Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Aaron, 5 years later

bensw.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 133 posts

Re: Aaron, 5 years later

#81

Post by wooter »

r3bl wrote: post #64
andreyf wrote: post #41

What did SOPA have to do with Net Neutrality?

Doesn't take too big of a stretch to see the connection. No net neutrality: Big companies will be able to afford paying to ISPs to get into "fast lanes", smaller companies will not. SOPA: Big companies will be able to afford scanning user generated content for piracy, smaller companies will not. End result is pretty much the same.

I dont see that connection at all.

In fact, it is the 'benevolent' government that has abused surveillance, tried to corruptly enable large companies to censor the internet under the guise of 'anti-piracy' (SOPA), and pushed Aaron to suicide through prosecutorial overreach which Net Neutrality proponents want to grant more control over the ISPs over fear-mongering (like piracy) of prices/throttling. (despite the obvious failures of government-enabled regional monopolies)

Re: Aaron, 5 years later

#82

Post by nicklaf »

0xBA5ED wrote: post #75
nicklaf wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you guys are interested in going down that rabbit hole, I highly recommend Robert Sapolsky's Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst . Although I confess I have only read the first chapter or so, the book sets out to convince its readers that many of the things that can go wrong in the human brain ought not to be thought of as bad choices so much as automobiles in need of a part replacement (this metap…

Now we’re completely off topic, but I want to reply to this :) I think of it like this. Perhaps every decision you make is /almost/ entirely determined by your current biological state and a long string of preconditions beyond your control. But… there is a sliver of freewill on top of this. And /with/ that sliver, you can choose to make incremental changes to your personal beliefs which molds your perception. By doin…

Probably the most interesting answer I could have imagined to this, and from what I gather from Sapolsky's book that I've thus far read, pretty much in the opposite direction of his thesis in the book. But to my eyes just as convincing.

Re: Aaron, 5 years later

#84

Post by urda »

MrQuincle wrote: post #4

A very moving story. To pick up your life and start living again is not easy. Importantly, to become relaxed and happy again without the feeling to have to become more and more productive or create legacy for ourselves or the ones we love is yet another even more difficult step. There are very few self-help methods that do not have as Target to "improve yourself". Take your time and remember the good times of the pas…

> Importantly, to become relaxed and happy again without the feeling to have to become more and more productive or create legacy for ourselves or the ones we love is yet another even more difficult step.

I still deal with this problem daily, I never feel that I'm good enough for my family to be happy for me.

Re: Aaron, 5 years later

#85

Post by ebcode »

jacquesm wrote: post #47
petrikapu wrote: post #34

I'm happy he died for a good reason

He did not die for a good reason.

Think the parent might have meant "good cause."

I'm not sure if Aaron really took his own life or not, and I don't want to say anything insensitive, but I'll share a thought I remember having around the time of his death, which was that if he did kill himself, he was acting out of concern for the greater good -- in that by killing himself, he escaped being "made an example of" by the prosecution, and instead made the prosecution look extremely heavy-handed, and even guilty themselves. The hope would have been that for other folks facing similar circumstances in the future, his case would be remembered and other prosecutors would therefore choose not to go down that same road of trying to make an example out of someone with extreme punishment, for fear of creating another martyr.

Re: Aaron, 5 years later

#86

Post by akoster »

wickawic wrote: post #72
alelefant wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quote about death seems very similar to David Eagleman's book "Forty Tales from the Afterlives". Here's an excerpt that you might find interesting: http://www.eagleman.com/sum/excerpt

It is also a way of thinking about death prevalent in Jewish culture.

Indeed! It's why many Jews choose to name children after deceased relatives to honor and remember them.

Also a similar quote by Irving Yalom:

"Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That's when I will be truly dead - when I exist in no one's memory. I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people. When that person dies, the whole cluster dies, too, vanishes from the living memory. I wonder who that person will be for me. Whose death will make me truly dead?"

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/153699-some-day-soon-perhap...

Re: Aaron, 5 years later

#87

Post by sillysaurus3 »

DanBC wrote: post #80
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Speculation is all we can do, if we're serious about trying to prevent this in the future. No no, if you want to prevent suicide you should avoid specualting on what went on in a person's mind. Suicide is a complex phenomena, and it's wrong to boil it down to one or two things.

For what it's worth, I partly agree. It just seems important to try to help whatever is going on.

Most people don't try, you know? It can be really hard for people who have stuff going on to find any kind of support.

And you'd think it'd be the opposite: family, friends, counsellors. Yet for some reason, people tend to eschew them during dark times. There's something worth exploring there, and I want to help somehow.

A decent example: https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/7q9eu0/my_...

In that case, it was trauma that almost led to suicide. But it was intensely private and humiliating. Of course she wasn't going to talk to her father about it.

If only there were a service for people in that situation to get real help, on demand. There are suicide hotlines, but many people are far more comfortable expressing themselves via keyboard.

Re: Aaron, 5 years later

#88

Post by thissiteblows »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #30
narrator wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Egyptian and Babylonian religions of antiquity were dedicated to maintaining the status quo and they did so for centuries. They did this by carefully guarding who was allowed to have access to sacred knowledge to control who had power in their hierarchical societies. Those with access to specialized knowledge had to be limited in number and properly initiated. Unfortunately, it seems like this pattern of social o…

That comparison only holds if you consider those attending cheap state school on student loans as "the vetted privileged few". Not to mention, even at the state schools, we just download the PDFs off Google Scholar because searching the databases is annoying. Nothings's really changed other than rhetoric.

> That comparison only holds if you consider those attending cheap state school on student loans as "the vetted privileged few".

As any sensible person would, consdering how few people do that.

Re: Aaron, 5 years later

#89

Post by marvy »

sapper123 wrote: post #68
jacquesm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is the right to copy the paper an agreement between universities and the publisher? If so, can't the universities just give a middle finger to the publisher, cancel those rights and allow the research to be publicized for free, in the interest of furthering research, or is money that they get from the publisher that significant?

I'm not an expert in this area, but I'm pretty sure they get no money at all from the publishers. Other way around in fact: their libraries spend large fraction of budget subscribing to the journals.

Re: Aaron, 5 years later

#90

Post by madez »

MollyR wrote: post #2

"Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations." - Aaron I think about his quote quite a bit lately. I wonder what he would have thought about modern facebook, google, and the extreme cons…

Have you ever had the feeling like "Uhm, I better not share this article even though I like it" or "I'm curious about a topic but I better not google it" or "I shouldn't have these files on my machine for somebody could find them".

These thoughts often come out of social pressure to conform, an invisible ever-present behaviour regulation, that we never explicitly agreed upon.

Social pressure is harmful to minorities, which is a problem, because we develop by minorities becoming the majorities.

Feeling watched builds up social pressure immensely.

Google and Facebook multiply social pressure, because watching is a fundamental and essential part of their business.

Post reply on HN