In this chapter, we will discuss the thoughts of mathematician, Neo-Luddite, and serial killer Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski and compare them with the ideas of more mainstream thinkers. We limit our picture of Kaczynski
In this chapter, we will discuss the thoughts of mathematician, Neo-Luddite, and serial killer Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski and compare them with the ideas of more mainstream thinkers. We limit our picture of Kaczynski's thoughts to those presented in his manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future. Of these ideas, we are specifically interested in the ethical considerations that Kaczynski thinks should guide the progress of science and technology and the values that he thinks define modern technical professionals. These ideas combine to form a unique perspective on professional ethics for engineers. All quotations from Kaczynski are taken from his manifesto and referenced by paragraph number.
In this section, we will briefly describe Kaczynski's life, through the publication of his manifesto and his subsequent arrest, to provide context for his ideas. Kaczynski, born in 1942, was recognized early as an academic prodigy, with special abilities in mathematics. At the age of 16, he was accepted as a student to Harvard University, where he studied math and physics. Kaczynski went on to earn his PhD in mathematics from the University of Michigan, where his award-winning dissertation  was widely praised by the faculty members he worked with. After a short-lived professorship at UC Berkeley, Kaczynski resigned and built himself an isolated wood cabin in rural Montana.
From the early to mid-70's Kaczynski lived in this cabin without electricity or running water, learning a variety of survival skills and reading books about sociology and philosophy. In 1978, he began a series of 16 bombings, mostly targeting university professors and computer store owners. He was widely referred to as "the Unabomber" prior to his identification and arrest. Kaczynski's attacks culminated with a letter to the New York Times, which demanded that a reputable newspaper or journal publish his 35,000 word manifesto regarding the dangers of modern industrial-technological society. Though there was some initial hesitation, the New York Times and the Washington Post published the Unabomber manifesto on September 19, 1995. While a costly FBI investigation had been underway since the first bombing, Kaczynski was not caught and arrested until April 3, 1996, after his brother recognized the writing style of the published manifesto. In May 1998, Kaczynski was sentenced to life in prison, with no possibility of parole.
To understand Kaczynski's ethical perspective, we must first determine what he defines as good. He never defines this explicitly, concluding that "in a discussion of this kind one must rely heavily on intuitive judgment" (paragraph 231). He appears to assume a shared, intuitive understanding with the reader of what things are right. His occasional examples fall in line with conventional ideas. In paragraph 153, for example, he identifies "good purposes, such as discouraging child abuse or race hatred". His full definition of what is right cannot be typical, though, because society deemed his deliberate, murderous bombings criminal. We must therefore carefully analyze the things that Kaczynski classifies as right and wrong.
He justifies most of his objections to the modern industrial system by attributing "immense suffering all over the world" (paragraph 169) to it. We may thus conclude that Kaczynski considers the suffering of people bad. He deliberately inflicted suffering on people, though, which appears to violate this simple precept. What, according to Kaczynski, makes some suffering worth causing? He provides hints in the section on "Human Suffering" (paragraphs 167-170), where he states that "it is not all certain that the survival of the [industrial] system will lead to less suffering than the breakdown of the system would" (paragraph 169) and "one has to balance the struggle and death [of a revolution] against the loss of freedom and dignity" (paragraph 168). These excerpts suggest that Kaczynski's guiding principle is a sort of Utilitarian arithmetic for minimizing net human suffering. He makes this explicit for his own actions in paragraph 96, claiming that to have "some chance of making a lasting impression, we've had to kill people". He casts his murders as negative actions but believes that this harm was outweighed by the exposure of his writing.
Kaczynski's picture of psychology
Kaczynski's views on the ethics of technology rely on his model of human psychology and the ways that its interactions with modern technology allegedly lead to suffering. Kaczynski believes that a core element of human psychology is what he calls the "power process" (paragraph 33). He theorizes that, in order to have healthy, functional lives, people must formulate goals and exert nontrivial efforts to attain them. Reaching goals without effort is not sufficient; Kaczynski offers the trend that "leisured, secure aristocracies that have no need t