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Comment by 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.

19 comments

idiotsecant

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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.

    • fruitworks  15 hours ago

      What would debating the ideas do? You either get it or you don't. There is a large sum of people who are categoricially indifferent to the idea of debate. They just support the status quo blindly, no matter what.

      For example, you haven't even read the first sentence of the relevant material and you are already in a soylent-driven tizzy making lists of synonyms and debating whether we should even be allowed to debate.

  • simianparrot  2 days ago

    I think ad hominems are fine when the lunatic in question mail bombs and injures/murders innocent people. Like what the eff are you talking about!?

    • greenavocado  2 days ago

      This is the justification for the killings (Paragraph 96) in case you are curious:

      96. As for our constitutional rights, consider for example that of freedom of the press. We certainly don’t mean to knock that right; it is very important tool for limiting concentration of political power and for keeping those who do have political power in line by publicly exposing any misbehavior on their part. But freedom of the press is of very little use to the average citizen as an individual. The mass media are mostly under the control of large organizations that are integrated into the system. 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. If we had never done anything violent and had submitted the present writings to a publisher, they probably would not have been accepted. If they had been been accepted and published, they probably would not have attracted many readers, because it’s more fun to watch the entertainment put out by the media than to read a sober essay. 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.

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