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Chris Seaton has died

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Re: Chris Seaton has died

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, I've read that for them its not even seen as making a choice. Earth is too freaking hard sometimes.

It's not a choice. It's not seen as a choice. The Choice is not between life-and-death but between suffering and ending your suffering. This is how the suicidal mind thinks. When suffering becomes greater than any other emotion it It's like a pressure that has to be relieved

"The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling."

- David Foster Wallace

Re: Chris Seaton has died

#143
post #130

Quoted post unavailable.

My experiences as a person who has been suicidal, who has been close to suicidal people, and who has had friends who committed suicide all tell me that it's not as simple as "wanting to die". The same person can feel completely different about their continued viability as a living person within the same hour. The version of that person who wants to continue living is just as worthy of respect. And we can only reach o…

The most apt analogy (to my experience) is that in general, suicidal people don't want to die, but it's like they're trapped on the 20th story of a burning building and sometimes the fire seems to be under control but right now they're nearly overwhelmed with smoke and the heat is bearing down, and they're at a point where jumping seems like the best alternative.

And how relieved they could be if a fireman could put out the fire, or pluck them from that ledge to safety.

In the same analogy, there is still a time when jumping really is understandable; there are situations (Robin Williams comes to mind) when suicide really is a rational option.

Re: Chris Seaton has died

#144
I just opened my first issue two weeks ago in concurrent-ruby and he kindly offered me help. In the end I feel like I have wasted his time, because it was a different problem. I wish I expressed more gratitude. I'm grateful for everyone in the Ruby and OpenSource community

Re: Chris Seaton has died

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. The guy had what appears to be a pretty great life. Looking through twitter, there's photos of him with his kids and wife. I just can't comprehend how someone can arrive at the decision to commit suicide, especially when you have a wife and children, and to then tweet about it. The human mind is an odd thing.

Trust me, been there tried to do that (June 1977 — I woke up several days later intubated/on a ventilator in the ICU). It's completely logical when you're profoundly depressed. If you haven't been there then you "just can't comprehend..."

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Re: Chris Seaton has died

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. The guy had what appears to be a pretty great life. Looking through twitter, there's photos of him with his kids and wife. I just can't comprehend how someone can arrive at the decision to commit suicide, especially when you have a wife and children, and to then tweet about it. The human mind is an odd thing.

Trust me, been there tried to do that (June 1977 — I woke up several days later intubated/on a ventilator in the ICU). It's completely logical when you're profoundly depressed. If you haven't been there then you "just can't comprehend..."

I'm glad you made it through that experience, and hope that things have improved considerably since then.

I've never been seriously suicidal, but I did have a period of bad depression/OCD where I experienced what I later learned is called "derealization", where I felt cut off from everything in life and as though I was viewing the world through frosted glass. Once I received help and left that state, I was struck by how much it felt that everything I cared about was already gone. I can only imagine there's a similar feeling when people die by suicide.

Re: Chris Seaton has died

#147
post #26

About 10 years ago he started a project with Ruby running on Graal before it was known as TruffleRuby. I still remember those HN submissions. SubstrateVM, Graal, The VM to rule it all. And as far as I am aware, he was the only one putting all papers about Ruby and Compilers Design in a single place [1]. I still remember a thread which I have bookmarked somewhere, where you have the lead of JVM, Graal, TruffleRuby, JS…

Can you link that thread? It sounds quite interesting

Re: Chris Seaton has died

#148
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not optimism, hope. What is the difference?

Optimism is trying to convince yourself things are better than they are, hope is the idea that things can actually get better.

Well put. I often see people who are not depressed who use optimism towards depressed people, because optimism will cancel out an ephemeral despondency as it doesn’t really require evidence or reasoning beyond “it’ll get better”. Depression is too well bunkered in for something like that.

Re: Chris Seaton has died

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. The guy had what appears to be a pretty great life. Looking through twitter, there's photos of him with his kids and wife. I just can't comprehend how someone can arrive at the decision to commit suicide, especially when you have a wife and children, and to then tweet about it. The human mind is an odd thing.

Suicide is not a decision. It’s not something you commit, like a crime. Our phrasing needs to reflect this. It’s a disease. Chris died of suicide.

thanks for saying this. i believe it to be an important comment and it has helped me.

Re: Chris Seaton has died

#150
post #144

I just opened my first issue two weeks ago in concurrent-ruby and he kindly offered me help. In the end I feel like I have wasted his time, because it was a different problem. I wish I expressed more gratitude. I'm grateful for everyone in the Ruby and OpenSource community

> In the end I feel like I have wasted his time, because it was a different problem

Every issue is an investigation. It's normal for the breakage to be in some place non-obvious. Don't beat yourself up over it or let it hold you back from opening issues in the future. If you can provide a good reproduction you'll speed up the time to get to "oh here's the bug" or "not my problem" which is really helpful to maintainers.

> I wish I expressed more gratitude. I'm grateful for everyone in the Ruby and OpenSource community

There's never enough in hind site. Let's all pay it forward a little more

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