Reddit Co-Founder Commits Suicide

[Vigilante]

Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz commits suicide - NYPOST.com

 

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[Vigilante]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/technology/aaron-swartz-internet-activist-dies-at-26.html?_r=0

 

[mayana]

This is very, very tragic.

 

[Twiki]

Depression is a terrible thing. Anyhow, how long do you think it'll be before we start seeing the Tweets and blog posts titled "10 Lessons I Learned About Being An Entrepreneur From Aaron Swartz" from people who never met him and never worked with him?

 

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[The-J]

Well, if I were facing 35 years of prison rape because I wanted to have access to scientific journals, I'd be looking at the rope, too.

That aside, let's make this a reminder that health is no. 1 priority. Mental health is still part of health, and is often the most overlooked part.

 

[Rickson9]

R.i.p.

 

[khsrr]

Well, if I were facing 35 years of prison rape because I wanted to have access to scientific journals, I'd be looking at the rope, too.

I think that was unnecessary.

 

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[Kak]

You know what seems unnecessary? Killing yourself. When you do that, you are dead for a REALLY LONG TIME. I don't feel sorry for him at all. He did it to himself. Now his family and friends have to live with this reality.

Get help or something, don't be a selfish coward...

 

[theDarkness]

Very sad.

You know the world of academic journals could be fertile soil for the right entrepreneur. I don't know how profitable it'd be, but it could be a great non-profit project that could significantly affect the speed of development in all areas.

I haven't been in academia in years now, but I just remember thinking that none of it made a damned lick of sense, as an end-user and reader.

 

[theDarkness]

You know what seems unnecessary? Killing yourself. When you do that you are dead for a REALLY LONG TIME. I don't feel sorry for him at all. He did it to himself and now his family and friends have to live with this reality.

Get help or something, don't be a selfish coward...

You know what seems unnecessary? Being a complete jackass in a thread about a dead man.

 

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[Rickson9]

You know what seems unnecessary? Being a complete jackass in a thread about a dead man.

The Rich Lack Empathy, Study

 

[theag]

Fully agree with The-J and Kak. Basically an entrepreneur turned white-collar criminal and killed himself in fear of his trial. Thats sad, but he's still a coward. Never even heard of him before, but RIP though.

 

[Pixpax]

Fully agree with The-J and Kak. Basically an entrepreneur turned white-collar criminal and killed himself in fear of his trial. Thats sad, but he's still a coward. Never even heard of him before, but RIP though.

Armchair moraliser - you don't know the details of his situation, or the makeup of his personality and how that might affect his reaction to the prospect of prison. Or if there were any other factors.

 

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[theag]

Armchair moraliser - you don't know the details of his situation, or the makeup of his personality and how that might affect his reaction to the prospect of prison. Or if there were any other factors.

Yeah, you're right. I don't know the details and I don't care about them. He still killed himself and therefore is a coward. There are more important things in the world than cowards.

 

[The-J]

I disagree with pretty much all of you.

Yes, suicide IS the coward's way out, but it's really not quite that simple. You guys obviously have no idea how it feels to be backed into a corner like that. To consider ending your own life, to consider causing irreparable pain to everyone in your life in order to get out, that's truly a sign that a screw is loose. However, people who are in it don't really realize it. The stages of suicide are the same as the stages of loss: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. It's a long road to get to that last stage: to accept your own death. Rationally functioning people don't get very far on that road.

So it's obvious that this guy needed help. Did he get it? Nope. Did he try? We don't know.

When you get help, sometimes you don't trust the help that you're given. There's no magic fix that will cure suicidal thoughts. This man had been considering suicide probably since he was a teenager. It's not as simple as 'getting help', it's a complete shift in mindset.

One thing is for sure, however: he put his work in front of his mental health. Whatever help he was getting wasn't enough. Whatever meds he was on also weren't enough. He lacked foresight, considering his history of depression. But when you've got the might of the US Government against you, what else are you going to do?

I do wish the Fastlane Forum was a little bit more sensitive when it comes to these issues. I don't know where you guys got to be so insensitive.

 

[mayana]

I do wish the Fastlane Forum was a little bit more sensitive when it comes to these issues. I don't know where you guys got to be so insensitive.

It's easy for people, under the protection of relative anonymity, to be less sensitive than they would otherwise be.

I had a really close friend commit suicide just after high school (he was my best friend's boyfriend). It took years and years for everyone to recover from the shock of someone close to them taking their own life. I understand people's anger and frustration towards the person who would do this.

It's important to remember that it is really easy to judge a situation from the outside. We could sit back and think, "How bad could it be?" He's started a successful business, he can probably afford lawyers, etc... If someone already struggles with depression it can make any of these legal problems impossible to overcome (maybe they were...). I don't think we should judge him so harshly.

Instead, we should look at our systems. Our mental health system. Our legal system. Our political system. Somehow, they failed this guy and his family. The systems are what we should judge - not the person who tragically lost their life, whether it was by his own hand or not.

 

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[Kak]

You know what seems unnecessary? Being a complete jackass in a thread about a dead man.

For every person that kills themselves there are 10 more fighting a terminal illness, hoping and praying that they get to see their kids grow up and meet their grandchildren.

I'm done with this thread.

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Twiki]

I think the sharp disagreement this issue raises is not a matter of someone lacking empathy or sensitivity, but rather that some people focus more on empathizing with the person who commits the self-destructive act out of despair... while others focus more on empathizing with the people who are "left behind" and who also suffer in their own way. We can also empathize that for most mentally healthy people, this level of despair and hopelessness is incomprehensible --- they tend to assume "these people should just suck it up". Fortunately for them, they cannot imagine how it'd feel or what decisions they'd make, if their brain were somehow wired or altered so that they literally could feel no pleasure or positive expectation about anything.

