Ted Kaczynski as a relatively apolitical test case for cancellation norms:
Ted Kaczynski was a mathematics professor who decided that industrial society was terrible, and waged a terroristic bombing campaign to foment a revolution against technology. As part of this campaign, he wrote a manifesto titled “Industrial Society and Its Future” and said that if a major newspaper printed it verbatim he would desist from terrorism. He is currently serving eight life sentences in a “super-max” security prison in Colorado.
My understanding is that his manifesto (which, incidentally, has been updated and given a new title “Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How”, the second edition of which was released this year) is lucid and thought-out. Here are some questions the answers to which are not obvious to me:
Should anybody read “Industrial Society and Its Future”, given its origin?
Suppose an EA group wrote to Kaczynski in prison, asking him to write a letter about opposition to technology to be read aloud and discussed in an EA meetup, and he complied. Would it have been unacceptable for the EA group to do this, and should it be unacceptable for the EA group to hold this meetup?
Generally speaking, if someone commits heinous and unambiguous crimes in service of an objective like “getting people to read X”, and it doesn’t look like they’re doing a tricky reverse-psychology thing or anything like that, then we should not cooperate with that objective. If Kaczynski had posted his manifesto on LessWrong, I would feel comfortable deleting it and any links to it, and I would encourage the moderator of any other forum to do the same under those circumstances.
But this is a specific and unusual circumstance. When people try to cancel each other, usually there’s no connection or a very tenuous connection between their writing and what they’re accused of. (Also the crime is usually less severe and less well proven.) In that case, the argument is different; either the people doing the cancelling think that the crime wasn’t adequately punished, and are trying to create justice via a distributed minor punishment. If people are right about whether the thing is bad, then the main issues are about standards of evidence (biased readings and out-of-context quotes go a long way), proportionality (it’s not worth blowing up peoples’ lives over having said something dumb on the internet), and relation to nonpunishers (problems happen when things escalate from telling people why someone is bad, to punishing people for not believing or not caring).
There’s no need to cancel anyone who’s failing to have influence already. I suspect there are no apolotical test cases: cancellation (in the form of verbally attacking and de-legitimizing someone as a person, rather than arguing against specific portions of their work) is primarily politically motivated. It’s pretty pure ad-hominem argument: “don’t listen to or respect this person, regardless of what they’re saying”. In this case, I’m not listening because I think it’s low-value on it’s own, regardless of authorship.
The manifesto is pretty easy to find in PDF form for free. I wasn’t able to get very far—way too many crackpot signals and didn’t seem worth my time. To your bullet points:
I can read this two ways: “should anybody” meaning “do you recommend any specific person read it” or “do you object to people reading it”. My answers are “yes, but not many people”, and “no.”. Anybody who is interested, either from a direct curiosity on the topic (which I predict won’t be rewarded) or from wanting to understand this kind of epistemic pathology (which might be worthwhile) should read it.
It’s absolutely acceptable. I wouldn’t enjoy it, but I’m not a member of the group, so no harm there. To decide whether YOUR group should do it, try to identify what you’d hope to get out of it, and what likely consequences there are from pursuing that direction. If your group is visible and sensitive to public perception (aka politically influenced), then certainly you should consider those affects.
To be explicit, here are some reasons that the EA community should cancel Kaczynski. Note that I do not necessarily think that they are sound or decisive.
EAs are known as utilitarians who are concerned about the impact of AI technology. By associating with him, that could give people the false impression that EAs are in favour of terroristic bombing campaigns to retard technological development, which would damage the EA community.
His threat to bomb more people and buildings if the Washington Post (WaPo) didn’t publish his manifesto damaged good discourse norms by inducing the WaPo to talk about something it wasn’t otherwise inclined to talk about, and good discourse norms are important for effective altruism.
It seems to me (not having read the manifesto) that the policies he advocates would cause large amounts of harm. For instance, without modern medical technology, I and many others would not have survived to the age of one year.
His bombing campaign is evidence of very poor character.
Who wrote these: “(which, incidentally, has been updated and given a new title “Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How”, the second edition of which was released this year)”?
How long is “eight life sentences”, and how much time does he have left?
Yes, there were no further bombings after its publication.
He did.
“eight life sentences”, IIUC, means that he will serve the rest of his life, and if the justice system decides that one (or any number less than 8) of the sentences should be vacated, he will still serve the rest of his life. I’m not sure what his life expectancy is, but he’s 78 at the moment.
