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Why Aaron died

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Re: Why Aaron died

#51

Post by oh_sigh »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #48
rayiner wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just don't like the implications of the facts. If you took 100 people and put them in the same situation, the vast majority of them wouldn't have killed themselves. People face longer sentences and the prospect of being imprisoned among violent offenders everyday without killing themselves. The fact is that suicides are statistically aberrational behavior, even among people in high-stress situations. There are lo…

>People face longer sentences and the prospect of being imprisoned among violent offenders everyday without killing themselves. Some of those people grow up in a culture that prepares them for the possibility that they will be jailed, even possibly unjustly imprisoned.

And I don't think that those are the people that the OP was referring to.

Re: Why Aaron died

#52

Post by oh_sigh »

knowtheory wrote: post #21
d0m wrote: post #7

The last sentences makes me think: Ask yourself this: If on January 10, Steve Heymann and Carmen Ortiz at the Massachusetts US Attorney’s office had called Aaron’s lawyer and said they’d realized their mistake and that they were dropping all charges — or even for that matter that they were ready to offer a reasonable plea deal that wouldn’t have marked Aaron as a felon for the rest of his life — would Aaron have kill…

> "a straw that broke the camel's back" I think you're asking people to oscillate between two poles of a continuum. The indictment of Aaron Swartz was very clearly, and i think uncontroversially, a life altering experience for Swartz. So I think that Taren, the OP and Aaron's GF, are probably correct on the substance. I think that even if you want to say that the prosecution wasn't the only factor, it is something th…

So what? What does that fact tell us?

Re: Why Aaron died

#53

Post by DanBC »

xijuan wrote: post #44
ErrantX wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. But. (and this post doesn't intend to argue Aaron was depressed, just thinks about the premise that he might have been) As someone who suffers a lot with depression, it is quite possible to be depressed and for no one close to you to notice . We can be damn good at hiding it, especially with practice, especially with people we know well. Some time ago I was living with my partner and she had no clue I had been d…

Do you know how psychiatrists or clinical psychologists diagnose depression? Have you read the DSM? Do you know how they come up with the criteria for psychiatric disorders in DSM? Do you know the controversies behind DSM? Do you know few decades ago homosexuality was regarded as a mental disorder? Do you know that there are researchers who want to introduce a new "psychiatric disorder" (i.e., hypersexual disorder) i…

> I am sure everyone has met some of its criteria at some point in their life

It is incredibly frustrating that you say this, even while quoting the DSM which says:

i) at least 2 weeks

ii) and at least five of the following symptoms

iii) clinically significant impairment in social, work, or other important areas of functioning almost every day.

These symptoms are not vague. Unless you take one symptom, and ignore the significant impairment clause.

Re: Why Aaron died

#54

Post by rayiner »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #49
rayiner wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your comment is not enlightening. It is not insightful. It falls flat on its face if you bother to do even two minutes' Googling to find that while somewhere between 1 in 10 and 1 in 20 Americans suffer from depression ( http://www.cdc.gov/features/dsdepression/ ), "only" 38,000 die of suicide each year ( http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm ). And some similarly tiny portion of people who are prosecuted com…

This'll be my last reply; I've gotta step away from this because it's getting me angry, and it's not likely that you and I will find anything to agree about. > And some similarly tiny portion of people who are prosecuted commit suicide. What's your point? I never made the point that prosecution leads to suicide. You, however, tried to make the point that depression leads to suicide, and that's factually wrong. > She'…

> I never made the point that prosecution leads to suicide. You, however, tried to make the point that depression leads to suicide, and that's factually wrong.

The premise of the article this thread is attached to is, as I understand it, is that aggressive prosecution lead to Aaron's suicide.

> But, we know that Aaron's lawyer notified Heymann at least of Aaron's possibility as a suicide risk, and the response from Heymann was, "Fine, we'll lock him up."

What was she supposed to do? Treat alleged suicide risks specially?

> What a pile of ox manure. I would love to see you leave comments like this on threads about sexism: "Well, if she didn't want doctored pornographic photos of her online, she never should have posted her face on the internet for public consumption!" Someone writing their opinion on a subject never gives anyone else a pass to be an asshole.

