Aaron Swartz, Asking For Help, 119 Days Ago • Hacker News Board

Re: Aaron Swartz, Asking For Help, 119 Days Ago

#501

Post by pygy_ » Tue, Jan 15, 2013, 9:01 AM UTC

davorak wrote: post #397

Permit wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Push anyone far enough and they'll take their own life. This is ridiculous hindsight bias, people have been charged with far more than Aaron and didn't kill themselves. Aaron had been depressed for a long time leading up to all of this, yet everyone seems to argue that the prosecution is what did it and he would have been completely fine otherwise. They have nothing to base that off of, but that's still the case tha…

It is more a statement of probabilities, do I know thats what pushed him of the edge of course not, is likely to have played a significant role, I think yes. It does not have to be all or nothing to change my opinion and my future actions.

Another point I wanted to make, but couldn't articulate because 3am is not my neuron's best friend:

The fact that you're experiencing or you've experienced depression in the past doesn't mean you're inherently broken.

As for suicide, most people have an acute and a chronic stress threshold that can lead to a so-called "major depression" episode.

Re: Aaron Swartz, Asking For Help, 119 Days Ago

#502

Post by pygy_ » Tue, Jan 15, 2013, 9:06 AM UTC

MrScruff wrote: post #448

sethbc wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never post and I never comment, but I had to login to say something. HN needs to "man up" and accept that the majority of the attitudes in the original post are exactly why things ended the way they did. People bitching about the styling of payment buttons? Telling someone to "man up" or exclaiming (with plenty of IANAL disclaimers) that no one would get jail time for something like this is typical for your average…

HN needs to "man up" and accept that the majority of the attitudes in the original post are exactly why things ended the way they did. What exactly do you mean by this?

He details it further in his message.

Re: Aaron Swartz, Asking For Help, 119 Days Ago

#503

Post by gazrogers » Tue, Jan 15, 2013, 9:33 AM UTC

nextstep wrote: post #489

InclinedPlane wrote: post #480

I'm not sure why I'm commenting here, I expect it'll just be shouting into the void given the nature of this thread. However, there are some things that rub me the wrong way about all this, so maybe I'll try to make a few points. One thing that's been bugging me is how, to be blunt, intellectually lazy so many people seem to have been about this whole thing, especially the case against Aaron. Everyone is looking for…

Exactly. In a few sentences, edw519 took apart Aaron's whole life and claimed to know enough to write off his plea for help. I think a good first step would be for Ed to apologize and stop trying to defend his rude comment from 4 months ago.

edw519 has posted exactly once on this discussion and made no attempt that I can discern to 'defend his rude comment'.

Re: Aaron Swartz, Asking For Help, 119 Days Ago

#504

Post by scriptdude » Tue, Jan 15, 2013, 9:42 AM UTC

HN is the big brother you worship, your hero, the coolest guy you know. Then one night you find him drunk and coked up sleeping in the backyard in a pool of piss and vomit.

This topic is the backyard.

Re: Aaron Swartz, Asking For Help, 119 Days Ago

#505

Post by klepra » Tue, Jan 15, 2013, 10:39 AM UTC

Wrong or not, Ed's comment was very cold-hearted, uncompassionate, pretentious, egoistic even sexist. That said, I see a lot of this in IT/tech word in general and it makes me sad to work in this field.

Re: Aaron Swartz, Asking For Help, 119 Days Ago

#506

Post by analog » Tue, Jan 15, 2013, 10:57 AM UTC

mpyne wrote: post #470

analog wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any of those as being correct tbh. Wrong - morally not, legally maybe. JSTOR backing out - MIT didn't back out. An example is justified - absolutely not, given that the act is not morally wrong. Aaron won't serve serious time - well, we're seeing the time he's serving now. He's lost his life and he isn't the first under these circumstances.

Well for a legal prosecutor "legally wrong" is the point that matters (and it's this way for a very important reason). Likewise the state prosecutes in some situations even if the "victim" doesn't want to press charges, as the responsibility of the state extends far beyond just the party that was allegedly wronged. I've mentioned it elsewhere but it's well enough to reiterate: Even know we know that there was a plea…

The prosecutors were told he was a suicide risk.