Ted Kaczynski as a relatively apolitical test case for cancellation norms:
Ted Kaczynski was a mathematics professor who decided that industrial society was terrible, and waged a terroristic bombing campaign to foment a revolution against technology. As part of this campaign, he wrote a manifesto titled “Industrial Society and Its Future” and said that if a major newspaper printed it verbatim he would desist from terrorism. He is currently serving eight life sentences in a “super-max” security prison in Colorado.
My understanding is that his manifesto (which, incidentally, has been updated and given a new title “Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How”, the second edition of which was released this year) is lucid and thought-out. Here are some questions the answers to which are not obvious to me:
Should anybody read “Industrial Society and Its Future”, given its origin?
Suppose an EA group wrote to Kaczynski in prison, asking him to write a letter about opposition to technology to be read aloud and discussed in an EA meetup, and he complied. Would it have been unacceptable for the EA group to do this, and should it be unacceptable for the EA group to hold this meetup?
Generally speaking, if someone commits heinous and unambiguous crimes in service of an objective like “getting people to read X”, and it doesn’t look like they’re doing a tricky reverse-psychology thing or anything like that, then we should not cooperate with that objective. If Kaczynski had posted his manifesto on LessWrong, I would feel comfortable deleting it and any links to it, and I would encourage the moderator of any other forum to do the same under those circumstances.
But this is a specific and unusual circumstance. When people try to cancel each other, usually there’s no connection or a very tenuous connection between their writing and what they’re accused of. (Also the crime is usually less severe and less well proven.) In that case, the argument is different; either the people doing the cancelling think that the crime wasn’t adequately punished, and are trying to create justice via a distributed minor punishment. If people are right about whether the thing is bad, then the main issues are about standards of evidence (biased readings and out-of-context quotes go a long way), proportionality (it’s not worth blowing up peoples’ lives over having said something dumb on the internet), and relation to nonpunishers (problems happen when things escalate from telling people why someone is bad, to punishing people for not believing or not caring).
There’s no need to cancel anyone who’s failing to have influence already. I suspect there are no apolotical test cases: cancellation (in the form of verbally attacking and de-legitimizing someone as a person, rather than arguing against specific portions of their work) is primarily politically motivated. It’s pretty pure ad-hominem argument: “don’t listen to or respect this person, regardless of what they’re saying”. In this case, I’m not listening because I think it’s low-value on it’s own, regardless of authorship.
The manifesto is pretty easy to find in PDF form for free. I wasn’t able to get very far—way too many crackpot signals and didn’t seem worth my time. To your bullet points:
I can read this two ways: “should anybody” meaning “do you recommend any specific person read it” or “do you object to people reading it”. My answers are “yes, but not many people”, and “no.”. Anybody who is interested, either from a direct curiosity on the topic (which I predict won’t be rewarded) or from wanting to understand this kind of epistemic pathology (which might be worthwhile) should read it.
It’s absolutely acceptable. I wouldn’t enjoy it, but I’m not a member of the group, so no harm there. To decide whether YOUR group should do it, try to identify what you’d hope to get out of it, and what likely consequences there are from pursuing that direction. If your group is visible and sensitive to public perception (aka politically influenced), then certainly you should consider those affects.
To be explicit, here are some reasons that the EA community should cancel Kaczynski. Note that I do not necessarily think that they are sound or decisive.
EAs are known as utilitarians who are concerned about the impact of AI technology. By associating with him, that could give people the false impression that EAs are in favour of terroristic bombing campaigns to retard technological development, which would damage the EA community.
His threat to bomb more people and buildings if the Washington Post (WaPo) didn’t publish his manifesto damaged good discourse norms by inducing the WaPo to talk about something it wasn’t otherwise inclined to talk about, and good discourse norms are important for effective altruism.
It seems to me (not having read the manifesto) that the policies he advocates would cause large amounts of harm. For instance, without modern medical technology, I and many others would not have survived to the age of one year.
His bombing campaign is evidence of very poor character.
Did a newspaper print it verbatim?
Did he desist? Did he start again later?
Who wrote these: “(which, incidentally, has been updated and given a new title “Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How”, the second edition of which was released this year)”?
How long is “eight life sentences”, and how much time does he have left?
Yes, it was published by the Washington Post.
Yes, there were no further bombings after its publication.
He did.
“eight life sentences”, IIUC, means that he will serve the rest of his life, and if the justice system decides that one (or any number less than 8) of the sentences should be vacated, he will still serve the rest of his life. I’m not sure what his life expectancy is, but he’s 78 at the moment.