Wilson Wilson
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2014
- Messages
- 3,750
"The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race."
I am curious to discuss the criticisms of modern society and technology put forth by Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber). I encourage people to separate the actions of the author from the ideas presented in the text, as the bulk of the text itself is not only lucid and sane with a consistent philosophy, but seems to become more relevant with each passing year.
This is the full text.
It is 35,000 words so I don't expect most people to read the entire thing. But simply skimming the first couple pages is enough to give you an idea of the concepts contained within.
Aside from the direct attack on technology, there is also a wider attack on the foundation of modern day society, with a core belief that it is impossible to live in an industrial society without giving up personal freedom and autonomy. This expands into the fields of moral and political philosophy. Some particularly interesting quotes:
"The moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can think, feel and act in a completely moral way. For example, we are not supposed to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some time or other, whether he admits it to himself or not. Some people are so highly socialized that the attempt to think, feel and act morally imposes a severe burden on them. In order to avoid feelings of guilt, they continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives and find moral explanations for feelings and actions that in reality have a non-moral origin. We use the term "oversocialized" to describe such people."
"Today people live more by virtue of what the system does FOR them or TO them than by virtue of what they do for themselves. And what they do for themselves is done more and more along channels laid down by the system. Opportunities tend to be those that the system provides, the opportunities must be exploited in accord with rules and regulations, and techniques prescribed by experts must be followed if there is to be a chance of success."
"In the modern world it is human society that dominates nature rather than the other way around, and modern society changes very rapidly owing to technological change. Thus there is no stable framework."
It is further asserted that our society has been set up to serve the progression of technological advances at all costs, and instead of technology being developed in such a way that it helps society, instead society is being shaped to serve technology.
It is prophesied this will eventually lead to the genetic engineering of humans, essentially creating technological eugenics. This is being developed right now because after all who can say no to preventing diseases that threaten quality of life? But you cannot begin a precedent of chopping and changing human DNA without eventually creating genetically engineered humans. Indeed we already have the science necessary to choose the colour of your child's eyes for example.
Further, another vital point is that any technological invention eventually becomes mandatory even if no one is technically forcing you to use it. For example smartphones used to be an expensive novelty. The first iPhone was seen by most as a fancy overpriced toy. Fast forward to today and most people are effectively required to own a smartphone to communicate with friends and family as well as for work. No one is technically forcing you to own one, but most of us effectively are required to own one due to various social obligations. And yet this has happened in a very short amount of time, as the original iPhone came out in only 2007 and the original Android phone in 2008. A relevant quote:
"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. Once a technical innovation has been introduced, people usually become dependent on it, so that they can never again do without it, unless it is replaced by some still more advanced innovation. Not only do people become dependent as individuals on a new item of technology, but, even more, the system as a whole becomes dependent on it. (Imagine what would happen to the system today if computers, for example, were eliminated.) Thus the system can move in only one direction, toward greater technologization."
And sure enough technology keeps replacing more and more things society depends on. Even currency is now digital and computerised. And in response to concerns of an eventual cashless society where recorded bank and card transactions will be the only method of spending money, the only possible saviour is cryptocurrency - more anonymous than a bank account, certainly, but still totally reliant on technology, and a blockchain requires a (usually public) ledger.
This is to our detriment, the text argues, as the increased trend to shape society around technology has lead to increased rates of depression, anxiety, and other mental illness because we are simply living a way that we have not evolved to.
And need I say it? Look at the effect social media is having on the Gen Z right now. That's the generation that has never even grown up in a world without social media. And further they do not simply put their lives on social media, but they instead live their lives for social media. They act as if they're in the public spotlight and care deeply about how they're perceived on the make believe land of social media because all their peers do the same as they simply don't know anything else.
This is the same generation that has the highest recorded rates of depression and anxiety in human history.
For a very literal example of a society becoming a slave to technology you need look no further than China. As of next year the state run social credit system, which already exists as a series of pilot programmes, goes into action fully. Every single Chinese citizen will be electronically ranked by the government on their obedience to the state. A high ranking will net you everything from access to exclusive hotel rooms and luxury taxis to priority treatment in hospitals. A low ranking, on the other hand, can lead to you being banned from buying property, travelling by train or plane, and have your kids kicked out of school.
