Dialogues between US and Canadian intellectuals of

Dialogues between US and Canadian intellectuals of Russian descent...

Tony Senatore

What is the difference between what Ted Kaczynski did and what Luigi Mangione is accused of doing? Why is one widely regarded as a villain while the other is sometimes celebrated as a hero? If both cases involve the belief that killing someone is justified because of the harm they allegedly represent to society, what does that say about our moral consistency? Have we reached a point where we judge murder not by the act itself, but by whether we agree with the killer’s cause? What a sick world we live in.  The latest from the chooch off the streets:

Last night, I watched the Netflix movie about Theodore Kaczynski(the Unabomber) and then went back and read his manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future. I had not thought seriously about Kaczynski for many years. What struck me most was that, whatever else one thinks of him, he was not simply some lunatic living in a cabin in the woods. He was an extraordinarily intelligent man who developed a coherent, if deeply disturbing, philosophical critique of modern civilization.

I do not agree with the methods he used to usher in the world he wanted. In fact, I consider the murder of innocent people morally indefensible. But I find myself agreeing with many of his ideas about technology, human autonomy, and the direction of modern society.

What interests me most about Kaczynski today, however, is not simply his critique of technology. It is the dangerous step he took from believing that he had identified a profound problem to believing that violence was justified in confronting it. That distinction has become particularly relevant in an age of artificial intelligence, when Kaczynski's warnings about technological dependence seem less like the product of an eccentric mind and more like questions we are increasingly forced to confront. At the same time, recent acts of political violence raise an even broader question: What happens when people become so convinced that another person or institution is harming society that they conclude killing that person is morally justified? The murders of Charlie Kirk and Brian Thompson, and the deification of their murderers by members of our society make evident that America  and the rest of the world is heading down a dangerous path.

To me, that is Kaczynski's central lesson. We can recognize that someone has identified a genuine problem without accepting his proposed solution. We can even agree with part of his diagnosis while completely rejecting the idea that the people he considers responsible become legitimate targets. Kaczynski's ideas about technology deserve examination; his justification for violence does not.
That realization becomes especially interesting when considering artificial intelligence.

Kaczynski's fundamental concern was not that every individual piece of technology was evil. He argued that technological society gradually creates a system upon which human beings become dependent. The more sophisticated the system becomes, the harder it becomes for an individual to live outside it. What begins as a collection of tools eventually becomes an environment that determines how people work, communicate, obtain information, entertain themselves, and even understand the world.

AI could represent the culmination of that process.
For the first time, we are developing machines capable not merely of performing physical tasks but of activities traditionally regarded as distinctly human: writing, composing music, analyzing information, solving problems, tutoring, creating images, conducting research, and helping people make decisions. The attraction is obvious. AI can make people more productive and give individuals access to capabilities that once belonged exclusively to highly trained specialists.

But Kaczynski would ask a different question: What happens to human beings when they no longer need to develop those capabilities themselves?

This connects directly with his concept of the "power process." Kaczynski believed that human beings need to set goals, overcome obstacles, exercise their abilities, and experience the satisfaction of accomplishing something through their own efforts. If an artificial intelligence system can write the essay, create the photograph, compose the song, solve the mathematical problem, conduct the research, and eventually make the decision, we may gain enormous convenience while losing something less measurable: the experience of doing these things ourselves.

Another problem that concerns Kaczynski is the concentration of power. The most sophisticated AI systems require enormous amounts of computing power, data, infrastructure, and capital. Consequently, much of AI development happens within enormous corporations and institutions. Individuals may use the technology, but generally do not control the system that makes it possible.
That is precisely the sort of dependency Kaczynski warned about.

But a second part of Kaczynski's story cannot be separated from his ideas about technology. His argument did not remain an intellectual critique of modern society. He eventually concluded that the problem was so fundamental, and the consequences so serious, that ordinary political debate and reform could not address it. In his mind, the technological system had become an existential threat to human freedom, and that conclusion changed the nature of the question he was asking. He was no longer asking, "Is this system harming us?" He was asking, "What are people justified in doing to stop it?"
That is the point where a critique of technology becomes a question about political violence.

Kaczynski crossed a moral boundary when he decided that his conviction about the dangers of industrial society justified deliberately using violence against human beings. His bombing campaign killed three people and injured many others. Whatever merit there may be in some of his observations about technology, those observations cannot provide a moral justification for murder.
What interests me, however, is not simply that Kaczynski crossed that boundary, but how familiar the underlying reasoning can become when people are convinced that they are confronting a profound threat to society.

The reasoning can take a deceptively simple form: if a person or institution is believed to be causing serious harm, and if ordinary political mechanisms are believed to be incapable of stopping that harm, then the person who commits violence can begin to see himself not as a murderer, but as someone taking extraordinary action against an extraordinary threat.

That is the connection I see between Kaczynski's story and contemporary political violence. The ideologies can be completely different. The targets can be completely different. The grievances can even be legitimate. But the moral leap can be remarkably similar: moving from "this person or institution is doing something harmful" to "therefore violence against that person is justified."
That distinction matters enormously when thinking about the recent killings of public figures such as Brian Thompson and Charlie Kirk. The circumstances and alleged motives in those cases differ, and it would be irresponsible to assume every act of political violence rests on the same ideology or reasoning. But they force us to confront the same underlying question: Can hatred of what someone represents eventually become a justification for killing the person who represents it?

For me, that is one of the most important questions I take away from reading Kaczynski today.

You can believe a system is profoundly harmful without believing the people operating within it are legitimate targets. You can believe corporations have too much power without believing executives deserve to die. You can believe a political movement is dangerous without believing its supporters have forfeited their right to live.

