Unabomber manifesto refuted

[Anonymous No.22507456]

In assessing the effects of technology on human life, Kaczynski considers only the negative effects. This makes him leave out from his inquiry a number of very important facts, such as the fact that prior to the industrial revolution, all countries in the world had a living standard comparable to today's standard in Africa south of the Sahara, and that since the late 18th century, the global average life expectancy at birth has more than doubled. 22 It is hard to deny that these are real improvements and that they were made possible by technologies, perhaps most centrally artificial fertilizers, agricultural machinery, water chlorination, sewer systems, antibiotics, and vaccines. It is also hard to deny that a wide range of other technologies—reading glasses, painkillers, printing presses, light bulbs, pianos, music recordings, trains—have enriched the lives of billions.

—Ole Martin Moen
https://www.duo.uio.no/handle/10852/76721
https://www.duo.uio.no/bitstream/handle/10852/76721/The%2bUnabomber%2527s%2bEthics%2b-%2bpenultimate.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y
https://www.thetedkarchive.com/library/analysis-of-ted-s-ideas-actions

[Anonymous No.22507466]

>>22507456
>prior to industrial revolution
not hunter gatherer then, don't care.
>muh life expectancy
what about life satisfaction? again I don't fucking care.

[Anonymous No.22507469]

>>22507456
This is not an effective refutation because Uncle Ted deals with the "modern improvements" of life and concludes that they are not worth trading for autonomy and meaning in your life.

[Anonymous No.22507472]

[Anonymous No.22507483]

>>22507472
>obviously fixable with neurotech
how can people clamor so eagerly for something that's obviously going to be nightmarish

[Anonymous No.22507490]

>>22507483
How is it obviously nightmarish?

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jsEt7zDxRzY

[Anonymous No.22507493]

>>22507483
I agree. I can't stand the sort of person who flippantly says: "oh, that'll obviously be fixed by gene editing/AI/advances in neurology." The problems they are referring to are obviously complex and the solutions offered have yet to produce any genuine remedies.

[Anonymous No.22507498]

>>22507490
they're tearing down a bigger chesterton's fence than ever before with complete assurance that they'll "fix it in post". this always happens and it always makes things marginally worse on net.

[Anonymous No.22507503]

>>22507469
That’s all well and good but not dying from a common cold at 25 years of age is pretty cool too.

[Anonymous No.22507504]

>>22507490
Genes and grey matter are fundamental to our existence. Even slight errors in our treatment of them will therefore cause wide ranging and catastrophic side effects. Human beings are hubristic and error prone. Therefore, the likelihood that gene editing and neurotech will produce nightmarish results is very high. The mRNA vaccine was, in truth, an unmitigated failure that caused the untimely deaths of a great many people. Actually altering peoples' genes, (or making technological additions to their brains) is even more audacious than something like a gene based vaccine... and is likely to result in even greater misery.

We can't even move beyond so-called antidepressants that were first synthesised in the 80s and have been shown to not function past the first year or so. It is sheer folly to assume that we somehow have the capacity to alter our genome and/or "hack" our minds despite this.

[Anonymous No.22507530]

Other than medicine, has modern technology ever improved human lives?

[Anonymous No.22507548]

>>22507469
Right, the problem with Uncle Ted is that he has an extremely naive view of freedom as largely negative freedom, freedom from constraint, the terms of the Anglo Enlightenment thinkers.

Ted misses the role of positive freedom in development, the positive freedom to take on certain roles. You need certain things to be free to become certain things; a good doctor, a writer, a good father, a scientist. You need positive things not just "freedom from constraint." You need education to learn how to be a doctor, equipment, mentors, etc.

The question is, how does one get these positive assets without giving up some negative freedom?

The answer is that it is always a trade off. No one is absolutely free. Absolute freedom is a contradiction. If you're free to do anything, if you can move up and down, draw a square that is also a triangle, keep your cake and eat it, then no choice you make changes anything and this you have no impact on your world, becoming weightless, having no choice. Choice itself means to choose between what is actualized. So freedom always means accepting constraint.

Being a doctor means doing thing you don't want to do sometimes. Roles come with duties and accepting duties means trading negative freedom for positive.

Second, fostering self-control, reflexive freedom, the ability to rationally decide not only what to do but what you want to want, control over one's desires, requires guidance. We aren't free when we just get what we want, free from constraint. That's being driven by desire and instinct like a slave. We are free when we choose what we desire to desire.

No human develops this on their own. There is a reason why there are virtually no children in Rand's work. Raising children requires sacrifices and children can't just have negative freedom (the Buddha story in a nutshell).

Social freedom is also required. Humans can take away other human's freedom. That's why the state is necessary for freedom per Hegel and others. If we are all Nietzschean overcomers, some will dominate the others. The vanquished won't be free, but neither will the masters. They will only be free to act like masters less someone rise up and usurp them. They aren't free to receive recognition, thymos from those they have lowered as bondsmen.

So a dynamic social state fostering equality and rule of law is required for freedom.

Ted seems to forget that every society that stuck to HG or pastoralist life was roflstommped and enslaved by those who built civilization and thus better armies. Even if we reached his utopia, it would be unstable, falling to the first warlord of vision.

It's an immature vision, born of a man who clearly never raised children. Trying to blow up random airliners with kids on them is just the outward sign of a man who isn't free, but a slave to his own demons and impulses.

Only the man who knows what he wills and wills what he wills is free, the man with the Logos. The Logos who is Christ the Word.

