Still More About The Death Of Aaron Swartz
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Still More About The Death Of Aaron Swartz
1–10 of 70 posts
Re: Still More About The Death Of Aaron Swartz
#2I don't particularly think there's much to be gained by going against the hivemind on all of this, but I also don't "blame" the prosecutors for Aaron's death. Aaron killed himself. Suicide and depression are tricky things, and not one single person currently living knows what the full story is. If that's enough to get me labeled as "usually reasonable" as well, then so be it.
Re: Still More About The Death Of Aaron Swartz
#3I don't particularly think there's much to be gained by going against the hivemind on all of this, but I also don't "blame" the prosecutors for Aaron's death. Aaron killed himself. Suicide and depression are tricky things, and not one single person currently living knows what the full story is. If that's enough to get me labeled as "usually reasonable" as well, then so be it.
I actually agree with you, but this is exactly the opposite of what the author is saying. Charles Pierce (a long-time Boston politics reporter, not a "tech guy") isn't blaming Ortiz for killing Swartz, he's blaming her and her husband for being disingenuous in their public statements about the prosecution and for the casual way they mention a six-month Federal sentence as if it's nothing.
He also attacks the obviously political motivation behind the prosecution:
I guarantee you, if Aaron Swartz hadn't killed himself, he'd have been in an Ortiz For Governor campaign commercial one day.Re: Still More About The Death Of Aaron Swartz
#4I don't particularly think there's much to be gained by going against the hivemind on all of this, but I also don't "blame" the prosecutors for Aaron's death. Aaron killed himself. Suicide and depression are tricky things, and not one single person currently living knows what the full story is. If that's enough to get me labeled as "usually reasonable" as well, then so be it.
I actually agree with you, but this is exactly the opposite of what the author is saying. Charles Pierce (a long-time Boston politics reporter, not a "tech guy") isn't blaming Ortiz for killing Swartz, he's blaming her and her husband for being disingenuous in their public statements about the prosecution and for the casual way they mention a six-month Federal sentence as if it's nothing. He also attacks the obviousl…
I'm not sure I buy that. Aaron Swartz is not exactly Willie Horton. Even if you paint him as a dangerous computer hacker, that doesn't strike me as a particularly convincing political ad.
Re: Still More About The Death Of Aaron Swartz
#5I don't particularly think there's much to be gained by going against the hivemind on all of this, but I also don't "blame" the prosecutors for Aaron's death. Aaron killed himself. Suicide and depression are tricky things, and not one single person currently living knows what the full story is. If that's enough to get me labeled as "usually reasonable" as well, then so be it.
I actually agree with you, but this is exactly the opposite of what the author is saying. Charles Pierce (a long-time Boston politics reporter, not a "tech guy") isn't blaming Ortiz for killing Swartz, he's blaming her and her husband for being disingenuous in their public statements about the prosecution and for the casual way they mention a six-month Federal sentence as if it's nothing. He also attacks the obviousl…
But that's ridiculous. The only thing that made this case big news was his death.
It's worth reading over old HN threads on the criminal case. The consensus was pretty close to my position now, which is that prosecutorial discretion worked pretty well in determining the charges. That doesn't make the outcome any less sad; nor does raging at the wrong people.
Re: Still More About The Death Of Aaron Swartz
#6A focus on the prosecutor helps distract attention from the question of whether and how Swartz was mistreated by being made a (somewhat artificial) "tech celebrity" at a very young age only to become a kind of semi-outcast in some tech circles just a few years later.
Re: Still More About The Death Of Aaron Swartz
#7I don't particularly think there's much to be gained by going against the hivemind on all of this, but I also don't "blame" the prosecutors for Aaron's death. Aaron killed himself. Suicide and depression are tricky things, and not one single person currently living knows what the full story is. If that's enough to get me labeled as "usually reasonable" as well, then so be it.
When you say things like "we don't know the full story" or "suicide is tricky", you aren't taking a reasonable middle-of-the-road position you're effectively endorsing the status quo. By refusing to pick a side when there is a disagreement or struggle between groups of unequal strength you still pick a side: you side with the stronger group. When people are bullied, be it in the schoolyard on by the government, the power difference is immense. That means by default the bully will win. It's just that simple.
