19 ms·

Why Am I So Upset About Aaron Swartz's Suicide?

239 points by discountgenius 14y ago

cup 14y ago
The Aaron Swartz issue really reaffirms a hypothesis ive held for a long time about empathy. This is the first time I've seen HN in uproar, up in arms about the injustice against a man at the hands of the state for a crime which they cannot agree with. Yet there have been far greater travesties of justice, countless suicides by innocent people in Guantanamo bay or prison and not a bleep on the HN radar. Obviously Aaron Swartz impact on the internet, his relevance to this community and obvious closeness to many people explains it. But take away who he is and the circumstances are sadly far from rare. Aaron Swartz' ordeal is being relieved right as we speak in numerous places around America and the world. It's just unfortunate that for many it took this long to empathise or understand their plight.
- thomasjoulin 14y ago
  I guess that the HN crowd easily identifies with Aaron, or at least relates to what he stands for. Like OP, I'm surprised to be so upset about someone I didn't know about a few days ago, but I keep reading everything by or about him, and man ! What a loss...
- rdl 14y ago
  Guantanamo is different. There are a lot of people there (fewer now) who don't belong there, but others I'd have to try hard not to murder, myself. The problem with Guantanamo is the lack of legal process, and the way some people were swept up who shouldn't have been (which mostly got resolved in 2005-2006), not that many of them aren't horrible criminals. I'd be fine with prosecuting them all in federal civilian court with fair trials.
  - hobbyhacker 14y ago
    The problem with Guantanamo is that it exists at all as an extra-judiciary area specifically designed to deny inmates certain rights.
    - rdl 14y ago
      I'd be fine with holding them there for physical security reasons; just ensure that normal US law applies as it would on a US federal military base in the mainland US.
    - alexqgb 14y ago
      The whole point of the tactics used against Aaron was to render his right to a trial by jury too risky and expensive to exercise. In both cases, the legal accountability of the Executive Branch is what's being undermined - by the Executive Branch.
  - paganel 14y ago
    > There are a lot of people there (fewer now) who don't belong there, but others I'd have to try hard not to murder, myself. That's what makes (made?!) America so great in the eyes of many (myself included) that have never set foot in there, i.e. the concept that anyone deserves a fair trial, based on actual evidence, and that you wouldn't be f.cked up by the judicial system during the whole process (perdon my French). That's what happened in Aaron's case, he was f.cked up by the system, at least that's how I see the initial threat of spending 35 (or was it 50?) years in prison for something that didn't involve murdering young kids and raping them after the deed. A judicial system that depends on threats (doesn't matter if they're implicit or not) gets dangerously close to pure dictatorship.
    - rdl 14y ago
      Yeah, this is why police and prosecutors (and judges/juries) should be separate people. It's unreasonable to expect me to not want to kill someone who a couple years earlier was trying to kill me.
- danso 14y ago
  I guess the more profound tragedy, as I feel it, is that I always believed Aaron would be one of the best people to lead the fight against these problems (or at least, what causes them), and that the JSTOR trial was just a new, if difficult front.
  - SoftwareMaven 14y ago
    I think many people in power got scared by the power he wielded in the SOPA/PIPA debate, which put a lot of pressure on getting him out of the scene. The AG was all too happy to acquiesce.
- dinkumthinkum 14y ago
  I think the difference is that Aaron is considered, directly, a member of this community, which is why there are different reactions than for Darfur or other injustices. Also, the issue, freedom of academic information is one that is very popular here in that it is a common topic of discussion.
- pinaceae 14y ago
  well, you need to kill yourself first to get this kind of support over here. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529484 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529484 the top commentator in this topic, edw519, back then wasn't that reflective. hindsight is 20/20.
meric 14y ago
"I am upset that we have a justice system that would persecute me the way it did Aaron." But it wouldn't, because we allow our fears to convince us to keep our thoughts to ourselves. And I am upset the very persons who are courageous enough to fight for our interest are eliminated, leaving us.