But mainly I'd like to counter the idea that this fellow was just a former entrepreneur-turned-white-collar-criminal who was scared of going to jail. He was a creator, someone who added value at a scale most people only dream about (I'm not even talking about Reddit... RSS is the big deal). The problem is that as an activist he ran up against the interests of other creators, like the creative forces who lined up against SOPA, and the supposedly non-profit interests who keep academic knowledge locked up behind pay-walls. But it's a very incomplete characterization to label him a white-collar criminal.

 

[Twiki]

Very sad.

You know the world of academic journals could be fertile soil for the right entrepreneur. I don't know how profitable it'd be, but it could be a great non-profit project that could significantly affect the speed of development in all areas.

I haven't been in academia in years now, but I just remember thinking that none of it made a damned lick of sense, as an end-user and reader.

This is right on. It makes even less sense if you're not in academia but you still need access to research. Then you have to pay out of your pocket and the cost is extraordinarily nonsensical. I also wonder how much more progress in so many areas could be made if this knowledge could be made more freely available --- if not totally free, at least affordable. After all, we aren't talking about interfering with the free market's assessment of how much the market is willing to pay to download "Transformers 4". I think you're right about this area being ripe for change.

 

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[DennisD]

It's easy for people, under the protection of relative anonymity, to be less sensitive than they would otherwise be.

I've dealt with death, murder, and suicide personally. I express in person the same thing I do on the internet: indifference bordering on anger.

It's the same way I'm indifferent to the 'suffering' of people who sit on their butt and watch TV. It's the same way I'm indifferent to somebody who chooses to burn down their own house. To me, ending your own life is the ultimate 'slowlane' activity.

My girlfriend's mom lives with an abusive guy. We've gotten involved, called the cops, tried to help. In the end, she denies the situation and brushed the help away. To me: that's the end of the situation. If you CHOOSE pain over pleasure, I'm done helping you. I don't care what dependance, self worth, or other mental issues you're suffering from as a result of your actions. It's on you now.

There are so many people making so many stupid decisions everyday there comes a point where you draw a line. What to care about and what to be indifferent about. it's impossible to feel sympathy for everybody.

Showing care or concern about the death, loss, suicide, or WHATEVER of somebody you don't know, never met, and never would have met feels 'fake'.

If it doesn't affect your day to day life, you're not thinking about it before you go to bed, you're still eating and sleeping properly, you obviously weren't that 'shaken' by it. Any appearances of sympathy to such situations are purely social.

 

[Twiki]

I've dealt with death, murder, and suicide personally. I express in person the same thing I do on the internet: indifference bordering on anger...
If it doesn't affect your day to day life, you're not thinking about it before you go to bed, you're still eating and sleeping properly, you obviously weren't that 'shaken' by it. Any appearances of sympathy to such situations are purely social.

This is the type of indifference where people feel a need to express how indifferent they are. That's a curious type of indifference. It's like an expression of "I don't care. Why do you care? Even though I've never met you, it upsets me that you care, because you're just a fake phony pretending to care about some you've never met."

Personally, I don't sympathize with any one who destroys themselves, either. They do what they choose to do, good for them. But I don't sympathize with their friends or their families who are hurt by their actions, either --- and a lot of the disgust and anger towards this individual seems to stem from that.

(btw. let's make sure there's a distinction between sympathy and empathy, since they are not the same thing)

It's curious to think about how this relates to the concept of ownership in terms of a labor dispute. Some people focus on how the decision to shut down a company will make life harder for the workers. Others will focus on how the purpose of a business is not to serve the workers, but the owners, so they should have a right to shut down a business if it's costing them too much. It's interesting to notice that people who are all about personal responsibility are often aligned (sensibly, I think) with the interest of the business owner in a case like that. If the workers and larger community suffers, that's unfortunate, but it's simply the result of a cost/benefit analysis of whether or not it is worthwhile to keep the thing going. It's curious but commonplace that people who see that decision from the outside, taking a collectivist POV, will often point the finger at the business owner and call them "selfish cowards".

 

[Rickson9]

"People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway." - Mother Theresa

 

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[stranger]

I read that sad news on yahoo yesterday. Rich men do it too, sometimes. Money does matter nothing in this case.

 

[stranger]

You know what seems unnecessary? Killing yourself. When you do that, you are dead for a REALLY LONG TIME.

You say like you had been there. Sorry, but your post sounds like that.

 

[socaldude]

"I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them."-Baruch Spinoza

 

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[Destined]

This guy was facing 35 years in the pen, so he had tons of pressure on him. RIP fella....

 

[Bruce]

Very sad to see how far the federal justice system pushes people. Fined thousands of dollars and put in jail for decades just because he wanted to share public domain documents?

 

[Timmy C]

You know what seems unnecessary? Killing yourself. When you do that, you are dead for a REALLY LONG TIME. I don't feel sorry for him at all. He did it to himself. Now his family and friends have to live with this reality.

Get help or something, don't be a selfish coward...

Your an absolute moron, you disgust me.

 

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[Raoul Duke]

Your an absolute moron, you disgust me.

Really? That was really uncalled for. Bump a 5 year old thread. Just to call someone a moron. smh.

 

[George Appiah]

When I saw this in the RSS feed, my heart rate jumped like crazy... because I thought another Reddit co-founder had committed suicide.

Only to find out someone dug out a 5yo thread to make such an uncalled-for comment.