And it is possible to agree with parts of Kaczynski's diagnosis while completely rejecting the moral conclusion he drew from it.
In fact, that may be the most important reason to take his ideas seriously rather than dismissing him as merely a lunatic. If we reduce Kaczynski to "the Unabomber," we can dismiss the uncomfortable questions he raised. If we examine his arguments honestly, we can consider whether some of his criticisms of technological society have merit while also examining the catastrophic consequences of believing that having the right diagnosis gives someone the right to use violence.

That is where AI brings the entire issue back into the present. The more powerful technology becomes, the more important it is to debate what it is doing to human autonomy. But the more passionately we believe that technology, corporations, governments, or political movements are threatening society, the more important it becomes to maintain the moral distinction between opposing an idea and destroying the people who hold it.

Kaczynski's warning about technology may deserve debate.
His justification of violence does not follow from it.

Perhaps that is the ultimate lesson I take from reading his manifesto. We should be willing to listen even to an individual whose conclusions we find profoundly disturbing when he raises questions that deserve serious consideration. But intellectual brilliance does not confer moral authority, and identifying a genuine problem does not give someone the right to decide that another human being has become expendable.

The challenge for us, particularly as artificial intelligence becomes more powerful, is to preserve both sides of that principle: We should never be afraid to question where technology is taking us, but we should also never become so convinced that we possess the answer that we believe violence against those who disagree with us is justified.

The first danger is losing human autonomy.
The second is losing our humanity.

Response by methamonk Angelblazer

Dear Tony, sorry, but you mixed two distinct problems of human psychology into one cocktail, and that is where I think your otherwise thoughtful argument starts to mislead.

Problem 1 is cognitive: how do we make sense of abstract, systemic harm?

Industrial society, the technological system, the healthcare industry, political polarization — none of these have a face. They are distributed, bureaucratic, and faceless. The human mind is very bad at hating an abstraction.

So we do what humans have always done: we personify it. We need a scapegoat. We need to reduce a system to a person.

Kaczynski said he was at war with the technological system, but he didn't bomb "the system." He mailed bombs to specific professors, engineers, and a computer store owner.

The same cognitive shortcut is at work in the cases you mention. No one can shoot "the health insurance industry" or shoot "polarization." But a mind desperate for a concrete target can convince itself that Brian Thompson is the industry, or that Charlie Kirk is the movement. The victim stops being a person and becomes a symbol. This is not a new moral inconsistency. It is the ancient mechanism of the scapegoat.

Problem 2 is moral: how do we give ourselves permission to kill?

And this problem operates by completely different laws.

It has nothing to do with whether our diagnosis of society is intelligent, coherent, or even true. It follows the logic of moral disengagement:

1. I have identified a profound, existential threat.
2. Ordinary means — politics, debate, reform — are incapable of stopping it.
3. Therefore, I am no longer a murderer. I am an instrument of justice. A surgeon removing a tumor.
That is the moral leap you correctly describe. But notice: the brilliance of the diagnosis does not affect the legitimacy of the leap. A true diagnosis does not make murder less of a murder. A false diagnosis does not make it more of one. The act must be judged on its own.

This is why I disagree with your central question: "What is the difference between what Kaczynski did and what Luigi Mangione is accused of doing? Why is one a villain and the other a hero?"

From the perspective of Problem 2, there is no difference. Both crossed the same moral boundary. You are absolutely right about that.

From the perspective of Problem 1, there is a psychological difference that explains the different public reaction — but does not justify it. Kaczynski's victims were largely random to the public. They were killed to send a message about an idea. It was textbook terrorism: the victim is instrumental.

In the Thompson and Kirk cases, the victims were not random in the mind of the killer or the public. They were perceived as the direct operators of the harm itself. People are not celebrating murder as such. They are celebrating the fantasy that a complex, faceless system can be stopped by removing one person who personifies it. It is an illusion of agency for people who feel powerless.

That illusion is precisely why your warning is important, but it also needs to be sharpened. We have not "reached a point where we judge murder by whether we agree with the cause." We have always done that. Human morality has always weighed both act and motive — that is why the law distinguishes between a hitman and a man who kills to protect his child. The inconsistency is not new. What is new is how easily Problem 1 now feeds Problem 2.

And this is where AI brings your argument full circle, but in a darker way than you suggest.

Kaczynski feared AI would make us helplessly dependent and strip us of the "power process" — the need to struggle and achieve. I think the greater danger is the opposite. AI will not make us feel helpless. It will make each of us feel absolutely certain. It will give each of us a perfectly coherent, personalized, seemingly brilliant diagnosis of what is wrong with the world, complete with footnotes.

If everyone walks around with their own infallible diagnosis in their pocket, the temptation to take the second step — to grant oneself the moral license to act on it — becomes overwhelming.

Your final principle is therefore exactly right, but it needs to be absolute:

We should be willing to listen to uncomfortable ideas, even from deeply disturbed individuals. But intellectual brilliance never confers moral authority, and identifying a genuine problem never gives anyone the right to decide that another human being has become expendable.

The first problem is how we understand the world.
The second is how we permit ourselves to destroy a part of it.

We must never confuse the two.

P.S. Together with my assistant and personal secretary, Miroshka the AI, I came up with this image to illustrate our dialogue — a Russian intellectual from Moscow, from his estate in Zendikovo, which I have renamed Sbrendikovo — a play on Glupovo, "Fools' Town," suggesting a place gone mad.

My neighbor Big Alex, a Moscow intellectual in exile, sits on his porch trying to solve Problem 1 — diagnosing why the world has gone mad — while being completely unaware that Problem 2 — the conviction that his brilliant diagnosis gives him the right to decide who is expendable — has already settled in with his samovar.

He believes he is fighting "the System." The System, meanwhile, is just waiting for him to finish his tea.