I'm not a mathematician but I'm friends with several, and Paulos was spot on. It was super obvious he was either in math or in one of the formal-logic-y corners of PhilSci - there's a really unmistakable way they specify terms.
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Replying to @iridienne @arthur_affect
Right at the beginning (bc I'm definitely not wading through the whole thing right now)pic.twitter.com/oO4jHmc8zq
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Replying to @iridienne @arthur_affect
His *argument* is a sociological one, but the *way* he argues is pure mathematician.
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Replying to @iridienne @arthur_affect
(It's also striking, the degree to which Yarvin clearly models his writing on TK's, but CY is utterly without the intellectual clarity or formal training to pull it off.)
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Replying to @iridienne
I do kind of remember him describing this debate with his colleagues and him pointing this out and colleagues saying that someone as disturbed as the Unabomber couldn't *actually* be a mathematician but must be a dilettante crank pretending to be one
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Replying to @arthur_affect @iridienne
And Paulos was like "No his argumentation is fluent and sophisticated enough that I consider it quite likely he's the holder of an advanced degree and has probably been published" And lo and behold, he was right about that too
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Replying to @arthur_affect @iridienne
People are reluctant to give credit to bad people for anything but as he kind of trollishly pointed out (as did other commentators like Chuck Klostermann) to successfully be the Unabomber and not get caught for so long requires an unusual level of competence
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Replying to @arthur_affect
I mean, the reason his argument ends up bad is because ultimately, "doing sociology" is very little like "doing math", and competence at one doesn't automatically translate to the other (a mistake which TK is neither the first nor the last STEMlord to make).
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Replying to @iridienne
IIRC both before and after he was caught as the Unabomber Kaczynski got a ton of praise for his math skills and he only didn't go further in academia because of, well, his profound hatred of human society
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Replying to @arthur_affect @iridienne
His doctoral advisor said his dissertation was the best one he'd ever read, in hindsight the field he was working in barely existed at the time and he was one of the pioneers
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He is definitely much much smarter than all his modern imitators who have neither accomplished anything intellectually nor actually killed anyone
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Replying to @arthur_affect
@ireneista Hilariously (fsvo 'hilarious') he's not the only complex analysis guy who turned out to be a spree killer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/André_Bloch_(mathematician) … Possibly it's something about complex analysis?
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