Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

His argument is basically that industrial society increases net suffering from violence and disease, because large populations are unsustainable and rely on the exploitation of the third world's poor. So instead of having one person die from a curable infection because nobody has antibiotics, you have five dying of infections because the population has exploded and antibiotics exist but they can't afford them.


Someone who claims to care about humans while murdering them really has zero credibility.


Kaczynski would've probably said the same thing honestly.


The proof for that being vibes? Your specific example is quite obviously false in my eyes, but maybe I’m missing something obvious. How is some antibiotics worse than no antibiotics?

I mean unless his stance was that a higher population is inherently bad because there’s more people to experience suffering? But surely all these people in this thread don’t support something THAT dumb.

I’m so lost and his wiki page isn’t helping


As far as I can tell, yes, that is exactly his stance: each suffering person is a net negative, regardless of others who are not. So five people suffering is always worse than one person suffering.

And please don't mistake people explaining his theories with supporting them.


Ah wow ok. Was not getting that from the wiki and didn't want to read 35K words just to figure out why people think he "has some interesting ideas".

Thanks for the explanation, I really appreciate you taking the time!


I think the Unabomber would posit that a society that is complex enough to produce something as advanced as anti-biotics inherently causes human beings to lose their local autonomy and freedom (and by extension their dignity and happiness) due to the rigid organization such a system requires. To me it sounds like a trolley problem and reading his manifesto it seems he erred on the side of flipping the switch to the track with one person on it.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: