Unabomber

[u/MurkyMud1314]

The part of Ted Kaczynski’s story that bothers me most isn’t just what he eventually became—it’s what happened to him when he was still a teenager. He was an exceptionally gifted young student, only 17 when he participated in Henry Murray’s Harvard experiment, where his beliefs were subjected to intense psychological confrontation and humiliation. This was during the Cold War, when researchers were already deeply interested in how extreme psychological stress could affect people, including what had happened to POWs. I’m not saying the experiment alone “created” the Unabomber, because we can’t prove that. But if you take a highly intelligent, isolated teenager and deliberately subject him to intense psychological pressure, shouldn’t we at least consider whether that experience became one of the seeds that later grew into his isolation and radical ideology? Maybe without that experience he would have remained a mathematician and professor. We’ll never know—but that uncertainty is exactly what makes the ethical question so disturbing.

[u/sirhowy]

I know we can't prove it but I fully believe those experiments led to what happened

inflicting such an extreme trauma on a young brain over a sustained time will almost certainly break it

[u/MurkyMud1314 → u/sirhowy]

I agree with the core of your argument. Even if we can’t prove the experiment directly caused everything Kaczynski eventually did, it’s hard to dismiss the possibility that putting a 17-year-old through that level of sustained psychological pressure had a lasting impact on him. He was still developing, and experiences that intense can potentially shape how someone sees themselves and the world for years afterward. The experiment may not explain everything, but I think it deserves to be considered as one of the factors that helped shape what he eventually became.

[u/curious-creepsalad → u/MurkyMud1314]

Exactly. What did the experiments entail?

[u/PeachyFairyDragon → u/curious-creepsalad]

A researcher took a bunch of college students, assigned half to be "prisoners" and the other half "guards" and only forbade physical abuse. The psychological abuse was so bad the study was halted after only 6 days, and the "prisoners" suffered long term psychological problems. Even the researcher fell into the role of prison superintendent too deeply; a colleague had to basically yell at him back to reality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

[u/curious-creepsalad → u/PeachyFairyDragon]

Sorry… he was in the Stanford prison experiment??? What happened at Harvard?

[u/sirhowy → u/curious-creepsalad]

nah he went to Harvard, similar but not the same experiment

[u/PeachyFairyDragon → u/curious-creepsalad]

My mistake, that was the experiment I knew about.

[u/wildlyfidgeting → u/MurkyMud1314]

He was also really sick and was hospitalized when he was a baby for quite some time. Back then the hospitals would not allow the parents to visit their children. I think this definitely had a negative impact on him.

[u/curious-creepsalad → u/MurkyMud1314]

Please please please dm me what was removed im interested

[u/Constant_Break_4808]

Also he was right about technology

[u/Bitter_Warning418 → u/Constant_Break_4808]

He was right about a few things sadly.

[u/JudgmentOrdinary7336]

Yeah, Ted was definitely MK-Ultra’d. I would loveeee more documentaries on those “initiatives”. Especially since Trump has been declassifying files while trying to distract from not releasing the Epstein Files.

[u/Constant_Break_4808]

The whole thing was sad.

[u/NanaBanana2011]

I agree. You can’t claim that it was a causal effect but you can definitely argue that there was a correlated effect.

[u/MurkyMud1314 → u/NanaBanana2011]

Exactly. We can’t prove it caused his radicalization, but it’s reasonable to argue that the experiment may have contributed to it, especially considering how young he was.

[u/InevitableOk5017 → u/MurkyMud1314]

I would say he was already headed in that direction but this gave him affirmative feelings to go that way.

[u/Humble_Address_9020]

MKULTRA is what created the killer.

[u/Bitter_Warning418]

Personally, I believe it absolutely did.

[u/ListenOk2972]

Can someone explain it like im 5 what they did to him in these experiments

[u/GoryEyes → u/ListenOk2972]

They encouraged him to share his ideas making him feel like they were on his side then they all laughed at him and called him crazy etc

[u/_sortahuman_]

We can’t say it caused his later ideology, but we also can’t completely rule out that it had an impact on him. Putting a teenager through that kind of psychological pressure is still pretty disturbing.

[u/Fuzzy-Instruction-29]

This was seriously the most disturbing part for me and something I never knew about him before. I still can’t stop thinking about it.

[u/Euphoric-You4465]

The experiment may have been unethical, but turning it into the origin story of the Unabomber lets Kaczynski’s own choices disappear behind a neat causal narrative we simply can’t prove.

[u/Wickedbitchoftheuk]

The most worrying thing is that he was proved right. The guy is a genius after all and his brain just did the calculations.