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Comment by greenavocado

3 days ago

This specific point is addressed in a famous 1995 anti-technology essay by Ted Kaczynski.

Specifically paragraphs:

127. A technological advance that appears not to threaten freedom often turns out to threaten it very seriously later on. ...

128. While technological progress AS A WHOLE continually narrows our sphere of freedom, each new technical advance CONSIDERED BY ITSELF appears to be desirable. ...

129. Another reason why technology is such a powerful social force is that, within the context of a given society, technological progress marches in only one direction; it can never be reversed. ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unab...

23 comments

greenavocado

Reply
ikamm  2 days ago

Who ever said facial recognition wasn't going to threaten freedom? None of those points feel at all relevant or substantive to the topic of discussion

idiotsecant  3 days ago

Melodramatic slop from the original edgy school shooter. There are plenty of technologies that increase freedom. For example, I am substantially more free to not die of smallpox, which would have been quite limiting to my options.

  • dleary  2 days ago

    > Melodramatic slop from the original edgy school shooter.

    This is a very arrogant, judgemental, dismissive comment that adds nothing to the conversation. It is also a textbook example of ad hominem. “Why are you paying attention to what that guy said?”

    > There are plenty of technologies that increase freedom. […For example. Smallpox vaccine…]

    If you think that Kacynski or OP were talking about all technologies then you lack reading comprehension. Since they’re not making the assertion about all technologies, holding up a specific technology as being good does not address the point that was being made.

    > from the original edgy school shooter.

    Regardless of your views on Kacynski, he is a philosopher of note. His work is regularly quoted and referred to 30 years later. As opposed to, say, Bin Laden’s manifesto.

    > Melodramatic slop

    It’s ironic that you chose this phrasing, when “slop” has come to mean “low effort, low quality content pushed out without much thought”.

    How humiliating for you, to put your foot in the mouth in front of everyone in this distinguished forum. This isn’t Digg, or even Reddit. Put some thought into what you write.

    • AnimalMuppet  2 days ago

      First: Much of your post is against site guidelines. You should perhaps re-read them.

      Second: My opinion of Kaczynski is colored by having met one of his bombing victims, both before and after.

      More generally, he is philosophizing about what is good for society. That is, he's making claims about what is moral. But his actions show that his moral compass is hopelessly skewed. So why am I going to take his judgment on moral questions? I'm not. As a philosopher on moral questions, his actions destroy his credibility.

      His ideas may sound credible. If that's where they led him, though, no, I don't want to start down the road of his ideas.

    • idiotsecant  2 days ago

      I'm almost as interested in debating this as I would be debating the livejournal girls who worshipped manson. It's the same thing. The guy was a gutless stinking murderer who was so afraid of debating his ideas on the merits that he spent his life shitting himself in a shack tying barbwire across bike trails to decapitate kids he didn't like and mailing innocent people instruments of death, torture, and terror. He was one of the more worthless and useless people to live in recent memory, and that's quite a list.

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