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Comment by angrycoder | Hacker News Reader

An honest appraisal? That is one way of looking at it. Another way is he threw out a giant derogatory 'Meh' to someone asking for help.

Does he bear responsibility for what happened to Aaron? No, but it is also not hard to see how the top ranked comment from a respected member didn't carry some weight in how people perceived Aaron and his situation.

The big take away here is that words matter and maybe if you don't have all 'the facts available' you can give someone the benefit of of the doubt. Or the next time you feel like making a 'meh' post, just say nothing at all.

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I don't think this is fair. You cannot read a comment, or a bunch of comments, from over 100 days ago in light of the recent suicide. If people make their actions dependant on someone's post on HN, that is the problem, and making the right posts that magically know what will happen in the future, and what happened behind closed doors (such as the district judge basically shutting Aaron up, if I catched that correctly, sorry if I didn't) is not the solution to it. Yes, more love is what the world needs, so in that sense you are right and would be in whatever context you said the above, and maybe I am just contradicting you because I often am a callous SOB online. But still.. this isn't fair. Yes, he asked for help, but every single US citizen pays taxes for the reason he asked for help. So if you're gonna play the blame game, play it and see where it actually leads, don't just stop at convenient scapegoats like Ed. I cannot speak for Aaron, but it does seem to me that he was scared of jail or worse; he didn't kill himself to hurt anyone, so maybe don't use it that way. There is no way to make sense of all this, but there are ways to make good come of it.. I would do that just to spite someone who killed themselves out of revenge, but how much more so when they didn't. That is all, I feel weird even speaking to this, but I hope it helped.

I up-voted his original comment I would do so again.

Aaron knew what he was doing. There are many charities more deserving than his legal defense fund -- that isn't changed just because he was apparently mentally ill enough to take his own life.

There should be a high burden you have to overcome to successfully find crowd-funding for anything including a legal defense.

There are many charities more deserving than the coffeeshop you go to, those nice kickstarter projects you backed and the companies who make your clothes. One thing doesn't null the other.

Push anyone far enough and they'll take their own life. The threshold varies from one person to the next, but blaming his suicide on mental illness is IMO disingenuous.

Which causes deserve funding is a matter of personal choice.

>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 that is frequently made here.

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.

You can call outside speculation "a statement of probabilities" in an attempt to make it seem legitimate, but that doesn't make you correct.

Dressing up speculation doesn't change what it is.

I am confused on how you think the information should be used to change ones opinion and future actions. Do you think there should be zero influence?

> but that doesn't make you correct.

My aim was not to be 100% correct about Arron, but rather to on average be more correct with similar cases.

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.

Ridiculous? Eat it!

Hindsight bias, not really either, a plain old fact. Some people are more resistant than others, but at some point anyone will snap (for the toughest it may require severe sleep deprivation and torture, but most people have a much lower threshold).

I didn't know Aaron Swartz, and I am thus not familiar with the details of his alleged depressive past.

There are usually a lot of factors that bring people to kill themselves. Assuming he was indeed depressed, the intensity of the symptoms get modulated by external influences. The absolute weight of the charges is also completely meaningless. They were intentionally unfair, and the meaning of a given sentence varies from people to people.

Blaming depression for his suicide on depression alone simply shows you don't know what you're talking about (FWIW I hold a MD).

> FWIW I hold a MD

It's not worth much in this discussion.

Your logic here is fuzzy man. Asserting that everyone has a point at which they will kill themselves? Maybe you're basing this on knowing that YOU have a point at which you'd take your own life.

But what in the thousands of years of human suffering gives you this certainty that "everybody" has this suicidal breaking point?

You can't make an assertion into a "plain old fact" just by repeating it.

The MD is relevant regarding my knowledge about depression.

I know you can't prove the threshold thing, short of trying to break each and every person on earth. That being said, there are various ways to weaken people (including, for the die hards, prolonged isolation, sleep and sensory deprivation, manipulation, mental and physical torture, destroying their social status, friendships and families... I never practiced this, BTW), and I believe that you can drive anyone to suicide using them.

For example, put someone in a situation where he has the choice between killing himself or killing someone he loves. 5 seconds to decide, after which, if he didn't act, the other person is killed.

This is becoming really gloomy. I balk out.

Edit, actually the bargain I set up above is not a good example of what I meant exactly, but a good example of the level of cruelty you can use.

Edit2: I didn't downvote you, BTW (AFAIK, you can't downvote the answers to your comments).

> Push anyone far enough and they'll take their own life.

Perhaps, but many, many people have been in situations such as Aaron's and not killed themself, so it's warranted to at least ponder if there was something else going on than a mean prosecutor. And here we don't have to wonder, it's been reported already that there was a lot of depression involved.