Fice 14y ago
Everyone blames the system but we should really blame ourselves first. We did not protest Aaron's prosecution enough, we did not make him feel our support. We ourselves allowed this to happen.
- toyg 14y ago
  I partially agree. I remember reading about his arrest thinking "uh-oh, this time he messed up" and kinda forgot about it, but I never realised he was facing the threat of 35+ years to life.
ohwp 14y ago
Today I had a strange thought: did Aaron kill himself because he thought it was the only solution to end the madness of the system?
- yardie 14y ago
  Sort of like the "Life of David Gale":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_of_David_Gale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_of_David_Gale
- csense 14y ago
  I think not. If he'd been planning to use his own death to bring about radical change, you'd think he'd at least have arranged for a suicide note to appear on his website after he was gone, or something. I haven't seen anything like that, and if it existed and was accessible to the public, I'm sure it would've appeared on HN's front page by now. Then again, if he was planning this, we could account for our observations by saying maybe he mailed instructions, passwords, documents and public statements to someone he trusted to make the greatest impact with it, and that person's sitting on the information, watching the momentum build, waiting for the most effective time to release it. The noise about this has been deafeningly loud for us in the tech community for quite some time, but only in the last day or so have I noticed this story being picked up by mainstream news outlets.
junto 14y ago
Whether or not the actions of the US government via the DOJ was the direct cause of Aaron's suicide will be debated at length. However, as both a cause and a "martyr" of sorts, Aaron's death has become a rather large stick to hit both government and the copyright lobby with. I hazard a guess that Aaron would have been happy for us all to use that stick with a vengeance. We should keep hitting these powerful lobbies with that stick until they break or the stick breaks.
guynamedloren 14y ago
I'm going through the exact same thing. I've been upset since Aaron's suicide and I just cannot figure out why it's affecting me in such a way. I didn't know him, and like the author, I have a difficult time feeling emotions for distant (yet immense) tragedies, including war and natural disasters. But this just fucking hurts. Maybe it hurts because seemingly reasonable, well educated people are behind this. This wasn't some looney that snapped and walked into a school with guns blazing. The people responsible are representatives (in one way or another) of the United States of America. Land of the free. Home of the brave. Supposedly good people. But they can do this (thanks to the wallets of hard working American people) and will probably get away with it? They have this kind of power? They can ruin a person's life for a victimless crime, even when the alleged 'victim' chooses not to pursue legal action? That's a devastatingly scary thought. And it's not just Carmen Ortiz and Steven Heymann. Our justice system is wrought with corruption, and that's scary, because it's probably the best justice system in the world (or at least touted as such).
- 0xABADC0DA 14y ago
  > The people responsible are representatives (in one way or another) of the United States of America. Land of the free. Home of the brave. I don't get this at all... Harvard fellow uses MIT's network surreptitiously to violate the terms of service to download a nonprofit's entire database and then give it away for free, putting them out of business. Gets busted and charged with crimes. Where's the problem here? Ok the prosecutor may have been overzealous, but we do have an adversarial system and it was Swartz's bad decisions that brought the hammer down. They didn't plant drugs on him. He wasn't doing it to feed his family. Sorry to all the people here that knew him personally, and to whom this is a personal tragedy, but this is not the kind of travesty of justice that you are making it out to be.
  - toyg 14y ago
    35+ years in prison for "checking out too many books at once" is not a travesty?
