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Aaron, 5 years later

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Re: Aaron, 5 years later

#51

Post by chris_wot »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #32
jacquesm wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mental issues are flaws but they don't make a person bad in my book.

Mm, yes and no. It's one of those things where if you reveal you have them, you feel like less of a person. People look at you differently. Be honest: If you were in a position of authority, would you place someone with known suicidal tendencies in a position of power? What if things went very badly? How about someone with outbursts of anger, or serious sleep issues that prevent them from showing up to work on time?…

As someone who has had suicidal tendencies in the past, and suffered as a direct result, yeah - I would give Aaron positions of power and responsibility.

Re: Aaron, 5 years later

#52

Post by chris_wot »

jacquesm wrote: post #45
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mm, yes and no. It's one of those things where if you reveal you have them, you feel like less of a person. People look at you differently. Be honest: If you were in a position of authority, would you place someone with known suicidal tendencies in a position of power? What if things went very badly? How about someone with outbursts of anger, or serious sleep issues that prevent them from showing up to work on time?…

> Aaron had some political aspirations, and a felony conviction would've precluded him from running for certain offices. Maybe that, combined with his internal issues, may have made him feel like less of a person. I don't know. If you don't know then don't speculate.

I agree.

Re: Aaron, 5 years later

#53

Post by chris_wot »

antonkm wrote: post #16
jotm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I envy him, he had the guts to take the fast way out.

Please do not be so insensitive on HN, or in other forums. This is an actual person that took his life and you never know who ends up reading your comment.

Or he could mean what he says.

Re: Aaron, 5 years later

#55

Post by mentalhealth »

DaniFong wrote: post #37

Just in case it ever comes to this, if I die, it was NOT a suicide. RIP Aaron, I wish I knew you.

This is a reasonable statement to want to make, but (with a vanishingly small number of exceptions), suicide is not a choice. It's the result of depression combined with loss of inhibition (due to stress, chemical imbalance, or other factors). Your rational state of mind now has no bearing on whether you are capable of taking your own life under certain circumstances.

Re: Aaron, 5 years later

#56

Post by sillysaurus3 »

chris_wot wrote: post #52
jacquesm wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aaron had some political aspirations, and a felony conviction would've precluded him from running for certain offices. Maybe that, combined with his internal issues, may have made him feel like less of a person. I don't know. If you don't know then don't speculate.

I agree.

He felt something, near the end. Put yourself in his shoes. Speculation is all we can do, if we're serious about trying to prevent this in the future.

Giving people an outlet is important. The people who reached out to me often felt cornered, for one reason or another. Isn't it reasonable to suppose Aaron felt the similarly?

If people feel like they're allowed to open up about their issues, it can really do some good. But that won't happen by trying to hush people.

Readers: If any of you are considering any extreme action, contact me first. I'll listen. And I won't judge you. I know at least one of you has had similar thoughts. So reach out instead.

Re: Aaron, 5 years later

#57

Post by icantdrive55 »

jacquesm wrote: post #29
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should also celebrate people's flaws. There's no such thing as an entirely good person. Aaron had mental issues. But those same issues were what gave him strength, because they were a part of him. If you took them away, Aaron wouldn't be Aaron. If we celebrate people's flaws, maybe people won't feel like they're not allowed to have flaws. And maybe that might help people who feel like ending it. https://news.ycomb…

Mental issues are flaws but they don't make a person bad in my book.

Actually, the people I have know that had issues, should be in positions of authority.

So many are not given the chance to get back on track, or retreat from it all together.

Re: Aaron, 5 years later

#58

Post by ilamont »

Ortiz continued to pursue the case, comparing Swartz’s transgression to that of a common thief. The lead prosecutor on the case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Heymann, compared Swartz to a rapist who had “revictimized” MIT by not taking a plea bargain, according to a later MIT investigation. Heymann was also bothered that Swartz launched a “wild Internet campaign” in his own defense. (He had not done so.)

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/carmen-ortiz-us-attorne...

Swartz’s attorney Elliot Peters accused Massachusetts assistant U.S. attorney Stephen Heymann of pursuing federal charges against Swartz to gain publicity.

Heymann was looking for “some juicy looking computer crime cases and Aaron’s case, sadly for Aaron, fit the bill,” Peters said. Heymann, Peters believes, thought the Swartz case “was going to receive press and he was going to be a tough guy and read his name in the newspaper.”

Heymann, the deputy chief of the criminal division in the Boston-based U.S. Attorney’s office, also headed the computer crimes task force there, a position Peters said “doesn’t carry much prestige and respect unless you have computer crimes cases.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-steph...

MIT’s behavior throughout the case was reprehensible, and this report is quite frankly a whitewash.

Here are the facts: This report claims that MIT was “neutral” – but MIT’s lawyers gave prosecutors total access to witnesses and evidence, while refusing access to Aaron’s lawyers to the exact same witnesses and evidence. That’s not neutral. The fact is that all MIT had to do was say publicly, “We don’t want this prosecution to go forward” – and Steve Heymann and Carmen Ortiz would have had no case. We have an institution to contrast MIT with – JSTOR, who came out immediately and publicly against the prosecution. Aaron would be alive today if MIT had acted as JSTOR did. MIT had a moral imperative to do so.

http://tarensk.tumblr.com/post/56881327662/mit-report-is-a-w...

Re: Aaron, 5 years later

#59

Post by stryk »

jacquesm wrote: post #44
pazimzadeh wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's too bad Aaron and Alexandra Elbakyan never met. They might have made a good team.

She's currently in hiding after Elsevier won an injunction. There's one company I'll be very happy to see the last of.

I still don't see why all the scientific paper publishing stuff is allowed to work in the way that it does. I mean, don't a large % of the people doing that research use funding from government grants? If public money was used to produce the research, then the public should have free and available access to it -- we already paid for it.

Re: Aaron, 5 years later

#60

Post by jacquesm »

stryk wrote: post #59
jacquesm wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She's currently in hiding after Elsevier won an injunction. There's one company I'll be very happy to see the last of.

I still don't see why all the scientific paper publishing stuff is allowed to work in the way that it does. I mean, don't a large % of the people doing that research use funding from government grants? If public money was used to produce the research, then the public should have free and available access to it -- we already paid for it.

Ostensibly you are not paying Elsevier to access the research, you are paying them because they obtained the right to copy the paper.

That's the loophole that many of the writers use to publish pre-prints from their own homepages. That did not stop the publishers from suing them:

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/elsevier-versus-open-access

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