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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27397 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023

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I know and care about Kaczynski

Well this is kind of the point; despite his efforts all Kaczynski's 'legacy' consists of is occasional discussion of his ideas on various obscure internet fora. He himself may be remembered as a minor footnote in American history, but his ideas are already on the ash heap of history, which is of course where they belong.

He himself may be remembered as a minor footnote in American history, but his ideas are already on the ash heap of history, which is of course where they belong.

His ideas were on the ash-heap of history when his manifesto was published. You can't get more fringe than an anti-tech screed by a murdering hermit published in the dawn of the internet era. Approximately no one took anything he said at all seriously.

Fast forward a few decades, and his name comes up more and more because it has become increasingly obvious that tech is a serious problem that can't be ignored. His solutions might not be the correct ones, but the problem he identified is both real and dire.

name comes up more and more

... among a small number of the terminally online, perhaps.

Just to check context here, you believe that tech advancement is not presenting us with serious problems, with the problems growing increasingly serious over time, to the point that they could plausibly rise to civilizational or existential threats?

his ideas are already on the ash heap of history

Are they really? The Western pro-technology crowd seem to be running into some kind of game-over screen as they came up with contraception pills or the washing machine before artificial wombs. The intellectual future of the West, if any, is Amish.

Voting machines and drones don't make a modern democracy, you still need meatbags somewhere in the system to operate a military or pretend that your elections have meaning.

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