Crafting is crafting, whether you’re doing woodworking or killing. Is it impossible to believe that someone like Ted might find bomb building every bit as gratifying as we find programming?
He was unhinged. But it’s hard to argue he wasn’t a master craftsman. Few lone-wolf bomb makers survive 20 years without accidents, let alone evade authorities till their family turned them in.
I know very little about Ted, and almost nothing about his philosophies or any of the subject matter. But it seems entirely consistent and reasonable that there would be deployable bombs that were sitting around for unknown amounts of time when he was captured.
Dude’s a murderer. I’m glad he was stopped, and it’s sad he wasn’t caught on day one.
(My sense of humor has gotten me in hot water more than once, so I may as well go all-in. Probably a matter of time till it nips me though.)
In seriousness, the goal here is to have curious conversation, and follow that curiosity wherever it leads. I agree it sounds asinine, but think of the sheer number of details he had to get right merely to survive. He was one inch away from blowing himself up, quite literally, for years. I’m not at all ashamed to point out the obvious skill required.
If he pulled the pin on a few grenades and casually tossed them at people, we’d be having a different conversation. But he built things, just as we do. Certainly a different kind of thing, as you say, but he was still a builder.
Also wait what even is this comment. Why are you just praising the Unabomber unprompted? That’s not what the person you’re replying to was even talking about…
Remember, authorities weren’t able to catch him. His family turned him in. It’s only through luck that his spree came to an end. That alone makes his particular case worth intensive analysis.
Innocent until proven guilty. There is more than enough evidence to put away Teddy K for life. Lean on real evidence. Don't stretch the truth and muddy the waters for the innocent. Your line of reasoning could be used to convict the innocent.
> Kaczynski replied Penthouse was less "respectable" than The New York Times and The Washington Post, and said that, "to increase our chances of getting our stuff published in some 'respectable' periodical", he would "reserve the right to plant one (and only one) bomb intended to kill, after our manuscript has been published" if Penthouse published the document instead of The Times or The Post.
Don't do victims of terrorism a disservice by suggesting a mass murderer deserves the benefit of the doubt as to whether he has any qualms about reneging on "deals" made with a society he doesn't respect. His calculus for who got to live and die hinged on factors as arbitrary as nitpicking over which periodical was willing to publish his bullshit. He was a fucking Narcissist to the extreme, who would waste no time coming out of retirement at the next perceived slight.
"Innocent until proven guilty" doesn't apply to the fucking Unabomber. Bombing people is kind of his thing. He proved it, what, 16 times?
I don't get what the big deal is. We already have more than enough evidence from his previous plantings to convict him as a bomb planter and put him away for life. Is it just that you can't compartmentalize and separate the two things in your mind?
> Is it just that you can't compartmentalize and separate the two things in your mind?
They are not separate. Past behavior predicts future one. And ignoring probabilities is just demanding that people act as if they were stupid.
It's analogous to coming up with one counterexample to disprove something in mathematics.
I can reasonably theorize that he fully intended to stop bombing people based on this "deal". There. Done. I can doubt he planned to bomb people in a reasonable way.
The onus is on you to remove all reasonable doubt. You have not done so by simply showing that there are bombs in his cabin. He could have built them before he made the deal to stop bombing people. That's a completely reasonable scenario.
No it's not.
Again, that's the standard for criminal punishment. Not moral judgement.
And have you heard of civil law? Despite the high stakes that's usually decided based on the preponderance of evidence.
I never said anything about moral judgement. I was never talking about moral judgement.
> And have you heard of civil law? Despite the high stakes that's usually decided based on the preponderance of evidence.
Unrelated. Please, do share a link where Ted Kaczynski was convicted of a crime in connection with the unplanted bombs in question, because that's what I have been talking about in this entire string of comments.
I am exonerated by fact. Ted was not convicted of a crime for the unplanted bomb because there was insufficient evidence to do so. End of story ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
"Just because he bombed people previously doesn't mean he intended to do it again. You have to have stronger evidence, like writings or postage stamps, to prove beyond reasonable doubt that these two bombs were going to be planted."
"He is doing moral judgement and that one requires only reasonable probability."
"Yeah but I only have to come up with a reasonable doubt."
Aren't those lines all replies in order? Then you're using "reasonable doubt" as a couterargument to a moral judgement.
Either https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36275516 is trying to apply reasonable doubt to a moral judgement, or you're not reading the comments you're replying to.
I should have made it more clear that "Yeah but I only have to come up with..." meant "With respect to what I claimed..."
Sorry, I really am trying to be as charitable as possible with my interpretations of these comments.
I just hate to see people conflate emotion with logical soundness and validity. Appeals to emotion are human and valid and expose interesting points, but I can't stand to see them used to tear down the intellectual value (whether or not something is logically true) of ideas.
That's fine with respect to your claims, but it means your claims can't be used as-is to counter other claims that aren't on the same framework. Those people aren't trying to convict him.
> I just hate to see people conflate emotion with logical soundness and validity. Appeals to emotion are human and valid and expose interesting points, but I can't stand to see them used to tear down the intellectual value (whether or not something is logically true) of ideas.
I don't think anyone is doing that in this thread? "he stopped because he was arrested" isn't an invalid takedown of his ideas. There was a mention of ideas further upstream, but from that comment on they don't come up.
Reasonable doubt shifts based on past behavior. The parable of them scorpion is retold for a reason.
That won't stop people determined enough to defend him here, and as you can see people will die on that hill.
How many lives were saved due to his arrest? That we will never know, but I suspect the number is not zero.
I am exonerated by fact. The prosecutors did not have enough evidence to convict him of a crime related to the live bomb they found.
What are you going to do to argue against that? Deny history? It already happened. He wasn't convicted.
I don't see it, man, I think you just want to go against the grain, here.
Explain yourself.
He stopped because he was arrested. At that time they found two completed bombs in his cabin, so he was planning to renege on his deal not to plant any more bombs.