That's an utterly ridiculous comparison and you know it. I'm not being an asshole to challenge a public opinion on its own merits. You're acting like I walked into some private memorial service instead of responding on its merits to a public posting implying that a public official was culpable for a person's suicide.

Also: it's tremendously bad form to turn a private tragedy into a public cause then raise that tragedy as a defense to any criticism of the cause.

> If you had said that, it would have been more valuable as a comment than the one you wrote instead.

No, it would be ad hominem, vacuous, and senseless just like the stuff you have been posting.

Re: Why Aaron died

#55

Post by anthonyb »

rayiner wrote: post #24
knowtheory wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, you're being that guy . Don't be that guy . Why shouldn't a prosecutor consider the personal circumstance of the accused? Certainly this is done in a variety of ways in the law, the decision as to whether a crime has been committed, the decision as to whether to charge an individual, what charges are brought against that individual. Particularly in the case where prosecutors have wide discretion, such as in the…

"That guy" in what sense? The one that thinks that it's not justifiable to accuse someone of causing someone else to kill themselves? I'm making a moral argument, not a jurisprudential one. We are responsible for the consequences of our actions, but our obligation to our fellow man is circumscribed by context and reasonable expectations. There may be situations in which it is reasonable to expect someone to kill hims…

Except that the prosecution was warned that Aaron might be suicidal.

Re: Why Aaron died

#56

Post by thaumaturgy »

rayiner wrote: post #47
thaumaturgy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are we now to charge prosecutors with being sensitive to the details of the personal lives of the people which they prosecute? Yes. A justice system that does not behave as though it is dealing with human lives is one which will corrupt itself into encouraging prosecutors to win cases , instead of seek justice.

Do we design cars so that not a single person ever dies? Do we design medicine so a single person never dies? You can't design a realistic justice system that doesn't have unfair outcomes sometimes any more than you can design a test for cancer that never has false positives. Outside this particularly sympathetic context, I'd say people want their justice system to be fairly neutral and not swayed by the specifics of…

When people die in car accidents, "we" investigate why they died and try to figure out how to build better cars in the future. I'm alive today thanks to that process.

That's a hell of a lot more than Carmen Ortiz has decided to do.

You are defending your profession at the expense of your humanity.

I can not think of any more powerful way to state my criticism of your comments here.

Re: Why Aaron died

#57

Post by rayiner »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #56
rayiner wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we design cars so that not a single person ever dies? Do we design medicine so a single person never dies? You can't design a realistic justice system that doesn't have unfair outcomes sometimes any more than you can design a test for cancer that never has false positives. Outside this particularly sympathetic context, I'd say people want their justice system to be fairly neutral and not swayed by the specifics of…

When people die in car accidents, "we" investigate why they died and try to figure out how to build better cars in the future. I'm alive today thanks to that process. That's a hell of a lot more than Carmen Ortiz has decided to do. You are defending your profession at the expense of your humanity. I can not think of any more powerful way to state my criticism of your comments here.

Your lawyer trolling is asinine. My other degree is aerospace engineering: did you see me falling over myself to defend Boeing in the battery threads? No, because I'm not a caricature and capable of having my own opinions.

It doesn't even make sense--every day engineers and scientists make decisions trading off cost, effectiveness, and preventable death. The accountants and actuaries then sign off on it. It's not a deficiency of the professions, that's just how human society operates. Contrary to your assertion, we do not launch an investigation any time someone dies in a car accident. We don't start posting how the engineers at Ford are morally culpable for the death because if only they had used a more expensive XYZ widget our loved one would still be alive. Sometimes bad things happen and it's not anyone's fault.

Re: Why Aaron died

#58

Post by DanBC »

rayiner wrote: post #43
thaumaturgy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will muster every ounce of decorum I can manage in responding to some random person's rebuttal to a post written by someone who actually knew and lived with Aaron (seriously, what are you thinking?!), and simply retort: "That program crashed because it halted. It was the proximate cause of its own crash so to speak. Are there other factors without which it wouldn't have crashed? Indeed, there are an infinite number…

> Your comment is not enlightening. It is not insightful. It falls flat on its face if you bother to do even two minutes' Googling to find that while somewhere between 1 in 10 and 1 in 20 Americans suffer from depression ( http://www.cdc.gov/features/dsdepression/ ), "only" 38,000 die of suicide each year ( http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm ). And some similarly tiny portion of people who are prosecuted com…

> She's implying that Carmen Ortiz bears some moral culpability for the suicide,

Suicide accounts for almost a 3rd of all deaths in US local jails. Things are much better in state prisons - "only" 6% of deaths are from suicide. (Behind AIDS at 9% and illness at 80%). (These are old, but accurate, figures. (http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/shsplj.pdf) )

Aaron meets some of the risk factors for suicide. Male, history of mental illness (and suicidal ideation), significant life event, potential institutionalisation, and being bullied.