Yes China will soon be a society where people will have to check the social rating app on their smartphones before they can buy property or travel. The stated goal is to "allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step."
Make no mistake that the building blocks exist to create this in the US and across the Western world as well. All you'd need to do is combine the records held by credit referencing agencies - which already take as much personal info as they can get and use machine learning algorithms to create a profile of absolutely everyone - with social media profiles, and boom, you would have a system virtually identical to China's social credit system.
Was that predicted too? Sorta, but it was claimed the introduction of this technology would not be done in an authoritarian manner. This is true for the Western societies it was focusing on - no one is forced by law to use Facebook, but most people do, and they will happily shovel all their personal information into it where it is then fed to advertisers and the US government along with the rest of the Five Eyes. Through social engineering this has quickly become the new "normal." But it is hardly surprising that China has taken a more overt approach to the following:
"Assuming that industrial society survives, it is likely that technology will eventually acquire something approaching complete control over human behavior."
Something I think it did get wrong is the claim that such control would require biological alterations to humanity, not merely psychological pressures. It has been proven more recently that mass surveillance (which even in the West has simply become an accepted norm) alone has a significant impact on how we behave, as people tend to be careful what they do and say when they know they are being watched, effectively creating a culture of covert censorship and control using technology throughout the so called "free world." I am referring not only to internet surveillance but also the ubiquity of CCTV which is now also becoming capable of facial recognition. In its current form facial recognition tech is unreliable, but it will only be improved in the future.
And again, social media, while technically optional, exerts a great deal of psychological control over its users. Social media apps are literally designed explicitly to be as addictive as possible, and the effect of living your life in pursuit of social status in such a public manner cannot be understated, particularly in a whole generation of kids who literally have never known anything different. Just look at how fucked up celebrities become.
Finally, there are predictions about the nature of AI which have been echoed by experts from Stephen Hawking to Bill Gates. People who have made science and technology their life's work are very seriously concerned about AI, and for very much similar reasons to this:
"If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can't make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines' decisions."
Stephen Hawking himself went even further and warned that AI has the potential to "spell the end of the human race." A fundamental issue with AI is that we cannot predict how it will think or what moral code it will develop for itself. It is fundamentally impossible to teach AI human morality, not least because there is no universally agreed upon human morality to begin with, but even if there was, how can you teach it to a machine? You could only do so if the machine thought exactly as a human does, but this would be extremely unlikely if not impossible.
These criticisms of technology and its dystopian potential (and increasingly dystopian reality) are far from novel, of course. Works as such as 1984 and Brave New World echoed similar concerns long ago, and modern media such as Black Mirror deals with these concerns in a fashion more directly critical of modern technology today. The 1997 film Gattaca deals with the genetic engineering of humans. AI takeover has been a running theme in sci-fi for decades and increasing automation putting people out of work is becoming a serious concern for many already. Not to mention the many philosophers who have dealt with themes of struggle between individual freedom and demands of society throughout history.
While not overly original, this writing goes into very deep detail about a connected yet wide range of topics just like a published philosophical text would. I myself read it expecting to laugh at a schizophrenic rant, but instead I ended up thinking pretty seriously about a lot of what was said. Indeed when it was first published, many serious intellectuals, academics, and so on praised it as a work of genius. This could easily have been published as a serious philosophical text in its own right had the author not resorted to terrorism... but the sad truth is many fewer people would have read it if that were the case.
It should go without saying I do not at all support the actions of this terrorist or the call to some kind of "revolution" to destroy all technology. And nor do I necessarily agree with his "all or nothing" approach to technology. But I doubt many people could seriously deny that it makes many valid criticisms regarding not only technology but the structure of modern society itself, as the two have become so tightly linked that our society is now totally dependent on technology and would easily collapse tomorrow like Mr Robot if the internet went down.
As this is a forum for druggies, who by definition exist outside of social norms, I'm interested in what people here think of the various points made about not only technology's role in society but also the criticisms of mainstream morality and the foundation of society itself.