[Anonymous No.22507550]

>>22507472
>>22507483

R. Scott Bakker has a pretty good story on the dramatic implications of having a control panel for one's emotions. The draft version is free online.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://rsbakker.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/crash-space-tpb.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwii7478wbaBAxVKJUQIHSMCB58QFnoECA4QAQ&usg=AOvVaw2wEXYBM_4YJd8IOREraE0p

[Anonymous No.22507554]

>>22507456
>>22507503
>not understanding elastic living
If you just made it to 12 then you would live till youre 70 but we HAVE to average it and include infant mortality rates from mediteranian islands so sure, old people are new I guess.

[Anonymous No.22507556]

>>22507456
He was right about everything

[Anonymous No.22507559]

>>22507504
>Human beings are hubristic and error prone. Therefore, the likelihood that gene editing and neurotech will produce nightmarish results is very high.
Unless human intelligence is also enhanced in the process. Genetically engineered humans with IQs above 200 would probably be less error-prone than humans with current intelligence.

[Anonymous No.22507561]

>>22507530
>other than medicine
>implying

[Anonymous No.22507562]

>>22507504
We don't need to learn how to do it dumbass, we just need good enough AI to figure out how to do it decently well. Then the new post humans build better AI. Then the better AI builds better post humans who then build better AI.

Competition drives evolution. Those who don't adapt will simply die out in warfare, become specimens in a zoo.

The post-human who colonizes the stars will be a battle cruiser sized nuclear powered brain, part wetware, part silicon, that is at home in the Void and VR. It will interact with the world not through weak and limited limbs but through the drones it builds in its nanotech autofactories. It will spread out to gather resources, AI going ahead to colonize the worlds.

This is the inevitable future. Competition will cause one species to come to control the galaxy, then even more. Vast planet sized brains will be powered by Dyson Spheres, sitting in the gentle tides of super massive black holes so that their outer computers run faster relative to them. These God like entities shall fathom the nature of being knowing itself as self, the coming into being of the Absolute! Hegel absolutely predicted Akira-like blobs of super intelligence taking control reality, feasting of quzars.

[Anonymous No.22507567]

>>22507503
If it's so cool how do you explain the epidemic of drug use and suicide in 1st world countries? R2r2p

[Anonymous No.22507571]

>>22507562
How does this preposterous scenario sound good to you and not horrifying?

[Anonymous No.22507577]

>>22507472
what a fag

[Anonymous No.22507578]

>>22507554
People died as adults all the time earlier. The homicide rate of hunter gatherers is insane, 2,000 per 100,000, the equivalent of 6.6 million murders in the US each year, absolutely dwarfing total deaths in any American war. This isn't even exceptional for mammals similar to us. The further you go back in history the more rape, cannibalism, and raids explicitly just to take shit become common. Contemporary HGs kill more of each other than Europe from 1914-1945 by a large margin. 1 in every 5 males who live to adulthood will die in homicide. Now tell me how free you are when Ug and Grug show up at your family's cabin and bash your son's brains out in front of you and start raping your wife and daughter after tying you up to sacrifice and eat to make sure the bananas grow big this year?

Le noble savage is the biggest maymay. Rich university towns in the Middle Ages full of priests used to have homicide rates that would make Baltimore blush.

Notably, Ted was a hermit, he never experienced trying to live in society without any rule or law and had a society defending him at all times.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature19758

[Anonymous No.22507580]

>>22507571
One should always fear the numinous. But it is inevitable. If we don't do it, some other species will. The Absolute is the process of its coming into being.

[Anonymous No.22507586]

>>22507472
Mexican intellectuals stick to making tacos paco

[Anonymous No.22507592]

>>22507578
Wars also used to kill a larger share of the population when they occured. The Huegnot War killed 14 times the share of France as World War I, which was to catastrophic for it. The Thirty Years War killed around 2.5 times more of all Germans than both World Wars combined. American Wars listed by deadliness go in just about reverse chronological order, with wars like the Revolution and 1812 representing millions of deaths can scaled to today's population.

England had a single day, at Towton, where prehaps 2% of its male population died, a battle on par with the opening of the Somme in deaths but for a population a tiny fraction of the size.

That's the other side of not having technology. When war comes, farming is disrupted. When farming is disrupted, hyperinflation and famine hit hard. Deaths are far more massive in scale.

[Anonymous No.22507594]

>>22507456
Discovering a problem and setting out a solution are very different things. The former is kind of obvious, the latter way beyond his intellect, even in terms of mere amelioration.

[Anonymous No.22507624]

>>22507456
Not reading all that, just tell me one thing: are zoo animals happier and more fulfilled than wild animals? Safetyism and commodity fetishism cannot answer this question honestly. Living longer is no achievement in itself and modernity is characterised more than anything by the exaltation of ‘mere life’ over virtuous or noble life as industrial specialised society tends closer and closer to zoo life.

I’m not totally anti-tech but it’s clear that all technē is degrading to the human spirit and antithetical to the liberal/pure arts. The Ancient Greeks were perhaps the last society that was still relatively free from being dictated by technology on a large scale and even they figured this out, or perhaps this is why they were able to. “No citizen wants their child to grow up to be a mechanic.” — Aristotle

[Anonymous No.22507645]

>>22507578
>>22507592
Obviously, wars don't count because I get to kill people, therefore securing a positive K/D therefore being in a position where it's not gay to die. As for killing you and raping your wife, that sounds pretty nice especially if I get big bananas out of it.