can see where you are going; an email address, a dropbox account, post onto hostile forums with public links to the latest essay, resulting hullabaloo gives mentally ill but very clever person the feeling of involvement, being the centre of something, action. Perhaps saving some injury and lives. Perhaps the valuable arguments get separated from the odd and obsessive context and get taken up more widely, or at least not associated with destructive acts. The teacher in the article has certainly got his students interested, they meet before the session to work out the arguments to use. Excellent! The journalist Gitta Sereny writes about evil people to try to understand where the evil comes from, this struck me as similar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gitta_Sereny http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gitta_Sereny

J3L2404 14y ago

His last two bombs were in '94 and '95 and both were fatal. So he could have published on the net, but he chose violence. He chose wrong.

keithpeter 14y ago
Yes, but perhaps he did not see the 'net/Web as natural? Perhaps a new unabomber now would? Technology gets naturalised over time, as the teacher in the original article was saying about Plato and writing. A modern maths textbook is a pretty sophisticated piece of technology.
- zbuc 14y ago
  Which is a very good reason that his argument doesn't make sense. Naturalism is silly, as is separating things as "human-created" or "man-made" versus "natural". It all comes out of the same matter of the universe. I really don't understand the allure this professor feels for his luddite ideals. > "It's always around the same theme of, This system is irreconcilable, it has to be ended," Skrbina says. "How can we make this clear? How can we convince people that technology is the root cause of the problem? It's not bad government. It's not the capitalists. It's not minorities. It's not illegal immigrants. He really wants to get away from blaming anything else or anybody else." Maybe he has difficulty convincing anyone of that because it's not a particularly compelling argument?
  - keithpeter 14y ago
    "Which is a very good reason that his argument doesn't make sense. Naturalism is silly, as is separating things as "human-created" or "man-made" versus "natural". It all comes out of the same matter of the universe." And it is part of the human story to use tools/manipulate their environment. However, when you abandon the idea of 'natural' you also loose the reassurance of some kind of limit to our particular random walk. The human journey could lead to our destruction, or to a life among the stars. We have to work on internal evidence and read the data we have effectively.

WiseWeasel 14y ago

Destroy your computers, after you like and retweet my blog post! It's the extremist version of the Alt-F4 prank.

canders 14y ago

Kaczynski addresses this possibility explicitly in his 1995 essay "Industrial Society and its Future": "Anyone who has a little money can have something printed, or can distribute it on the Internet or in some such way, but what he has to say will be swamped by the vast volume of material put out by the media, hence it will have no practical effect. To make an impression on society with words is therefore almost impossible for most individuals and small groups. Take us (FC) for example. ... Even [if] these writings had had many readers, most of these readers would soon have forgotten what they had read as their minds were flooded by the mass of material to which the media expose them. In order to get our message before the public with some chance of making a lasting impression, we’ve had to kill people." [1] [1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabo...