I’m sure many of you are familiar with the work of Theodore Kaczynski (the Unabomber). I read his manifesto and, not expecting anything too smart or logical, it actually made a lot of sense. The man is really smart. I was delightfully surprised.
“Modern society is in certain respects extremely permissive. In matters that are irrelevant to the functioning of the system we can generally do what we please. We can believe in any religion we like (as long as it does not encourage behavior that is dangerous to the system). We can go to bed with anyone we like (as long as we practice “safe sex”). We can do anything we like as long as it is UNIMPORTANT. But in all IMPORTANT matters the system tends increasingly to regulate our behavior.”
Clearly it wasn’t a good thing for him to kill innocent people, but what do you guys think of him?
He is quite intelligent, in fact he attended Harvard as an undergraduate at 16 and completed a degree in mathematics, he then completed a mathematics PhD from the University of Michigan and by all accounts he was a genius when it came to mathematics.
Also, from what I remember his manifesto did not contain any grammatical errors. However, I found his ideology is mostly composed of anarcho-primitivism of the ‘lets give up all modern technology and move to the woods’ type. He also had no qualms with using force to achieve his goals or to bring about the kind of society he wished. I find deficiencies with his ideology e.g. anarcho primitivism, but I don’t want to dwell on them at the moment.
I think he illustrates [‘Rothbard’s law’ ](http://In all the years I attended his seminar and was with him, he never talked about foreign policy. If he was an interventionist on foreign affairs, I never knew it. This is a violation of Rothbard’s law, which is that people tend to specialize in what they are worst at. Henry George, for example, is great on everything but land, so therefore he writes about land 90% of the time. Friedman is great except on money, so he concentrates on money. Mises, however, and Kirzner too, always did what they were best at.)which is basically ‘people specialize at what they are worst at’.
He’s one of those guys who has many interesting insights but reaches misguided conclusions. For example, the part about leftists is pretty interesting. He’s sort of like Chomsky (but not as insane
That’s crazy. I hadn’t heard that before, but I looked it up and you’re definitely right. I know that he began the bombings after he saw the environment being ruined, but I wonder if he went crazy in some way to retaliate or if he actually thought that what he did was the best way to bring about the specific change he desired in society. Do you happen to know which kind of mathematics he studied? I’m glad the terrorist networks aren’t full of people as smart as he. It’s too bad he chose the path he did.
Wikipedia says that his field of study was something called geometric function theory, though my mathematics is woefully inadequate to understand exactly what he was doing. Here is a preview to his dissertation though.
That’s awesome. I hadn’t really studied his economic beliefs before. I’ll never understand why the government doesn’t listen to these intelligent economists.
I’m left wondering if such mathematicians are even aware of the philosophy of methodology when it comes to the sciences. Honestly, it would be great if some of these mathematicians saw what Austrian econ. had to offer, and took up some of the ideas/arguments.
I feel like many of those mathematicians didn’t go from this to this within their own lifetimes. That’s the only way to do real math. With beards and bombs.
That’s the only way to do real math. With beards and bombs.
I don’t get it. He sounds like a nutjob who blew up innocent people. The little math he did do is so abstract that no one gives two craps about it.
If you want to see a real genius, look at Euler. He wrote like 800 papers on math and didn’t leave behind a trail of bodies.
I’m left wondering if such mathematicians are even aware of the philosophy of methodology when it comes to the sciences.
Probably not very. I mean they use the tools of deductive logic and they use the scientific method (e.g. Euler and Gauss did tons of numerical experiments: http://www.maa.org/editorial/euler/How%20Euler%20Did%20It%2022%20False%20induction.pdf; the Riemann hypothesis is studied experimentally with computers and is often used as a practical assumption in proofs).
Also, a lot of it is really intuition, some of it visual and spatial (I believe Hadamard addressed this: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/5896.html). But you don’t have to be an expert on epistemology to use most of these tools. The average person off the street knows these tools to some extent.
Honestly, it would be great if some of these mathematicians saw what Austrian econ. had to offer, and took up some of the ideas/arguments.
As the axioms are plausible, it is appealing to a math guy. But the use of imprecise verbal argumentation rather than symbolic manipulation makes it lose some of its appeal. P.S. from a scientific (not strictly mathematical) point of view, the dearth of experimental evidence is frustrating.
Haha! I didn’t mean to be offensive or anything. I’ve done plenty of supplementary math studies when getting my computer science degree. From the math courses I’ve been through and seen, and the math majors I’ve spoken with, there doesn’t seem to be much talk of methodology outside of the little bit in statistics courses. Not that epistemology is a central topic for mathematics in and of itself, but I think it’s important to know it anyways.
I’m just interested in having this stuff exposed to the “intellectual” or “opinion forming” (as I see it) class of people.
I wonder if this is related to the fact that Ted was friends with John Zerzan. Zerzan, a famous anarcho-primitivist, wrote an essay damning Chomsky called ‘Who is Chomsky?’ or something like that.