    - 14y ago
creamyhorror 14y ago
Reposting my comment from a forgotten thread, because I think the sense of loss many of us are feeling should be channeled into actions that may conceivably do some good: --- 1. What concrete steps can people take to prevent cases like Aaron's from happening again? What enduring commitments can be made, and to what causes or organizations? 2. Who should we be listening to and supporting who is of like mind with Aaron, and has been neglected so far? Who is doing good work out of the public eye, like Aaron was? I join you in commiseration. I'm going to look for a local organization to join in support of online freedom. Perhaps find a club to mentor promising youth in tech. I hope the Americans here will take every feasible step in correcting overzealous prosecutors (and nonetheless calling for justice where it hasn't been meted out). Aaron's passing must not be in vain. ---
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
ak39 14y ago
I'll tell you why you're upset. You're upset because you are precocious. And decided. And certain. And dare I say sometimes morally certain! Aaron was an absurd hero who chose not to revolt. He just didn't imagine himself happy, so he agonised about the futility of living with every breath he took. He remained a stranger in his own life even with each new career summit he topped. Ultimately he chose to check out thinking that was the only way from the inevitable. Tragic. It needn't have been. Like most of the high achievers of Aaron's age, your generation has achieved so much so quickly that you've missed the barely audible slow burning whisper of your own existential questions. The din of success, of the ceaseless twittering of Twitter, of the vacuous flapping on Facebook and the daily showboating wankery of blogging has made you forget that it's the SILENCE that matters. It's the silence of your thoughts to yourself that will answer your questions. Slowly and with meditated patience. I'm upset too. I'm upset that his parents have to deal with this tragic loss, that his surviving loved ones are looking for answers to this tragedy. I'm upset that traditional methods of calming, of seeking, of surviving are lost to this generation - a generation addicted to instantaneous Google-fed answers and one that is now gyrating to hokey lyrics like "partying & bullshit", "we're gonna die young"* ... :-( This generation that obviously knows a great deal about internet startups and computer science, and Batman and world peace knows very little about how to answer their own questions about a meaningless existence. Their parents did it. Same shitty world, shame shitty life - they made it! How?? Finally, I now know what a pointless Sisyphean desk job has to offer to a young person: how to suffer patiently without self-destructing. How to fold, without going all in on the flop. Much love, AK ----- * I like the songs, btw :-)
- anu_gupta 14y ago
  Seriously, if you think this generation has a monopoly on glamourising the "live fast, die young" ethos, you haven't been around for very long. But excellent attempt at using someone's suicide to vent a lot of your anger at today's kids.
  - ak39 14y ago
    <Quote> Seriously, if you think this generation has a monopoly on glamourising the "live fast, die young" ethos, you haven't been around for very long. </Quote> I didn't say that really, did I? I've lived long enough to hear more than one case of rapid success claiming a suicide victim in the field of arts. We all know them. Many of these cases are often dismissed as some sort of underlying pathology and the rest as inevitable result of the individual's pathetic circumstance. All of course inadequate in truly explaining the "storm inside". But guess who the high-achieving rock star child prodigies of today are, if not the erstwhile artists? The new kids have given up their piano keyboards for computer keyboards ... and there are plenty more of them in every second suburban basement than there are talented musicians, actors and artists today. And they are winning! And good for them! But some of the winners are even dreaming, no - decided, about ideals like social justice, equality, freedom. No amount of black and white binary talent will help answer the grey of these concepts that have plagued humanity since the beginning of human conscience. Wisdom is a slow cooking dish ... that's never going to be ready. I guess you'll just have to grow up, kid. (I'm sorry to sound patronising but there's no point in blaming the morons at MIT, the tits at JSTOR, the vindictive FEDS or the rotten capitalistic system. All really irrelevant.)
gws 14y ago
"Aaron Swartz is what I wish I was." I am too a cold, rational bastard and yet I've found myself fighting tears over and over these last two days. And I barely knew who Aaron was until two days ago. But I think the OP nailed it, for me and I'm sure for many more. I can still recall when I was an idealist as a child and a young teen. But I preferred to become cynical rather than suffer from injustices in the world. Much easier to be above, untouched, than fight for change and inevitably suffer, a lot. But we still viscerally admire somebody like Aaron, somebody who took the hard route, somebody we could have been but hadn't the courage to. That's why we suffer so much today, the best part of us has died.
- krrrh 14y ago
  I think you nailed it for me with having to confront out best selves and their absence. It's why I keep thinking of this George Orwell verse where he cursed his own cynicism upon meeting an idealistic young soldier in Barcelona (hat tip to Hitchens): For the fly-blown words that make me spew Still in his ears were holy, And he was born knowing what I had learned Out of books and slowly. Later on he ends: But the thing I saw in your face No power can disinherit: No bomb that ever burst Shatters the crystal spirit.
  - limist 14y ago
    And a hat tip to you for sharing this poetry, which so perfectly expresses the feelings some of us have reading about Aaron's life, and seeing his smile in photos.
edw519 14y ago
Aaron Swartz is what I wish I was. Please don't compare yourself to anyone else. It's pointless, disempowering, and generally a waste of time. Your "best you" is what I wish you wished you were. I am a bright technologist... You are not alone. There are many of us here, like you and like Aaron. ...but I've never built anything of note. The things you build do not have to be famous to be "anything of note". Do people use the software you have written? Do they benefit from it? If yes, then it is most certainly "of note". I have strong opinions about how to improve this world, but I've never acted to bring them to pass. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. That means you're normal. 99% of us are in exactly the same boat. We go about our daily business, taking care of ourselves and those close to us, making the world a better place in a thousand little ways. Think of it this way. We're all just one great big football team. The Aaron Swartzs and Steve Jobs of the world are the quarterbacks and ball carriers whose names are in the press all the time. But they would accomplish little if it wasn't for those of us around them who block and tackle all day long. Don't be upset that, up to this point, you've been a blocker or tackler. Be proud. And realize that your turn to carry the ball has yet to come. I have thoughts every day that I would share with the world, but I allow my fears to convince me to keep them to myself. Congratulations. You have just taken the first step toward addressing that issue with that statement here on Hacker News. Now please take Step 2. Start a blog. If it's anything like this post, then I want to read it. And others, I'm sure, will want to also. If I were able to stop being afraid of what the world would think of me, I could see myself making every decision that Aaron made that ultimately led to his untimely death. You don't know what really led to Aaron's untimely death. No one does. The decisions you make are just one input to a complex process we still don't understand. So go easy on yourself and don't jump to unnecessary conclusions. I am upset that we have a justice system that would persecute me the way it did Aaron. Many of us are upset about this and a lot of other things too. But we won't allow any of them to stop us from living our lives fully. You can be upset about things in background and still have a wonderful happy life in foreground. Give it a try. I am upset that I have spent 27 years of my life having made no discernible difference to the world around me. I bet if I asked those close to you if the felt they same way, I'd get a resounding "No!" Maybe you should, too. Most of all I am upset that Aaron's work here is done when there is so much more he could have accomplished. Agreed. I guess that means that each of us now has a few more things to add to our own To Do Lists. Thanks, John, for the great post. Best wishes for feeling better and getting on with it. Ultimately, that's what we hackers always do.
ck2 14y ago
We're upset because Aaron was an activist while many of us capable of doing what he did, just sit on our couches or comfy chairs. We're upset because the full legal power of the government was used as a weapon against him almost as if he was mass murderer instead of his "crime" being just setting information that was technically free in the first place, actually free. We're upset because instead of waiting pensively for what his sentence would be and protesting what would undoubtedly be unjust, all we can do is remember who he was and triumph his cause in the hope that this won't happen again. He didn't deserve to feel this was his only way out and he had so much more to contribute based on his past accomplishments. I guess the problem with us identifying with Bradley Manning in comparison is he didn't do things like contribute to RSS and Markdown. But the information he set free is just as important.
- killerpopiller 14y ago
  imho the american mentality is a hysterical and one can observe this in esp. in media induced reactions. A friend pointed out Aaron Swartz is our Lady Di of the hacker culture and it fits nicely. The US (loony) laws and the US "justice system" is fueled by that blinding hysteria in which commensurability is just a muted voice of reason far away. I wish Bradley Manning would receive this fierce reaction of an actual influential lobby like us. And he didn't take the easy way out.
  - twoodfin 14y ago
    Explain to me why what Bradley Manning did should be legal.
