[WolfCoder]

http://tech.mit.edu/...N61/swartz.html

Pathetic, I would think such an activist would have the steel to die fighting instead of die quitting. How selfish and insensitive do you have to be to not consider all the friends, family, and community you leave behind and hurt? It's made worse by the fact he was capable- who knows what sort of things he could have created had be been stronger?

[KYA]

I don't have any sympathy for people who want to kill themselves. There's plenty of people who want to live.

[Atli]

No offence guys, but that's just an incredibly stupid way to think about it. No sane person kills themselves unless forced to. So unless somebody was holding a gun to a loved one or something, this guy was clearly sick. Whether self inflicted or not, it was an illness that killed him. Psychological illnesses are no less damaging to people than physical illnesses, and can be just as lethal.

How can you not have sympathy for somebody so ill that it lead to his death?

[WolfCoder]

Just like Alcoholism is a disease? Oh wait..

[KYA]

The problem with your hypothesis Atli is that it attempts to rationalize completely irrational behavior [innate ignoring of self preservation]. However irrational it may be to a normal functioning human being, he still made a conscious choice to off himself. The attempt to offload it as anything else is simply yet another way to not allow people to be responsible for their actions.

[Lemur]

Suicide is cowardly. I refuse to give people a way to justify such an act as anything less.

[Atli]

But you just said it: it's completely irrational behaviour. It takes a rather major psychological break for a person to even be capable of taking their own life. You can not compare the choices made by somebody who's mind is "broken" like that to somebody who is thinking clearly.

This is why people who attempt to commit suicides but fail are detained. Because they are deemed not capable of thinking clearly and rationally enough to make make good choices for themselves. You could probably call them "concious" choices, but that term doesn't exactly cover the problem here. Their view on the world gets skewed, and they fail to see the consequences of what they are doing like they normally would.

WolfCoder said:

Just like Alcoholism is a disease? Oh wait..

And I suppose you think addiction is just weak mindedness? Mental diseases tend to be far more destructive, and far harder to cure, than physical diseases.

[ishkabible]

I think there are different cases, cases where it's cowardly, cases where it's just a way out of pain, and cases where the person has a mental illness. It's hard to say from that article what case this was.

If I'm dying of cancer and the rest of my days are just going to be pain, fuck yea I'd off my self. If someone is mentally ill then you can't really blame them. Then you have the people that decided to kill themselves because they thought their life sucked; It makes me feel sad but I can't say I feel sorry for them.

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Just like Alcoholism is a disease? Oh wait..

Alcoholism is an addiction to alcohol of which some people are genetically predisposed to. The predisposition could arguably be called a disease.

This post has been edited by ishkabible: 12 January 2013 - 03:33 PM

[farrell2k]

I'm a big fan of allowing people to make their own decisions. If this is what he wanted, then so be it. If we all have the right to life, we should also have the right to decide when it stops.

[ishkabible]

I agree 100%, that doesn't mean I don't look down on it. For instance, I thinking hooking is a perfectly legitimate idea but I look down on it. I think you should be allowed to drink your self into a stupor every chance you get but I look down on it.

I think the thing that I look down upon the most is how selfish it is. You kill yourself and leave all your loved ones and friends to deal with it.

Funny note, attempt at suicide is punishable by death in California. Or so I've heard, that may have been passed though the rumor mill a few times before it got to me.

This post has been edited by ishkabible: 12 January 2013 - 03:45 PM

[jon.kiparsky]

I don't think Swartz really gives a shit what any of us think at this point, particularly whether we have any sympathy for him. That ship has sailed.

[NeoTifa]

I think he was just super duper depressed, I don't think it was the government. Or maybe it was. Stress can build up to intolerable levels. Maybe he felt that was the only way to make the stress and pressure to stop. Idk. Didn't he co-found Reddit? I saw this on there earlier. Sadly, it was the first time I'd been on there in like a month, and I see that.

[baavgai]

Offing yourself is about as selfish as it gets. I think it's more rational rather than less; it takes a lot of rationalization to talk yourself out of breathing. News flash, one of the dangers of deep depression is suicide.

Now as to an activist killing themselves... well, it's quite a statement, particularly since there are now do overs. Probably more poignant if it was self immolation on a court house steps.

[jon.kiparsky]

We can make up reasons for him all day and into the night. At some moment, the guy saw no better option than to end his life. Why that is, we won't know. It might be that he was crazy - that's possible. It might be that he was depressed, in a clinical sense. That's also possible. It might be that he was a man of 26 years facing legal charges that could put him in jail for twice his lived life, letting him out of jail, if at all, just in time to die, and he was running out of the money that his accomplishments had brought him, and he felt that there was no good end to this and came to a moment when it was all too much, he came to a single moment of despair that freed him from this life, and cost us all whatever he might have brought us next.

We don't know.

One thing I do know: if he'd come to that edge, and turned back, he would be a person who had made a conscious decision to live that most of us never make. And those of us who have not made that conscious decision to live should probably accept that we are not in a position to judge his actions.

In any case, it's a little late to call him names. He can't hear you now. If you can't find a good word to say about what he did with his life, best to let him go. De mortuis nil nisi bonum.

[WolfCoder]

Atli, on 12 January 2013 - 03:00 PM, said:

...

WolfCoder said:

Just like Alcoholism is a disease? Oh wait..

And I suppose you think addiction is just weak mindedness?...

Yes.


You need to take responsibility. This whole "I am powerless to fight this disease" bullshit was started by groups like AA to replace your dependency on things like alcohol with a dependency for god. I'm pretty sure the christian god doesn't work that way anyways, aren't you supposed to make the effort to help yourself to receive any help?


You must fight your problems. If you cannot do it alone, then let your friends and family help you. If you don't, you die weak and you hurt the ones you love.

Quote

In any case, it's a little late to call him names. He can't hear you now. If you can't find a good word to say about what he did with his life, best to let him go.

I said what I said because it had to be said. Someone has to step up and say what's right, despite how unpopular, harsh and critical it may be.

Let us make an example out of his death and, when in the same situation, decide to fight for what could have been than to die a coward.

This post has been edited by WolfCoder: 12 January 2013 - 04:57 PM