I am curious to discuss the criticisms of modern society and technology put forth by Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber). I encourage people to separate the actions of the author from the ideas presented in the text, as the bulk of the text itself is not only lucid and sane with a consistent philosophy, but seems to become more relevant with each passing year.
This is the full text.
It is 35,000 words so I don't expect most people to read the entire thing. But simply skimming the first couple pages is enough to give you an idea of the concepts contained within.
Aside from the direct attack on technology, there is also a wider attack on the foundation of modern day society, with a core belief that it is impossible to live in an industrial society without giving up personal freedom and autonomy. This expands into the fields of moral and political philosophy. Some particularly interesting quotes:
"The moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can think, feel and act in a completely moral way. For example, we are not supposed to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some time or other, whether he admits it to himself or not. Some people are so highly socialized that the attempt to think, feel and act morally imposes a severe burden on them. In order to avoid feelings of guilt, they continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives and find moral explanations for feelings and actions that in reality have a non-moral origin. We use the term "oversocialized" to describe such people."
"Today people live more by virtue of what the system does FOR them or TO them than by virtue of what they do for themselves. And what they do for themselves is done more and more along channels laid down by the system. Opportunities tend to be those that the system provides, the opportunities must be exploited in accord with rules and regulations, and techniques prescribed by experts must be followed if there is to be a chance of success."
"In the modern world it is human society that dominates nature rather than the other way around, and modern society changes very rapidly owing to technological change. Thus there is no stable framework."
It is further asserted that our society has been set up to serve the progression of technological advances at all costs, and instead of technology being developed in such a way that it helps society, instead society is being shaped to serve technology.
It is prophesied this will eventually lead to the genetic engineering of humans, essentially creating technological eugenics. This is being developed right now because after all who can say no to preventing diseases that threaten quality of life? But you cannot begin a precedent of chopping and changing human DNA without eventually creating genetically engineered humans. Indeed we already have the science necessary to choose the colour of your child's eyes for example.
Further, another vital point is that any technological invention eventually becomes mandatory even if no one is technically forcing you to use it. For example smartphones used to be an expensive novelty. The first iPhone was seen by most as a fancy overpriced toy. Fast forward to today and most people are effectively required to own a smartphone to communicate with friends and family as well as for work. No one is technically forcing you to own one, but most of us effectively are required to own one due to various social obligations. And yet this has happened in a very short amount of time, as the original iPhone came out in only 2007 and the original Android phone in 2008. A relevant quote:
"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. Once a technical innovation has been introduced, people usually become dependent on it, so that they can never again do without it, unless it is replaced by some still more advanced innovation. Not only do people become dependent as individuals on a new item of technology, but, even more, the system as a whole becomes dependent on it. (Imagine what would happen to the system today if computers, for example, were eliminated.) Thus the system can move in only one direction, toward greater technologization."
And sure enough technology keeps replacing more and more things society depends on. Even currency is now digital and computerised. And in response to concerns of an eventual cashless society where recorded bank and card transactions will be the only method of spending money, the only possible saviour is cryptocurrency - more anonymous than a bank account, certainly, but still totally reliant on technology, and a blockchain requires a (usually public) ledger.
This is to our detriment, the text argues, as the increased trend to shape society around technology has lead to increased rates of depression, anxiety, and other mental illness because we are simply living a way that we have not evolved to.
And need I say it? Look at the effect social media is having on the Gen Z right now. That's the generation that has never even grown up in a world without social media. And further they do not simply put their lives on social media, but they instead live their lives for social media. They act as if they're in the public spotlight and care deeply about how they're perceived on the make believe land of social media because all their peers do the same as they simply don't know anything else.
This is the same generation that has the highest recorded rates of depression and anxiety in human history.
For a very literal example of a society becoming a slave to technology you need look no further than China. As of next year the state run social credit system, which already exists as a series of pilot programmes, goes into action fully. Every single Chinese citizen will be electronically ranked by the government on their obedience to the state. A high ranking will net you everything from access to exclusive hotel rooms and luxury taxis to priority treatment in hospitals. A low ranking, on the other hand, can lead to you being banned from buying property, travelling by train or plane, and have your kids kicked out of school.
