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Diaspora Co-Founder Ilya Zhitomirskiy Passes Away At 21

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Re: Diaspora Co-Founder Ilya Zhitomirskiy Passes Away At 21

#181

Post by LancerSykera »

ryan-allen wrote: post #175
thomasgerbe wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well at least suicide is a legitimate personal choice. Murder is not.

Just like how Depression is a choice and OCD is a choice and Schizophrenia is a choice. Your views on mental health are a bit last century.

Suicide isn't a mental illness like depression and OCD and Schizophrenia. While I do agree that this isn't the best time for "ethical theory," I also agree with thomasgerbe in that suicide is a fundamental human right. If one has no desire to continue living, who are you to force them to?

Re: Diaspora Co-Founder Ilya Zhitomirskiy Passes Away At 21

#182

Post by gujk »

LancerSykera wrote: post #181
ryan-allen wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like how Depression is a choice and OCD is a choice and Schizophrenia is a choice. Your views on mental health are a bit last century.

Suicide isn't a mental illness like depression and OCD and Schizophrenia. While I do agree that this isn't the best time for "ethical theory," I also agree with thomasgerbe in that suicide is a fundamental human right. If one has no desire to continue living, who are you to force them to?

The complication is that most life choices are to some extent reversible in case of mistake. Suicide is not, and therefore is subject to more delicate considetation. Also, for anyone not a hermit, suicide affects other people who may have moral or legal claims of dependency.

Re: Diaspora Co-Founder Ilya Zhitomirskiy Passes Away At 21

#183

Post by hellrich »

LancerSykera wrote: post #181
ryan-allen wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like how Depression is a choice and OCD is a choice and Schizophrenia is a choice. Your views on mental health are a bit last century.

Suicide isn't a mental illness like depression and OCD and Schizophrenia. While I do agree that this isn't the best time for "ethical theory," I also agree with thomasgerbe in that suicide is a fundamental human right. If one has no desire to continue living, who are you to force them to?

Your ability to make this decision would be impaired if you had a mental illness like depression.

Re: Diaspora Co-Founder Ilya Zhitomirskiy Passes Away At 21

#184

Post by pferde »

tbrooks wrote: post #117
dennisgorelik wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know?

Because people don't say "he died suddenly" without saying the cause unless it was suicide.

It could also be exhaustion from too much sex or something similarly private, and his family/friends wouldn't say anything about cause of death either. Give him the benefit of doubt, will you?

Re: Diaspora Co-Founder Ilya Zhitomirskiy Passes Away At 21

#185

Post by ryan-allen »

LancerSykera wrote: post #181
ryan-allen wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like how Depression is a choice and OCD is a choice and Schizophrenia is a choice. Your views on mental health are a bit last century.

Suicide isn't a mental illness like depression and OCD and Schizophrenia. While I do agree that this isn't the best time for "ethical theory," I also agree with thomasgerbe in that suicide is a fundamental human right. If one has no desire to continue living, who are you to force them to?

Of course suicide isn't a mental illness. How about you have a look at some facts from the US NIMH [1], how about I summarise some poignant facts:

"Research shows that risk factors for suicide include: depression and other mental disorders, or a substance-abuse disorder (often in combination with other mental disorders). More than 90 percent of people who die by suicide have these risk factors."

So, you're happy to condemn 90% of people who commit suicide to go and 'make that choice' because 'it's their right'?

I don't disagree that it's anyone's so-called 'right' to kill themselves, but when 90% of individuals who do so are suffering from mental illness or substance abuse disorders, I think it's far to broad and naive (not to mention downright heartless) to fob it off as a mere 'choice'.

Have you known anyone personally who's comitted suicide? I bet that if someone close to you, whom was having a hard time (by stretch of the mind I wouldn't say it's too difficult to imagine in this economy, the loss of a job and a home could be a sufficient trigger for a Major Depressive Episode), decided to kill themselves over a temporary hardship.

I doubt you'd merely say "well, it was their choice". I bet you'd rethink your statement and your position. You my friend are very wrong.

[1] http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/suicide-in-the-u...

Re: Diaspora Co-Founder Ilya Zhitomirskiy Passes Away At 21

#186

Post by DanBC »

lucasjung wrote: post #68
DanBC wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The more awareness of suicide Suicide has a strong triggering effect; see "Werther effect". Talking about suicide has to be done carefully to avoid triggering further suicidal behaviour; especially after someone has just completed suicide. I'd agree that more awareness of suicide prevention is very important.