We don't have all the information. In life you never have the information you need to make perfect decisions. But we can ask ourselves if we're OK with the status quo, and if not, try to change it.
To reduce the whole affair to simply "Aaron killed himself." is crude and far from reasonable.
Re: Still More About The Death Of Aaron Swartz
#8A focus on the prosecutor helps distract attention from the question of whether and how Swartz was mistreated by being made a (somewhat artificial) "tech celebrity" at a very young age only to become a kind of semi-outcast in some tech circles just a few years later.
Bingo. I've been trying not to say petty things out of respect for recently departed people and his family, with whom I sympathize for this terrible, terrible thing.
But the radical loss of perspective here is just jarring, and the case is big enough now that it's hard to refrain from trying to put things into perspective. I am aware of the full history, having been a programmer with significant open-source and other contributions through the 90s and early 2000s. Aaron is being totally misremembered.
Of those who knew of him before his death - and he was not a "celebrity" or "famous" or considered "brilliant" or a "genius" by technologists - most knew him as a blogger. He was actually a very good writer, even from a young age. He wrote with clarity and purpose, and he had many interests. His technical output was not major. To pull a random name out of a hat, his contributions were less than someone like Craig McClanahan and far less than someone like Brian Behlendorf. Basically, Aaron got a chance with Y Combinator, which he parlayed into a merger with Reddit's parent company, mostly through personal connections. Aaron didn't get end up getting along with Alexis or Steve, who considered him immature, dramatic, and unreliable. Reddit was shortly rewritten entirely, and web.py was too buggy to make any further contribution to Reddit. Aaron was fired from Reddit's acquirer because he didn't bother doing anything after the payout. He then floated around, wrote a few minor libraries and some more interesting blog posts, and then became a very good activist worthy of deeper respect on that front. He wasn't actually a tech celebrity before his death. He didn't "invent RSS." He didn't singlehandedly "defeat SOPA." His work on RSS 1.0, a version of RSS that was never significant itself, was mostly of interest to the semantic-web people, who have themselves have never made much of an impact, although the work is interesting to some.
I didn't know Aaron personally, but I do think his volatile relationships with others and his desire to be famous within this community were a source of extreme anxiety for him, though probably more so in the past than recently. But his professional life was, perhaps understandably, extremely frustrating for reasons that had nothing to do with his criminal case.
That's not an attack. Most people don't make major technical contributions. But I wish people would see this case for what it is - a volatile activist who pulled a stunt that spiraled out of control.
Re: Still More About The Death Of Aaron Swartz
#9I don't particularly think there's much to be gained by going against the hivemind on all of this, but I also don't "blame" the prosecutors for Aaron's death. Aaron killed himself. Suicide and depression are tricky things, and not one single person currently living knows what the full story is. If that's enough to get me labeled as "usually reasonable" as well, then so be it.
When you say things like "we don't know the full story" or "suicide is tricky", you aren't taking a reasonable middle-of-the-road position you're effectively endorsing the status quo. By refusing to pick a side when there is a disagreement or struggle between groups of unequal strength you still pick a side: you side with the stronger group. When people are bullied, be it in the schoolyard on by the government, the p…
"If you're not for us you're against us" is a poor counterargument, no matter how eloquently stated. There must be room for more nuanced positions. If insufficient knowledge is not sufficient cause for having no position, the only possible result is complete polarization.
Re: Still More About The Death Of Aaron Swartz
#10I don't particularly think there's much to be gained by going against the hivemind on all of this, but I also don't "blame" the prosecutors for Aaron's death. Aaron killed himself. Suicide and depression are tricky things, and not one single person currently living knows what the full story is. If that's enough to get me labeled as "usually reasonable" as well, then so be it.
When you say things like "we don't know the full story" or "suicide is tricky", you aren't taking a reasonable middle-of-the-road position you're effectively endorsing the status quo. By refusing to pick a side when there is a disagreement or struggle between groups of unequal strength you still pick a side: you side with the stronger group. When people are bullied, be it in the schoolyard on by the government, the p…
It's for extremely perceptive comments like this that I read HN. Thanks Gizmo.