Hacker News Reader

Comment by miramba | Hacker News Reader

What did the CIA do? I checked his Wikipedia page, not mentioned there.

He participated in about 200 hours of experiments from the age of 16 to 19 which basically consisted of "roasting" and bullying him. The experimenters intentionally sought out the most insecure "maladjusted" students at Harvard (Kaczynski was accepted at 16) and lied about what the experiment was going to do.

The entire thing was horrible and profoundly unethical. His brother has stated it really changed Kaczynski.

Some people have claimed that it was run by the CIA as part of MKUltra. This is certainly possible but not really substantiated by clear evidence as far as I've seen, and even if the CIA has some relationship they probably didn't instigate the experiments but just asked for research notes or something relatively benign like that. We'll probably never know for sure though.

Whatever the case may be, of the group of students that were subjected to these abusive experiments only one became a terrorist, so "the CIA created the Unabomber" is rather simplistic IMO. The primary blame remains with Kaczynski, no matter what.

>Whatever the case may be, of the group of students that were subjected to these abusive experiments only one became a terrorist

Source? What is the incidence of terrorism in that group and in the general population?

I don't have any data or sources on this; if my memory is correct the participants were actually anonymous and the only reason we know Ted Kaczynski participated is because of his brother, so we don't even know who the other people were. However, I expect if another one had also become a terrorist, we would have heard about it. There were just a handful of participants (1 or 2 dozen or thereabouts), so it's not really enough for a "proper study" anyway.

Also: many people (myself included) were extensively and viciously bullied in their childhood and/or teen years. Many suffer profoundly negative effects from this, sometimes for decades or even their entire lives, but most are not terrorists. And even if it did turn out that the incidence of terrorists was higher: that still doesn't absolve them or their own responsibility in committing violent acts against random people (i.e. terrorism).

Are you claiming that childhood bullying is equivalent to a program run by the CIA exploring the use of psychological torture and mind-altering substances?

It was not run by the CIA, as I have mentioned, and it certainly didn't involve mind-altering substances. The specific experiments he participated in involved abusive interrogation sessions to measure stress responses, which is roughly analogous to bullying, yes.

To wit, the study was run my Harvard psychologists, not CIA.

Well, whatever the size of the group is (let's call it X) it's at least 1 out of X. Which is almost certainly more than the general population.

By that logic, we might as well just blame it on his beard.

And the p-value?

> [1] The CIA was carrying out its mind control program at this university, using the most varied techniques for this purpose. Thus, he endured the administration of substances, hypnosis, electric shocks, and sophisticated psychological techniques. This Harvard experiment lasted almost three years and Kaczynski was one of those experimental subjects.

[1] https://exploringyourmind.com/the-harvard-experiment-that-le...

Search for the section "psychological study" under "Early Life".

"Some sources have suggested that Murray's experiments were part of Project MKUltra" doesn't really seem like strong evidence.

right after that sentence, you have -

"A Freedom of Information Act document released by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2018 states that "a considerable amount of credible circumstantial evidence suggests that Theodore Kaczynski. also known as the Unabomber, participated in CIA-sponsored MK-ULTRA experiments conducted at Harvard University from the fall of 1959 through the spring of 1962".[26] Chase and others have also suggested that this experience may have motivated Kaczynski's criminal activities"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com