    - gknoy 14y ago
      I don't feel that what he did was legal. On the other hand, the way he has been incarcerated and treated while in military prison seems excessively cruel.
      - rprasad 14y ago
        Cruel? He hasn't been excuted for exposing private government communications, including internal communications on national security issues and correspondence with foreign governments. That is potentially treason, and just a few decades ago he would have been summarily executed after a quick, brief trial.
EuroCoder 14y ago
While I sympathize with the tragedy of Aaron's death, I have to agree that he is receiving a disproportionate amount of attention. Take away his association with the HN community and the Internet, and his case is not nearly as tragic as many others. Take the Guantanamo inmates who committed suicide. They were innocent and were imprisoned without any control over the situation. Aaron chose to break into the MIT network closet and JSTOR (though I agree that the punishment is way too harsh, there should be no punishment at all). But everything Aaron did was by his own choice. The people in Guantanamo didn't do anything at all. Their situation is much more infuriating, much more tragic, and deserves much more attention.
julianpye 14y ago
Maybe it's similar for you to how many people were surprised by their level of grief, when Princess Diana died. Girls growing up in the 80s grew up on the fantasy of being like her, chosen and given wealth and fame and becoming a queen. And then she didn't buckle up and the entire childhood fantasy died right there with her in the tunnels of Paris. This trauma has changed England's emotional landscape for good - no more stiff upper lip. So you saying 'Aaron is what I wish I was' is the correct analysis - Aaron had everything that we here strive for - he was recognized for his potential when he was a teenager, he had been accepted by YC, was part of a successful exit, was a highly respected and idealistic Internet activist and intellectual... These are the goals people strive for when they tell themselves 'if I only could achieve XYZ, then I will be happy - I will put all my energy into XYZ, because it will eventually be worth it'. The reality is more complex. Even with all these achievements, the highest potential that we can strive for can be destroyed. In his case by the beast of depression when driven by senseless persecution through the political apparatus.
vph 14y ago
Aaron Swart is an example of people whose technical ability (IQ) exceeds their other ability (EQ). His technical ability allowed him to accomplish great technical achievements; it also let him get into troubles at work or with the law, which together with his fragile mental health eventually got him.
- npsimons 14y ago
  With all due respect, is EQ really that important? We keep getting told that it is, but EQ never won a war; EQ never sent anyone to the moon; EQ didn't cure polio. Maybe cases like Aaron Swartz are a wakeup call to us a society, not that we need to be more "emotionally" intelligent, but that a society with severe hangups chews up and spits out its best and brightest, to its own detriment. Say what you will about his activities not being in the accepted norm, or his mistakes, but the way we treat mental illness in this country is something we should be ashamed of, and I'm not just talking about the medical establishment.
  - vph 14y ago
    EQ is that important. Simply because you don't live in a vacuum. You live and communicate with other people. You can be as technically capable as you can, but if you keep pissing people off, you won't go anywhere. Now in addition to this, if you are mentally fragile, sooner or later you will be shocked by what society has for you. It is not the right time to analyze Aaron Swartz, but if you look at what is publicly written about his tenure at Stanford, Reddit, etc., you will see what I am talking about. Is it that important? You bet.
shaunxcode 14y ago
I know absolutely why I feel so upset. He was part of my tribe. Though I never met him, or even directly engaged with him, I was very aware of him and took direct inspiration from his actions. I have dealt with the death of close peers in the past who were part of my tribe. I was younger and more prone to succumbing to anger and spite - now I know the best thing I can do is to honor their memory by maintaining the impetus we once shared.