I receive annual suicide awareness training at work. One of the things they train us to do is, if we suspect someone might be considering suicide, to ask point-blank: "Are you thinking about hurting yourself." Most people will answer honestly, and then you can get them help if they need it. So while discussing suicide in the abstract can trigger others to commit suicide, discussing it directly with a potentially suic…

Yes, this is important.

There's a big difference between talking directly to a person who may be suffering, when you should be direct and then be able to guide them towards help; and talking in a thread like this with a lot of speculation and abstract talk about suicidal behaviours.

tl:dr - you're right, and I missed the point you made in my post.

Re: Diaspora Co-Founder Ilya Zhitomirskiy Passes Away At 21

#187

Post by muxxa »

chunkyslink wrote: post #115
edw519 wrote: post #89

Horrible. This news is so tragic I really can't focus on anything else now. Which is probably the way it should be. Our community stresses the importance of achievement, success, and technology so much that it's easy to forget what's really most important: each other. Sometimes it takes terrible news like this to jerk us back to that reality. I never knew Ilya, but if any of his friends of family visits this forum, p…

>> If you ever believe the possibility of something like happening is > .00001, do something, anything. If you don't know what to do, contact me (see my profile) and I'll help in any way I can. Its a nice thought, but people in this position often don't want help. My best Friend was doing a PHD in a Biochemistry related field at University College London back in 2003. He was an outgoing person, had a hot girlfriend a…

My older sister once gave told me 'never commit suicide hungover' (even though I wasn't feeling particularly depressed at the time). It respected that there are valid reasons for feeling down, while highlighting the need for a wider view than the current bad feeling.

Re: Diaspora Co-Founder Ilya Zhitomirskiy Passes Away At 21

#188

Post by mitsche »

muxxa wrote: post #187
chunkyslink wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If you ever believe the possibility of something like happening is > .00001, do something, anything. If you don't know what to do, contact me (see my profile) and I'll help in any way I can. Its a nice thought, but people in this position often don't want help. My best Friend was doing a PHD in a Biochemistry related field at University College London back in 2003. He was an outgoing person, had a hot girlfriend a…

My older sister once gave told me 'never commit suicide hungover' (even though I wasn't feeling particularly depressed at the time). It respected that there are valid reasons for feeling down, while highlighting the need for a wider view than the current bad feeling.

My recent reocurring suicidal thoughts while being hungover drove me to quit drinking altogether.

Now that I'm sober the motives for ending my life seem banal in hindsight. Cheers to your sister.

Re: Diaspora Co-Founder Ilya Zhitomirskiy Passes Away At 21

#189

Post by josteink »

tamersalama wrote: post #38
DevX101 wrote: post #25

The founders of Diaspora were in a really unenviable position. They started off with a wave of national press as well as solid financial support from grassroot users. As time went on, it became increasingly clear that they would not be able to accomplish the goal they originally set out to do. They had failed. Publicly. This can be very devastating psychologically to someone who has always 'succeeded' in life. I'm no…

I'm interested to know how they have been perceived as failure. I think this is all very relative, and failure is a strong word. Github still have 1 day old commit and the community is apparently still active.

As far as failures come, the only thing I have heard about diaspora are the following things:

* Source-code full of freshman's mistakes and security exploits. Basically not-to-be-trusted quality code, released to the public for deployment.

* All money invested in the project wasted without anything to show for.

* I know absolutely nobody using diaspora, expect one person.

* This person attempted to invite me, and diaspora failed to send me the invite email. Now he cannot invite me again.

It's a laughing stock. For the parts of the internet which has even heard about it. Which is the minority of the internet. As a social network this is a failure on absolutely every aspect I can find measures for.

The goals were admirable, but goals alone wont win you any credit. You have to get there as well. Diaspora didn't and most likely wont.

Re: Diaspora Co-Founder Ilya Zhitomirskiy Passes Away At 21

#190

Post by mitsche »

weel wrote: post #164
chimeracoder wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't. People are assuming that the lack of explanation + his young age = suicide. It may end up being the case, but at the moment, people are just speculating.

It is true that people his age don't usually die of disease, but that still leaves other options than suicide. The most common for males 15-24, according to http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/usa-cause-of-death-by-age... , are traffic accidents, violence, suicide, poisoning "other injuries," and drowning, in that order.

Traffic accident would have been my first guess, being the most common death cause amongst the people I knew. I didn't think of suicide till I read the comments.
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