I just finished watching "Manhunt" - fictionalized story about hunt for
Unabomber:
https://www.netflix.com/title/80176878The movie is good, but not perfect.
The good parts are:
1) Interesting perspective on some difficulties FBI investigators had to deal with in their internal kitchen.
Interaction with the press.
Story of Kaczynski family (who pointed to Ted as a possible Unabomber).
2) Interesting view on Ted Kaczynski line of reasoning and emotions.
The bad part: fiction in general.
In particular:
- Blowing drama out of proportion.
- Fake timeline and deadlines (urgencies).
11 days ago I was reading "Industrial Society and Its Future" by Theodore Kaczynski.
At the time of the reading I did not link him to Unabomber.
His claims looked like a mixture of insightful and junk ideas.
Some of the insightful quotes:
---
http://editions-hache.com/essais/pdf/kaczynski2.pdfIf they are humane they may use propaganda or
other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the
birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving
the world to the elite.
Or, if the elite consists of softhearted
liberals, they may decide to play the role of good
shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see
to it that everyone’s physical needs are satisfied, that all
children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions,
that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him
busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes
“treatment” to cure his “problem.” Of course, life
will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically
or psychologically engineered either to remove their
need for the power process or to make them “sublimate”
their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered
human beings may be happy in such a society,
but they most certainly will not be free. They will have
been reduced to the status of domestic animals.
.....
In the long run (say a few centuries from now) it
is likely that neither the human race nor any other important
organisms will exist as we know them today, because
once you start modifying organisms through genetic engineering
there is no reason to stop at any particular point,
so that the modifications will probably continue until man
and other organisms have been utterly transformed.
.....
technology is creating for human beings a new physical
and social environment radically different from the spectrum
of environments to which natural selection has adapted
the human race physically and psychologically. If man
is not adjusted to this new environment by being artifi-
cially re-engineered, then he will be adapted to it through
a long and painful process of natural selection. The former
is far more likely than the latter.
---
Unfortunately, Ted Kaczynski made wrong conclusions from his insights.
Instead of accepting technological and social progress, Ted decided to fight against it.
And fight it in a way that is totally disrespectful to other people.
So, while having very high IQ and capable mind, Ted turned out to be angry and vindictive loner, falling into basic mental traps at his social and economic reasonings.
