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Aaron Swartz & A Culture of Denial: Depression & Suicide in Tech

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Re: Aaron Swartz & A Culture of Denial: Depression & Suicide in Tech

#21

Post by zwily »

BrokenPipe wrote: post #12
intended wrote: post #10

There are 3 battles which are being fought here, and they should ideally be separated out during discussions. The trial affected a brilliant person who pushed limits of the world around him, to his limits. At the same time there are thousands of convicts who have committed far more heinous crimes, and others who are being prosecuted harshly for crimes they didn't commit who don't follow this path. Aaron died not beca…

>Aaron died not because of the trial but because of depression Aaron died because he decided suicide was the best course of action. Given that the trial was what ultimately and unjustly squashed him, I would say he did die because of the harsh and unjust trial. Depression is not a cause, is a consequence.

Aaron struggled with depression long before he downloaded the JSTOR papers. How is depression a consequence of the trial?

Re: Aaron Swartz & A Culture of Denial: Depression & Suicide in Tech

#22

Post by BrokenPipe »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #20

My reading of the various articles since Aaron's death has not been that people are blaming the prosecution for causing it, but rather noting: a) it was almost certainly a contributing factor; and b) regardless of its contribution to Aaron's death, it is ethically and legally appalling in itself to subject someone to the threat of a felony conviction and decades in prison for what amounts to a TOS violation - downloa…

I think you have a great way of expressing the point. In my view Aaron would be happy to know his sacrifices contributed into generating this sort of discussions and hopefully change.

Re: Aaron Swartz & A Culture of Denial: Depression & Suicide in Tech

#23

Post by oinksoft »

"a technology sub-culture that mostly doesn’t understand — or care much — about mental illness."

I'd go a step further and suggest that North American business culture, if not North American culture at large (and there's a good argument to be made that the latter is circumscribed by the former), is guilty of this as well. I don't think it's at all exclusive to IT.

Re: Aaron Swartz & A Culture of Denial: Depression & Suicide in Tech

#24

Post by BrokenPipe »

zwily wrote: post #21
BrokenPipe wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Aaron died not because of the trial but because of depression Aaron died because he decided suicide was the best course of action. Given that the trial was what ultimately and unjustly squashed him, I would say he did die because of the harsh and unjust trial. Depression is not a cause, is a consequence.

Aaron struggled with depression long before he downloaded the JSTOR papers. How is depression a consequence of the trial?

I never said his depression was a consequence of the trial. What I did say is that is death is a consequence of the trial, i.e. without trial he would be alive (so far at least, but I don't think he was necessarily suicidal prior to the trial). What I did also say is that depression (when not an chemical imbalance problem at least) is a consequence of a series of events and therefore caused

Re: Aaron Swartz & A Culture of Denial: Depression & Suicide in Tech

#25

Post by BrokenPipe »

oinksoft wrote: post #23

"a technology sub-culture that mostly doesn’t understand — or care much — about mental illness." I'd go a step further and suggest that North American business culture, if not North American culture at large (and there's a good argument to be made that the latter is circumscribed by the former), is guilty of this as well. I don't think it's at all exclusive to IT.

Do you this is 'because' of purer capitalism ? Isn't that north american [business] culture at large ? As opposed to mixed capitalism/socialism in other western countries.

Re: Aaron Swartz & A Culture of Denial: Depression & Suicide in Tech

#26

Post by oinksoft »

BrokenPipe wrote: post #25
oinksoft wrote: post #23

"a technology sub-culture that mostly doesn’t understand — or care much — about mental illness." I'd go a step further and suggest that North American business culture, if not North American culture at large (and there's a good argument to be made that the latter is circumscribed by the former), is guilty of this as well. I don't think it's at all exclusive to IT.

Do you this is 'because' of purer capitalism ? Isn't that north american [business] culture at large ? As opposed to mixed capitalism/socialism in other western countries.

I think that the old protestant work ethic, which of course is what originally made American capitalism so strong, is more to blame.

Re: Aaron Swartz & A Culture of Denial: Depression & Suicide in Tech

#28

Post by ef4 »

oinksoft wrote: post #23

"a technology sub-culture that mostly doesn’t understand — or care much — about mental illness." I'd go a step further and suggest that North American business culture, if not North American culture at large (and there's a good argument to be made that the latter is circumscribed by the former), is guilty of this as well. I don't think it's at all exclusive to IT.

The data don't really support that theory.

Some countries that are often held up as positive alternatives to "North American business culture" (like France) have higher suicide rates than the US.

Whatever our business culture's failing are, causing more suicide is not high on the list, especially when you compare with the cultures of Asia and Eastern Europe.

Re: Aaron Swartz & A Culture of Denial: Depression & Suicide in Tech

#29

Post by VMG »

oinksoft wrote: post #23

"a technology sub-culture that mostly doesn’t understand — or care much — about mental illness." I'd go a step further and suggest that North American business culture, if not North American culture at large (and there's a good argument to be made that the latter is circumscribed by the former), is guilty of this as well. I don't think it's at all exclusive to IT.

Do you know of any cultures that do understand mental illness?

Re: Aaron Swartz & A Culture of Denial: Depression & Suicide in Tech

#30

Post by intended »

BrokenPipe wrote: post #16
Deestan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aaron died because he decided suicide was the best course of action. People suffering from depression are not rational. I don't mean that "I can't make sense of this decision therefore they aren't rational", but people having recovered from depression consider their own thought processes from the depression to be flat out wrong .

In my view there is depression and depression. Some people have good reasons to be depressed and those can be very rational reasons.

Depression has a side effect of making normal thinking patterns unusable.

You could literally win a lottery, and feel that the world hates you.

Your thought process would go - I won a lottery, but I still feel dead inside. Why go on, there isn't anything for live for.

I hate to use an example to explain depression, because its always "explainable", but hopefully as a vignette into what every waking moment of life is like for someone with depression, it should serve its purpose.

Edit: grammar in last para.

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