The Ted Kaczynski surprise
Ted Kaczynski was one of my “lockdown” reads [1] during a ~3 year twitter hiatus.
(A thread)
A few years before “Covid Times A.D.” I learned that Kaczynski’s writings were glowingly reviewed by prominent people and “captains of industry”, like the founder of Sun Microsystems.
Many “important” people seem to have read him, but didnt often talk about it publicly.
Only casual mentions and the occasional allusion …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 11, 2023
Apparently he was a brilliant mathematician.
This humbly bubbles up frequently in his writings as he explains a concept (example later). ams.org/journals/tran/…
Like this https://archive.is/z0LWB
I’d run into Kaczynski occasionally on podcasts also…
Or I’d run into Kaczynski while reading about other things. unlimitedhangout.com/2021/08/invest…
In a very brief “paid subscriber” chat a year or two ago with @JimmyFalunGong about data visualizations,
I learned more about Susanne Treister’s artwork.
Note the title of this one 👉
At the time of my chat with @JimmyFalunGong, I didn’t realize Suzanne Treister’s art wasn’t just crazy para-political infographics.
suzannetreister.net/HEXEN2/HEXEN_2…
Anyway, so when lockdowns came-around I had him in my reading list.
“Technological Slavery” was the most popular so I started with the least popular “Anti-Tech Revolution”
In the past I’d flirted with some of his shorter essays. And was immediately struck by how clear the voice was.
I expected incoherent rantings:
- sclerotic. twitchy.
- no citations.
- no synthesis.
But, it was the COMPLETE opposite!
(Also, he really was a nerd! writing his essays in LaTex ? 🤣).
but it wasnt till I got into his longer reads that I was also struck by how erudite this dude was.
He danced from “deep-cut” historical events to mathematics…
and he did it unpretentiously
he wasn’t showing off, he was humbly sharing ideas
…you actually learn stuff along the way.
His observation of trends were (to my surprise) usually backed-up with great historical references.
He knew enough history that he observed patterns…trends.
He draws political trends together across national boundaries and historical time periods, like a Political historian. At times it read like “Modernization & Postmodernization” (by Englehart) or something by Caroll Quigley.
Earlier I mentioned how the math bubbles up in his writings…
but he does it in a such a way that you dont “hear” ego in his writing.
He’s not humble-bragging.
You can tell he GENUINELY thinks this way and naturally draws connections back to Mathematics.
He observed things so succinctly sometimes…
It would make me pause and think:
“hey, I’ve noticed that too”
Those “Seinfeld” moments.
He has lots of keen observations about the time we are living in.
Like this bit on the silly way nuclear proliferation was handled
But, it doesn’t read like a madman living in the woods.
It reads more like a social philosopher who writes MacroEconomic pieces for Stratfor or the Financial Times of London.
Lots of brilliant and objective observations of the geopolitical “factions” hiding in plain sight..
He even calls out the slow incremental creep of technocratic authoritarianism hiding behind utopian “marketing”
Anyway, reading Kaczynski was quite a surprise.
Here is full pdf of “Industrial Society and Its Future”,
his books are also on amazon,
and many of his essays and full books (sans formatting) are free on archive.org/details/kaczyn…
