this post was submitted on 30 May 2025
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This dude was a pos bc he hurt so many people for no real reason, but when you read about the stuff he was worried about, it's eerily accurate. It's like he crawled inside Peter Thiel's head, got a glimpse of his plans, and that's what set him off the deep end.
Editing to add, he was already in a very vulnerable state mentally when he decided to drop out of society, very likely related to an unethical psychological experiment he "participated" in at Harvard.
The Technological Society is the book he read while living in the wilderness that actually seemed to inspire his writings.
I mean....
True, and I didn't mean it in a necessarily derogatory way in terms of judgment for his mental illness, but for his actions. I know I should be more careful about saying things like that, and didn't mean to imply anything negative about people who struggle with mental illness.
It's complicated. Nobody should have had to go through what he did, but something awful somebody went through can't be used as a justification for them doing something awful to somebody else. It can be the reason they did it, and it may arguably make them not fully responsible for their own behavior, but it also doesn't make them an innocent.
So did anyone else in the study turn to terrorism to express themselves...?
To be fair, he was probably the youngest and most vulnerable participant, and the experiment lasted 3 years. He started attending Harvard at 16, and was probably around 16/17 when the study began.
They used psychological warfare on a kid who was already socially reserved on top of feeling alienated from his peers due to his age, and likely stressed due to being away from his family and home for the first time in his young life. During a developmental period that we now recognize is probably the most critical window for young men in particular to develop a mental illness like schizophrenia, they did this:
Like holy shit...
His motives were downright prescient, but his targets were poorly chosen to put it lightly