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Comment by bbor | Hacker News Reader

>He justifies the trade-offs that come with losing industrial society as being worth the cost.

That is fucking deranged. Describing it as deranged is an understatement, and it blows my mind that you’re defending it _on an internet forum_. Only someone who’s never seen someone die of violence or disease could ever say some shit like that.

Today is reminding me that I need to take hacker news commenters much less seriously…

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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.

Wait, whom are you quoting (and responding to) here?

In any case it sounds like you're describing a trolley problem (where people die whatever option you choose and you might pick the one killing less).

I think the parent comment was deleted? And I’m quoting the wiki on his manifesto.

I don’t see “no action or choice is perfectly good” as an excuse to take bs like “what if disease and famine and ignorance are good for us” seriously.

And that’s not really what the trolley problem is about, AFAIU it’s about agency and culpability - I think you’re more discussing basic utilitarianism?

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