“The thing that galls me is that I told Heymann the kid was a suicide risk,” Good told me. “His reaction was a standard reaction in that office, not unique to Steve. He said, ‘Fine, we’ll lock him up.’ I’m not saying they made Aaron kill himself. Aaron might have done this anyway. I’m saying they were aware of the risk, and they were heedless.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/01/15/humanity-deficit...

Re: Aaron Swartz, Asking For Help, 119 Days Ago

#507

Post by kamakazizuru » Tue, Jan 15, 2013, 11:42 AM UTC

dennisgorelik wrote: post #314

kamakazizuru wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

his point is pretty clear @tptacek - he's saying that just because edw519 didnt know the facts - doesnt make it okay for him to have been a caustic douche back then.

Please taste your own medicine. Your comment is way more aggressive than the comments tptacek and edw519 made 119 days ago. What if your comment gets upvoted and then tptacek or edw519 end up with suicide -- who would you be then?

calling someone a douche is significantly less aggressive than telling a person who's obviously PLEADING for help that he's wrong and should man up - based on very limited information.

Re: Aaron Swartz, Asking For Help, 119 Days Ago

#508

Post by jacquesm » Tue, Jan 15, 2013, 1:13 PM UTC

mpyne wrote: post #467

jacquesm wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 6-8 months is not "major" prison time by any reasonable definition of that term. That sounds like plenty 'major' for me. Have you been in prison? I have been in 'lock-up' for about 6 hours for the terrible crime of driving a foreign car in the Netherlands. I can tell you I did not enjoy it one little bit and the prospect of doing that 6 to 8 months would change me in ways that I would prefer not to think about. Jai…

> Have you been in prison? I've been in a submerged metal tube for some number of months. In many respects it's a worse environment than prison (though I can at least vouch for my fellow "inmates"). No email, no internet, no sleep, the stupid periscope watch with hydraulic oil dripping on your face. Of course, I chose to do that. I would think that aaronsw knew that some nominal prison term would be a possibility of…

> I've been in a submerged metal tube for some number of months. In many respects it's a worse environment than prison (though I can at least vouch for my fellow "inmates").

I think a big difference with prison is that prison is not voluntary.

Re: Aaron Swartz, Asking For Help, 119 Days Ago

#509

Post by rehack » Tue, Jan 15, 2013, 1:28 PM UTC

lhnz wrote: post #251

[deleted] wrote: post #104

[deleted]

This isn’t Ed’s fault, nor is it yours. But TechCrunch is completely right to call us all out. Aaron asked for our help and yet it’s difficult to find a single compassionate voice in that whole thread. Both Ed and yourself eloquently shut down anybody arguing on his behalf. “There is virtually no chance Swartz is going to spend time in prison.” That was you in the thread by the way. You also devolved the conversation…

>But TechCrunch is completely right to call us all out

Agree with you.

If you look at Aaron's activity on HN[1], you will see that there is none from around 144 days i.e. 15 days before from after the help submission[2] was discussed. If you see earlier activity, he had been posting things with a gap of 10-20 days. So it can't be ruled out, that perhaps he felt let down by the community. Sad.

  [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=aaronsw
  [2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529484

Re: Aaron Swartz, Asking For Help, 119 Days Ago

#510

Post by pygy_ » Tue, Jan 15, 2013, 1:38 PM UTC

oinksoft wrote: post #461

pygy_ wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only they get free upvotes, but the people who disagree with them sometimes get free downvotes. See here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5033743

What you are arguing for there is quite common-sense. Who would advocate the "throw up your hands, you're screwed if they're in the DB" approach?

That exchange was ridiculous. I brushed his ego by correcting him on what is supposed to be his core competency, and he resorted to bullying and fallacious reasoning rather than admitting he was wrong.

It took some work, but I managed to corner him.

I didn't want to lose this argument because he was trying to make me look foolish when I was technically right. Since he has a lot of street cred, I feared that a lot of people would take his ramblings as correct.

And some did. I got at least three down votes on the first message.