In a conversation on episode #2467 of The Joe Rogan Experience, host Joe Rogan and guest Michael Pollan turned their discussion of artificial intelligence toward one of the most controversial figures in recent American history: Ted Kaczynski.
The exchange came near the end of a lengthy conversation about AI’s trajectory, the risks of unchecked technological development, and whether humanity has any real power to stop what has already been set in motion.
Pollan had just told Rogan he believed it was too late to course correct, saying, “I don’t think we can do anything about it at this point in time.”
It was at that moment that Rogan brought up Kaczynski. “I think Ted Kaczynski tried that,” Rogan said. “That’s what he was trying to do. Like, that’s what’s really crazy. His manifesto was all about stopping technology because he thought it was going to surpass the human race.”
Pollan acknowledged there was a growing conversation around Kaczynski’s writings, noting that a community of people had begun revisiting them. Pollan said, “There’s a whole community of people now revisiting his writing.”
Rogan agreed and said: “I know it’s kind of nuts. He’s the hero we didn’t know we needed.”
Rogan quickly pulled back from the statement. “Not really,” he said. “But also, you know his history. He was a part of the Harvard program where they humiliated him and did all sorts of different things to try to see what they could do.”
Rogan was referring to the well-documented psychological experiments conducted at Harvard in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in which a young Kaczynski, then a student, was subjected to stress-inducing interrogations as part of research overseen by psychologist Henry Murray.
The sessions involved sustained verbal abuse and humiliation, and many who have studied Kaczynski point to this experience as a formative element in his later worldview and radicalization.