Ms Ortiz owed a duty of care to Aaron, if only to ensure he survived long enough to face trial. When they were told that he was suicidal, and had a history of depression, they should have at least obtained medical reports. They did not. They continued to aggressively pursue this young man (for an alleged crime that neither of the victims wanted to be prosecuted) and threatened to remove him from any support that he had by locking him up.

For almost a third of local jail deaths to be from suicide (and almost half of those occurring in the first week of admission) is pretty shocking.

Re: Why Aaron died

#59

Post by lutusp »

xijuan wrote: post #44
ErrantX wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. But. (and this post doesn't intend to argue Aaron was depressed, just thinks about the premise that he might have been) As someone who suffers a lot with depression, it is quite possible to be depressed and for no one close to you to notice . We can be damn good at hiding it, especially with practice, especially with people we know well. Some time ago I was living with my partner and she had no clue I had been d…

Do you know how psychiatrists or clinical psychologists diagnose depression? Have you read the DSM? Do you know how they come up with the criteria for psychiatric disorders in DSM? Do you know the controversies behind DSM? Do you know few decades ago homosexuality was regarded as a mental disorder? Do you know that there are researchers who want to introduce a new "psychiatric disorder" (i.e., hypersexual disorder) i…

> Do you know how psychiatrists or clinical psychologists diagnose depression?

Yes, and do you know how much variability exists between practitioners? Diagnosis is largely a matter of personal opinion, not science.

The reason for that, in turn, is because no on knows what causes depression -- it's not like a medical condition with an identified pathogen and clinically validated treatment.

But the vague state of depression as an illness with an unknown cause doesn't prevent psychiatry and clinical psychology from offering therapy and drugs of dubious efficacy.

Antidepression drugs have been shown to be ineffective in most cases --

Link: http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fj...

Title: "Initial Severity and Antidepressant Benefits: A Meta-Analysis of Data Submitted to the Food and Drug Administration"

Quote: "Meta-analyses of antidepressant medications have reported only modest benefits over placebo treatment, and when unpublished trial data are included, the benefit falls below accepted criteria for clinical significance."

The story is that drug companies publish only studies that support their belief in their drugs' efficacy. But when completed but unpublished studies are included, the evidence for the efficacy of antidepression drugs evaporates.

The study's authors don't say the drug companies deliberately suppressed negative findings -- they leave that conclusion to the reader.

Re: Why Aaron died

#60

Post by lutusp »

DanBC wrote: post #53
xijuan wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know how psychiatrists or clinical psychologists diagnose depression? Have you read the DSM? Do you know how they come up with the criteria for psychiatric disorders in DSM? Do you know the controversies behind DSM? Do you know few decades ago homosexuality was regarded as a mental disorder? Do you know that there are researchers who want to introduce a new "psychiatric disorder" (i.e., hypersexual disorder) i…

> I am sure everyone has met some of its criteria at some point in their life It is incredibly frustrating that you say this, even while quoting the DSM which says: i) at least 2 weeks ii) and at least five of the following symptoms iii) clinically significant impairment in social, work, or other important areas of functioning almost every day. These symptoms are not vague. Unless you take one symptom, and ignore the…

> These symptoms are not vague.

Of course they are. And there's a lot of variability in diagnosis between practitioners. Some even say that depression isn't really a disease at all.

There is an excellent book on this topic that I cannot recommend highly enough:

Title: "Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease"

Link: http://books.google.com/books?id=U-lvlVSGeEEC

Quote: (about Congitive-behavioral therapy) “a method of indoctrination into the pieties of American optimism, an ideology as much as a medical treatment.”

Here's a discussion of the book (and topic) at the New Yorker entitled "Head Case": http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2010/03/01/100...

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