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Aaron Swartz commits suicide

tech.mit.edu

231–240 of 583 posts

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've thought of suicide. Not "seriously," but it's crossed my mind. If it happens again, get help. I'm quite serious.

It's not your job to give this sort of advice to people here. It's not some sort of mental disfigurement to think about these things you know. He and everyone else has the right to explore and experience unhappiness. And anyway, by fixating on a peripheral detail of his post you derail the conversation and force him into a rather supplicatory posture. Not cool.

There's a difference between unhappiness and depression.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#232

Man this so sucks. If you hit someone with enough felony counts sooner or later something can snap. This in response to those that claim the DOJ didn't have anything to do with Aaron killing himself. For some people the mere fact of being suspected of a crime they didn't commit is enough to push them over the edge. When you're placed in a holding cell the police will remove your laces from your boots so you don't han…

> If you hit someone with enough felony counts sooner or later something will snap. Can we stop the speculations until we actually know what happened? :-(

>Can we stop the speculations until we actually know what happened? :-(

No, because:

1) we'll never know what "really happened" (even if he had left a note stating a reason one can never know if something not mentioned also weighted on him psychologically)

2) speculation is, counter to what some may think, productive. For example, it gets you questioning stuff like the legal system in the comment above.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#233
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing the reddit community, do you really think that is a good idea?

"Knowing the reddit community" Could you elaborate on that?

I believe they are referring to the reddit community's tendency to go off on misguided, half-cocked witch-hunts.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be a perfect opportunity for a White House pardon.

Those are only available to the guilty.

Is that the case in the US? My impression is that Ford gave Nixon a blanket pardon even though Nixon had not (yet, probably) been found guilty of anything.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#235

It's easy to deride suicide but fact of the matter is that it is the final but a very powerful option we have at our disposal. Instead of saying that a particular person should not have committed suicide, our hope should be that if a suicide happens, it is well thought through and is not done in haste. If a particular person decides that decades of painful life is much worse than simply ending the existence, who are…

When I was first going through what turned into a very long diagnostic phase for some mental health (let's call them) oddities, every person involved at any stage asked, every time I talked to them, whether I had thought of suicide. At one point, I had been asked about it so much I actually started contemplating if I were to kill myself, how would I do it (mind you, this wasn't wanting to, or even entertaining the notion, but me going "Why not actually think through the reality of it?"). I came to the decision that if I were to ever kill myself, I would stab myself in the heart with a knife. Yes, it would be excruciatingly slow and painful (can't quickly stab yourself and dodge ribs, have to drive the blade extremely deep to get the heart, etc.), but it would serve a singular purpose: to signal that it wasn't a quick decision, to absolve people from feeling like there was something more they could have done and to remove all doubt about how strongly I felt about making the particular decision. When I explained this to the psychiatrist next time I was asked, his response was along the lines of "Do you think someone would be capable of that?" And the only response I had was "If they wanted to end it all that badly, yes".

All this as a long ways to get around to saying: I disagree with anything that may consider suicide appropriate in any situation as one persons personal decision and situation becomes an example or model that someone in a similar situation could look to. But, I also don't think anyone should say a particular person should not have committed suicide. Instead, what should be said is a particular person should not have felt the need to commit suicide.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#236

Aaron suffered from a brain disorder. He had documented periods of extreme withdrawn depression and others of mild manic productivity. Because of that brain disorder, perhaps because it was not attacked with the requisite treatment, he is dead. If you or a loved one are ever feeling suicidal, depressed, or are acting abnormally erratic, contact an expert. It's nothing to be ashamed about. It's just a lottery of genet…

Thank you for this write up. It's nice to see this rational, weighed view on the incident among reactive speculations and accusations. But why a throw-away account?

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#237
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Context certainly matters. Depressed people are not perfectly rational agents. By the time you are contemplating suicide, it's not even close. And depression is a factor in almost every suicide. Depression is insidious because it makes all the alternatives to suicide seem much more difficult than they actually are.

This is right. I'm shocked at the "suicide apologists" in this thread.

I'm not. Similar arguments come up every time.

I am often accused in such discussions of being an offender against some wishy-washy personal development program ("just give depression a chance, what's the worst that could happen?").

Or of being a shill for some evil master-conspiracy to turn everyone into zombies.

Or ... well lots of things, really.

I honestly don't give a fuck.

The results are in:

Treatment. Saves. Lives.

One of these days, someone will read one of my endless simple, spammy messages about seeking help and it will make them less likely to die, because they will get help.

So you know what? I think I will keep going.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've thought of suicide. Not "seriously," but it's crossed my mind. If it happens again, get help. I'm quite serious.

Some of the first sensible advice I've read in this thread. I'm slightly disgusted by the sheer quantity of comments on how suicide can be "right" and how he was "pushed into it". Suicide is never, never the answer, it can just seem like it sometimes when you are very, very low.

I've certainly had periods when I felt suicide was the answer.

Basically depression so completely fucks with your head that it seems like the only option left.

Not: "this seems like a great idea".

But rather: "this is the only thing left to do".

And it's not true.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I beg to differ from what you are saying. I do understand your point though, but let me give you another picture. And this I say from personal experience. People around the world go through tough times. For some the path is eased by good friends, family, "miracles", etc. For others the path becomes too difficult to tackle. In the end the person chooses not to fight any longer. As much as we should respect this decisi…

>Every person who has every felt disturbed and suicidal and did not take the step, probably feels good about not taking the step. This is the ultimate example of survivorship bias. Please don't use this line of "argument." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

While brainless did commit the survivorship bias, I would consider you responding to what he said rather than what he meant to be attacking a strawman.

In this case, lets consider all humans who ever considered suicide. Now, while it's true that we can only observe those who did not commit suicide, we do have a substantial amount of data on humans in general that we can work from. If this claim has you skeptical (ie "successful suicides are a separate reference class"), I will remind you we have data on suicidal people who were forcibly restrained, which you are encouraged to look up.

So now let's look at the core of brainless' argument: people change with time. If you look at happiness rates for quadriplegic patients (or any of the hedonic treadmill research), you'll see that your happiness levels aren't so impacted by life events. This effect is present in both the population of completed suicides, and aborted suicides, and is likely a lot of the causal force brainless is trying to reference.

Which is to say that it's highly likely that people who kill themselves counterfactually wish they didn't.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#240

Man this so sucks. If you hit someone with enough felony counts sooner or later something can snap. This in response to those that claim the DOJ didn't have anything to do with Aaron killing himself. For some people the mere fact of being suspected of a crime they didn't commit is enough to push them over the edge. When you're placed in a holding cell the police will remove your laces from your boots so you don't han…

It really rubs me the wrong way when something like this happens and folks jump to conclusions as you have here. You didn't know this person. For all we know he could have not given two shits about the whole legal process and this is linked to family or relationship problems or long term general depression.
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