Yes China will soon be a society where people will have to check the social rating app on their smartphones before they can buy property or travel. The stated goal is to "allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step."
Make no mistake that the building blocks exist to create this in the US and across the Western world as well. All you'd need to do is combine the records held by credit referencing agencies - which already take as much personal info as they can get and use machine learning algorithms to create a profile of absolutely everyone - with social media profiles, and boom, you would have a system virtually identical to China's social credit system.
Was that predicted too? Sorta, but it was claimed the introduction of this technology would not be done in an authoritarian manner. This is true for the Western societies it was focusing on - no one is forced by law to use Facebook, but most people do, and they will happily shovel all their personal information into it where it is then fed to advertisers and the US government along with the rest of the Five Eyes. Through social engineering this has quickly become the new "normal." But it is hardly surprising that China has taken a more overt approach to the following:
"Assuming that industrial society survives, it is likely that technology will eventually acquire something approaching complete control over human behavior."
Something I think it did get wrong is the claim that such control would require biological alterations to humanity, not merely psychological pressures. It has been proven more recently that mass surveillance (which even in the West has simply become an accepted norm) alone has a significant impact on how we behave, as people tend to be careful what they do and say when they know they are being watched, effectively creating a culture of covert censorship and control using technology throughout the so called "free world." I am referring not only to internet surveillance but also the ubiquity of CCTV which is now also becoming capable of facial recognition. In its current form facial recognition tech is unreliable, but it will only be improved in the future.
And again, social media, while technically optional, exerts a great deal of psychological control over its users. Social media apps are literally designed explicitly to be as addictive as possible, and the effect of living your life in pursuit of social status in such a public manner cannot be understated, particularly in a whole generation of kids who literally have never known anything different. Just look at how fucked up celebrities become.
Finally, there are predictions about the nature of AI which have been echoed by experts from Stephen Hawking to Bill Gates. People who have made science and technology their life's work are very seriously concerned about AI, and for very much similar reasons to this:
"If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can't make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines' decisions."
Stephen Hawking himself went even further and warned that AI has the potential to "spell the end of the human race." A fundamental issue with AI is that we cannot predict how it will think or what moral code it will develop for itself. It is fundamentally impossible to teach AI human morality, not least because there is no universally agreed upon human morality to begin with, but even if there was, how can you teach it to a machine? You could only do so if the machine thought exactly as a human does, but this would be extremely unlikely if not impossible.
These criticisms of technology and its dystopian potential (and increasingly dystopian reality) are far from novel, of course. Works as such as 1984 and Brave New World echoed similar concerns long ago, and modern media such as Black Mirror deals with these concerns in a fashion more directly critical of modern technology today. The 1997 film Gattaca deals with the genetic engineering of humans. AI takeover has been a running theme in sci-fi for decades and increasing automation putting people out of work is becoming a serious concern for many already. Not to mention the many philosophers who have dealt with themes of struggle between individual freedom and demands of society throughout history.
While not overly original, this writing goes into very deep detail about a connected yet wide range of topics just like a published philosophical text would. I myself read it expecting to laugh at a schizophrenic rant, but instead I ended up thinking pretty seriously about a lot of what was said. Indeed when it was first published, many serious intellectuals, academics, and so on praised it as a work of genius. This could easily have been published as a serious philosophical text in its own right had the author not resorted to terrorism... but the sad truth is many fewer people would have read it if that were the case.
It should go without saying I do not at all support the actions of this terrorist or the call to some kind of "revolution" to destroy all technology. And nor do I necessarily agree with his "all or nothing" approach to technology. But I doubt many people could seriously deny that it makes many valid criticisms regarding not only technology but the structure of modern society itself, as the two have become so tightly linked that our society is now totally dependent on technology and would easily collapse tomorrow like Mr Robot if the internet went down.
As this is a forum for druggies, who by definition exist outside of social norms, I'm interested in what people here think of the various points made about not only technology's role in society but also the criticisms of mainstream morality and the foundation of society itself.
Last edited:
