Aaron Swartz commits suicide • Hacker News Board

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#251

Post by konstruktor » Sat, Jan 12, 2013, 10:48 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #159

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…

Aaron Swartz did something he knew was morally right but very probably illegal in some way, and, him being a prodigy, I'm very confident he was aware of this. It is called activism, and is a very brave and noble thing to do, something most people don't have the guts for. Governments often try to break activists who threaten their agenda (or in this case, that of a dying industry), and it seems they have succeeded with him, which I find very sad and which makes me so angry.

Maybe being indicted while free may even be a bigger psychological pressure on somebody than being in prison. When you are in prison, you can focus all your energy on your case, and the situation can only get better than your current one, not worse. You have certain legal protections, and your basic needs are taken care of.

Imagine having to work a job to earn an income (your assets probably being seized) and function in society with a constant feeling of danger looming ahead. They can fuck up your life one little piece at a time. Imagine working on your defence when the computer you are using to do so can be seized at any time (some DA having convinced a judge that you may be hacking right now). Imagine restrictions on travel that make making a living even more difficult. Imagine randomly being delivered a letter with one more bogus charge.

While being free seems to be better than in prison from an objective point of view, given the workings of the threat detection system in our mind, made for tigers in the savannah, not constant worry and fear, it may be much worse. It is well known that the functioning of our "higher" abilities like creativity and critical thinking are impaired under constant stress. It's easy to conceive what this means for the feeling of self worth of somebody who lives for doing cool, meaningful, big things (one of my favourite essays ever, btw): http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/productivity

Also, it neatly avoids the aura of illegitimacy that imprisoning peaceful activists would have for a government.

One lesson that could be learned from this is to try and consciously provide people in his situation with an environment that feels safe. Nut just a fund for legal and living expenses and therapy to cope with the stress, but much more importantly, reliable relationships with people who are supporting, compassionate and willing to listen.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#252

Post by beadmomsw » Sat, Jan 12, 2013, 10:50 AM UTC

Thank you all for your kind words and thoughts. Aaron has been depressed about his case/upcoming trial, but we had no idea what he was going through was this painful.

Aaron was a terrific young man. He contributed a lot to the world in his short life and I regret the loss of all the things he had yet to accomplish. As you can imagine, we all miss him dearly. The grief is unfathomable.

Aaron's mother

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#253

Post by pretoriusB » Sat, Jan 12, 2013, 10:50 AM UTC

jacques_chester wrote: post #222

droithomme wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a mental illness here and the mental illness is thinking that his suicide is unrelated to the massive witch hunt against him by the US Federal Government hellbent on his personal destruction at any cost. Those who deny that that had anything to do with this, and it was only a "brain disorder" or other such claptrap are truly insane. I've had students who for years were systematically abused and tortured by a…

None of these strawmen remotely resemble anything I've said.

Seems like they do, though, because you only mentioned "depression" and how "it's treatable", in describing this particular case, and not one line about his prosecution.

Many a totally non-depressed people have committed suicide under prosecution. Heck, many non-depressed people even became depressed under prosecution.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#254

Post by DustinBoyer » Sat, Jan 12, 2013, 10:50 AM UTC

tricolon wrote: post #219

I never met Aaron Swartz but always wanted to. His work has had a profound impact on my life. His blog was thought-provoking. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/ His work on the RSS 1.0 Specification enabled richer, more efficient information consumption. http://web.resource.org/rss/1.0/spec His work on Markdown enabled intuitive, unobtrusive formatting and structuring of information in plaintext and conversion to HTML. h…

Aaron was an old friend of mine, I really appreciate you making this.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#255

Post by pfortuny » Sat, Jan 12, 2013, 10:51 AM UTC

jlgreco wrote: post #225

vor_ wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be ridiculous. Nobody is directly responsible for Swartz's suicide but Swartz. That's what suicide is.

Responsibility is a nebulous concept. The extent to which a clinically depressed person (if indeed he was) can be said to "be responsible" for their own suicide is pretty debatable.

Supporting your (hypothetical reasoning, yes), I'd rather say that it is in most cases inexistent (at least from a relevance point of view): the urge can be so overpowering that 'responsibility' becomes almost meaningless.

That is why support is so so so so so so so important.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#256

Post by hackinthebochs » Sat, Jan 12, 2013, 10:51 AM UTC

jacques_chester wrote: post #196

paraschopra wrote: post #141

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…

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.

> By the time you are contemplating suicide, it's not even close.

This is classic begging the question. One could easily say someone who claims suicide is never a rational option is the altered one. It must be seriously condescending for those trying to help someone contemplating suicide to offer such plainly specious arguments against it, especially if that person is the contemplative type. It likely does more harm than good.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#257

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 12, 2013, 10:51 AM UTC

jlgreco wrote: post #225

vor_ wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be ridiculous. Nobody is directly responsible for Swartz's suicide but Swartz. That's what suicide is.

Responsibility is a nebulous concept. The extent to which a clinically depressed person (if indeed he was) can be said to "be responsible" for their own suicide is pretty debatable.

[deleted]

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#258

Post by jacques_chester » Sat, Jan 12, 2013, 10:52 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #242

jacques_chester wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prosecutors can usually act on their own initiative. It's because of the historical legal concept that an offence against a person is really an offence against the Crown. So the Crown takes a legal monopoly on force and logically, this means that the Crown gets to decide what to pursue. The USA inherited this concept from England. What I was trying to say above is that a prosecutor's goal is to prosecute as many case…

As you can see I'm not a firm believer in the 'this is my job so I do what I'm told' concept. Everybody - including prosecutors - gets to decide what they do for themselves. If your job is so repugnant that you go after good people you have to question your own morality. Just following orders isn't good enough for me.

I doubt they were "just following orders".

Nobody selects into public legal work for the money.

They would have been doing what they think is the right thing to do: prosecute suspects aggressively.

That you have a different criteria for what cases to prosecute doesn't make them evil.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#259

Post by argumentum » Sat, Jan 12, 2013, 10:52 AM UTC

SquareWheel wrote: post #202

guywithabike wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://aaronsw.jottit.com/reddit

I'm sorry, but merging with a company doesn't make you a cofounder of that company. You were not there when it was founded, thus it's not an applicable label. I'm just asking for a title correction, not trying to slander the guy.

Not the place for this argument.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#260

Post by rdl » Sat, Jan 12, 2013, 10:53 AM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #230

rdl wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, white collar just means generally "conducted using computers, paper, etc." vs. guns or sticks or fists. So defrauding people via the mail is white collar, or ponzi schemes, etc. There is usually a financial component, but the FBI 30k foot overview is "lying, cheating, or stealing". What aaronsw is alleged to have done was a white collar activity (except that he did sneaky wiring closet stuff), but not what peop…

Scariest part of about these things is, these are victimless crimes. Barely anybody is harmed by them. At the end its all about some prosecutor increasing his kill count.

There's probably some copyright/ip crime which does have victims, but it's usually civil victims, and in this case, I don't think even that.

(If you hacked in or bribed an employee and a trade secret and started making something in competition after someone spent 30 years researching, there's probably a civil case there)