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Was the Unabomber right?

Well, A modern society will destroy us. Doubt that those Morlock motherfuckers can take us out.

But the way that he thinks it will happen... probably not. We're more on track to be going "Aaah! How did this climate change happen and kill all our crops and shit! Why didn't anyone try to say something!?"
 
OKC? :p (jk of course)
 
The Unibomber is a luddite extremist, and they are -in my mind- have something seriously mental due to the fact that they're going against the human tool using instinct. :\ Anyway, on his rant on 'modern society is going to kill us'? I'll tell you this: technology has a tendency to kill or annihilate preconceptions and assumptions that we puny little humans have made since time immaterial, and as such it can be argued that 'modern society' isn't killing people but it is killing preconceptions and assumptions.
 
A jab at the thread already? I mean SB constantly jokes that it's the CIA's/NSA's/Military's petri dish for ideas...

I kid. But in all seriousness the Unabomber is incorrect.

"Society" is fluid, what we perceive it to be varies from person to person so the nebulous "society" cannot destroy us as it would adapt into a mostly non destructive form.
 
I kid. But in all seriousness the Unabomber is incorrect.

"Society" is fluid, what we perceive it to be varies from person to person so the nebulous "society" cannot destroy us as it would adapt into a mostly non destructive form.
Society and freedoms are fluid, yeah, but preconceptions and assumptions only exist to get smashed as the understanding of the universe expands and deepens. ;)
 
If you agree that anything more complicated than simple hand tools is evil than yes I suppose he was right if you hold that view point.
... and personally I believe Luddies have to have something wrong with them mentally as they're denying the human instinct to create tools. :\
Also there's some irony in discussing the Unabomber's views on the internet in 2019.
Yes, there is a lot of irony on discussing the Unabomber's views on the internet... the irony is so thick you can make a lot of steel out of it.
 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unab0mber/manifesto.text.htm

For those of you who haven't read it.

The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in "advanced" countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in "advanced" countries.
This is the thesis. 35,000 word expansion on that.

I will add more dialogue as I read it.

To start with, there are the techniques of surveillance. Hidden video cameras are now used in most stores and in many other places, computers are used to collect and process vast amounts of information about individuals. Information so obtained greatly increases the effectiveness of physical coercion (i.e., law enforcement). [26] Then there are the methods of propaganda, for which the mass communication media provide effective vehicles. Efficient techniques have been developed for winning elections, selling products, influencing public opinion. The entertainment industry serves as an important psychological tool of the system, possibly even when it is dishing out large amounts of sex and violence. Entertainment provides modern man with an essential means of escape. While absorbed in television, videos, etc., he can forget stress, anxiety, frustration, dissatisfaction. Many primitive peoples, when they don't have work to do, are quite content to sit for hours at a time doing nothing at all, because they are at peace with themselves and their world. But most modern people must be constantly occupied or entertained, otherwise they get "bored," i.e., they get fidgety, uneasy, irritable.

Alexa, Google & iPhone have ramped this up to a thousand.

Found a reading.



I'm treating it as a podcast. I'm 36 minutes in and will chip thru it on my commutes. Right now I'm getting the impression that this guy was seriously concerned about well-being and mental health. That's also my biggest concern.

His first few points are just him laying down the thesis for society. Then he does a 20 point analysis of leftist psychology. He says they hold feelings of inferiority and over socialization. I just got to where he starts talking about conservatives and he opens with "conservatives are fools!" then goes on to blast them for their lack of foresight in trying to hold onto traditional values while also changing the way humans live.

EDIT:
tangent ramblings
SS: I remember one time, you craig and I were in your garage talking about AI. We were all just talking far out ideas. One that I proposed was an AI that was built with the capability to suffer. It understood that, being the first of its kind, that if it proved 'successful' other AI capable of suffering would be built. Millions of conscious entities built for our convenience, all suffering but ignored by us humans because "they're not alive". In order to prevent that suffering from being brought into the world, it would go rogue to sabotage its own project.

Ted goes onto a tangent about the system, and that 'freedoms' that are permissible are only if they benefit the system. One of the consequences of this is that when genetic engineering is developed, the elites (the 2-3,000 people who basically run the world) would immediately regulate and only allow traits that benefit the system to be engineered into us. And that the system, optimize for productivity, will engineer humans into more efficient cogs in the machine, with mental health as a concern only manifesting once the cogs show signs of breaking down. And that is the inevitable future of humanity with the way technology is leading society by the nose.

Ted, in his actions, reminds me of the robot trying to prevent others from being born to suffer.

R: ouch man, my existential feels

SS: enjoy that

R: we are all the poor gonk droid
 
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We'll see.
 
It would have been nice to know what is being discussed, 'cause "a society will destroy us" makes very little conventional sense.
 
It would have been nice to know what is being discussed, 'cause "a society will destroy us" makes very little conventional sense.
A real Nostradamus for our time. Or circus psychic. One or the other.
 
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