Not sure I appreciate you quoting it without a content warning, I for one am considering taking Eliezer’s advice seriously in the future.
I did read the Unabomber manifesto a while ago, mainly because I was fascinated that a terrorist could be such an eloquent and at the surface level coherent-seeming writer. But I think that was the main lesson for me, being more intelligent does not automatically make you good/moral.
Perhaps I could add… Avert thy eyes, lest thy mind be penetrated by words from a man most immoral!
Jokes aside, the quote is already preceded by an introduction as a courtesy to the reader, informing them about its unusual context. I reject any blame for not explicitly adhering to the “content warning” meme’s formatting rules because there is no normative reason for me to do so. At the object level, the quoted passage is a sober discussion of AI risk which is ostensibly far ahead of its time.[1]
I understand the logic of refusing engagement so as not to incentivize terrorism as a means to spread ideas, though there is an apparent coordination problem whereby curiosity drives defection from this standard, which ends up producing real-world consequences. To the extent that other important pieces of political writing are also tied to violence, adhering to this standard would make the study of history almost impossible, ultimately leading to a deterioration of one’s priors.
For what it’s worth, I reject Kaczynski’s claim that terrorism was necessary for the work to achieve significant recognition. I think it is largely sophisticated enough that people here would be discussing it even if it entered the world in a more mundane way.
Parenthetically, it was published roughly around the same time that the author of the 2025 bestseller If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies was searching for ways to bring about the technological singularity as fast as possible.
Not sure I appreciate you quoting it without a content warning, I for one am considering taking Eliezer’s advice seriously in the future.
I did read the Unabomber manifesto a while ago, mainly because I was fascinated that a terrorist could be such an eloquent and at the surface level coherent-seeming writer. But I think that was the main lesson for me, being more intelligent does not automatically make you good/moral.
Perhaps I could add… Avert thy eyes, lest thy mind be penetrated by words from a man most immoral!
Jokes aside, the quote is already preceded by an introduction as a courtesy to the reader, informing them about its unusual context. I reject any blame for not explicitly adhering to the “content warning” meme’s formatting rules because there is no normative reason for me to do so. At the object level, the quoted passage is a sober discussion of AI risk which is ostensibly far ahead of its time.[1]
I understand the logic of refusing engagement so as not to incentivize terrorism as a means to spread ideas, though there is an apparent coordination problem whereby curiosity drives defection from this standard, which ends up producing real-world consequences. To the extent that other important pieces of political writing are also tied to violence, adhering to this standard would make the study of history almost impossible, ultimately leading to a deterioration of one’s priors.
For what it’s worth, I reject Kaczynski’s claim that terrorism was necessary for the work to achieve significant recognition. I think it is largely sophisticated enough that people here would be discussing it even if it entered the world in a more mundane way.
Parenthetically, it was published roughly around the same time that the author of the 2025 bestseller If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies was searching for ways to bring about the technological singularity as fast as possible.