Exactly. While he may have been being put under undue pressure, I disagreed with his actions, his reasoning, and his approach, and so I didn't think his legal defense was worth my money. That doesn't mean I don't regret his death, but his death wouldn't change my action in an analogous situation tomorrow.

I'm actually in the same position: I didn't give any money to the guy's legal defense fund and I think any rational assessment of my budget and the merits of the case would result in the same decision if I had it all to do over. I don't think that is really the point, though.

There's a world of difference between choosing not to help someone or some cause when they need it - a choice we all make, passively or actively, all the time - and mocking them and encouraging others not to help. That's just kicking a guy when he's down. That's the part some of us find really objectionable.

"Aaron knew what he was doing"

...and at the time, I said the same thing I am saying now: Aaron Swartz was doing the right thing and should be praised for being brave enough to try to use access to a university to make human knowledge available to others. When universities are in the business of punishing people who spread knowledge, there is a serious problem with society, and Aaron knew that -- and unlike most people, he went out and tried to do something about it.

I was angry when the prosecutor tacked the extra charges on. I am just as angry today.

I don't think he knew what he was doing.

I've written on my blog about my own encounters with him; but the biggest thing that stands out was his naivete, his childlike perspective.

It's telling so many eulogies of him describe him as a boy.

IMO, it was his innocent perspective, combined with what he thought was the clear and obvious path, that drove him to do what he did, not understanding the consequences.

This is raging hindsight bias all over the place. "Next time you feel like making a 'meh' post, just say nothing at all?" Please.

"if you don't have all 'the facts available' you can give someone the benefit of of the doubt" is pretty solid advice though.

Well, hopefully the next time that you feel like making a 'meh' comment, you will at least consider whether you're making a positive contribution.

Ed made a comment that was pretty harsh, although true given the information available at the time, and is now being singled out by Techcrunch and the rest of the HN community. Of course, in fine HN tradition everybody is now jumping on Ed in exactly the same way that he jumped on Aaron at the time.

I keep remembering Tim Bray's adage that "A change in perspective is worth 40 IQ points." The average HN user has 40 IQ points more now than Ed when he wrote that comment - I don't think they have more than 40 over the current Ed.

Also note that tptacek seems to have been driven away too - hopefully not permanently.

It was 80 IQ points and Alan Kay said it.

Thanks. I should've looked that quote up before posting.

"Next time you think about saying 'man up', just don't" might be a good lesson to learn from this.

We are here to learn, right?

This reminds me of a relevant quote, and its relevance increases as you dissect it.

“Four things come back not: the spoken word; the sped arrow; time past; the neglected opportunity.”

- Umar ibn al-Khattab, Caliph (AD 592-644)

That's an awful lot of wisdom to pack into fewer than 20 words. Thank you for that.

"The big take away here is that words matter and maybe if you don't have all 'the facts available' you can give someone the benefit of of the doubt. Or the next time you feel like making a 'meh' post, just say nothing at all"

Couldn't have said it better.

It was, evidently, demoralization that killed Aaron. Ed took away moral support. So don't say he doesn't partly bear some responsibility.

Whether you think he deserves a measure of blame or not depends on whether you think his original remark was just or not. Evidently some could not tell ahead of time that the remarks were unjust, and evidently, this sort of person makes up the majority on HN, and it is just this sort who is making excuses for the original remark. They refuse to look in the mirror.

What am I missing here?

Did Ed know Aaron and tell him this publicly?

Or are you simply saying the act of making the original post on HN amounts to taking away moral support and consequently Ed bears some responsibility?

If so (and please correct me if that's not what you are saying) then I don't agree with that. What you are implying is that people can't speak their mind in a public forum about how they feel about something. (That has already happened with this issue as I've gotten some bullying behavior by someone simply because I questioned something because everyone is so worked up over this.). Or, perhaps people who are thought leaders (and/or top commenters on, say HN) need to be especially careful of what they say. Specifically what their opinion is which others are free to use their mind and agree or disagree with.

I'm saying that IF you believe Ed's initial post was unjust, then you believe he's responsible for an unjust -- i.e. immoral -- action. And if you believe that his statement possibly led to removing moral (and financial!) sanction from Aaron, then you're going to have to hold him responsible for that too.

The argument that he could have had the foresight to not do what he did is a separate matter.

"IF you believe Ed's initial post was unjust, then you believe he's responsible for an unjust"

I think I understand but to be clear you are saying that because he is a top commenter, and can change the opinions of others, on HN he needs to be especially careful and restrict what he says?

(For the record I don't have a problem with what he wrote as I read it.)

No, I'm not saying he needs to be "careful," I'm saying he needs to be just, and I think else everyone does too (including those who upvote unjust remarks). It's certainly not just him I'm talking about, and if it were only him who engaged in immoral behavior like this, then Aaron never would have been in the spot he was in in the first place. We live in a sick, depraved culture, and Ed's remarks are just one among millions.

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