etherael 14y ago
The state has for as long as I can remember disgusted me, amongst many other things, exactly due to behaviour like this. Murdering thuggish religious zealots are a lot less sympathetic than anti authoritarian information crusaders, but the hysteria pitch here is eye opening to me at least from the perspective of people being so incensed by the fact that their government could be involved in such a thing. Look around; the state is not your friend and it never has been, look at the statistics for democide in the previous century if you need any more proof. It's mindboggling to me that with all that goes on, when the blowback of business as usual in a modern western nation state hits closer to home people are actually shocked and amazed. Look at the representatives of the law here on HN bleating about the nature of the offense in question as within the strictures of the law and thus beyond reproach and simply a symptom of a system that needs further tuning; This is how the state operates, this is what it runs on. Changing this fact doesn't require a simple tuning of a few dials here and there, it requires a fundamental re-examining of the central role of the westphalian nation state and the gears and levers upon which it operates in the modern world. To be fair and admit my biases, yes, I believe castrating the beast is necessary, and this is just one more on a practically endless list of bullet points that demonstrate this. As important as what happened here is and as much as it is nice to see people actually appearing to finally notice what is being done in their names and with their tacit consent, I simply can't see that actually happening. In a few weeks people will become resigned to the fact that they have no actual power and cannot make any actual change. The depressing fact of the violent and compulsory nature of state authority coupled with it's extreme innate resistence to any kind of actual, real change are simply too entrenched for just this event to actually make any more difference than the millions of others just like it that ended up hitting some other tribe instead of ours. Pity.
- rprasad 14y ago
  The state is not a person, and ergo cannot be your friend. However, the state is a collection of persons, both elected, appointed, and hired, and many of those persons can be your friend. Indeed, I count a number of such persons among my friends. In a democracy, the state is what you make of it--it is your family, friends, and neigbhors. It is not some monolithic evil construct.
bradleysmith 14y ago
Thank you for this post. I've also been wondering about the depth of my emotion on this event. I have looked up to Aaron Swartz mildly in the past, but the turn of events and subsequent reactions have occupied my attention greatly since. I too wish to be more like Aaron Swartz in many ways, and I too am strangely moved by his story and his passing. Reading my thoughts in someone else's blog is appreciated.

239 points by discountgenius 14y ago

cup 14y ago

The Aaron Swartz issue really reaffirms a hypothesis ive held for a long time about empathy. This is the first time I've seen HN in uproar, up in arms about the injustice against a man at the hands of the state for a crime which they cannot agree with. Yet there have been far greater travesties of justice, countless suicides by innocent people in Guantanamo bay or prison and not a bleep on the HN radar. Obviously Aaron Swartz impact on the internet, his relevance to this community and obvious closeness to many people explains it. But take away who he is and the circumstances are sadly far from rare. Aaron Swartz' ordeal is being relieved right as we speak in numerous places around America and the world. It's just unfortunate that for many it took this long to empathise or understand their plight.

thomasjoulin 14y ago
I guess that the HN crowd easily identifies with Aaron, or at least relates to what he stands for. Like OP, I'm surprised to be so upset about someone I didn't know about a few days ago, but I keep reading everything by or about him, and man ! What a loss...
rdl 14y ago
Guantanamo is different. There are a lot of people there (fewer now) who don't belong there, but others I'd have to try hard not to murder, myself. The problem with Guantanamo is the lack of legal process, and the way some people were swept up who shouldn't have been (which mostly got resolved in 2005-2006), not that many of them aren't horrible criminals. I'd be fine with prosecuting them all in federal civilian court with fair trials.
- hobbyhacker 14y ago
  The problem with Guantanamo is that it exists at all as an extra-judiciary area specifically designed to deny inmates certain rights.
  - rdl 14y ago
    I'd be fine with holding them there for physical security reasons; just ensure that normal US law applies as it would on a US federal military base in the mainland US.
  - alexqgb 14y ago
    The whole point of the tactics used against Aaron was to render his right to a trial by jury too risky and expensive to exercise. In both cases, the legal accountability of the Executive Branch is what's being undermined - by the Executive Branch.
- paganel 14y ago
  > There are a lot of people there (fewer now) who don't belong there, but others I'd have to try hard not to murder, myself. That's what makes (made?!) America so great in the eyes of many (myself included) that have never set foot in there, i.e. the concept that anyone deserves a fair trial, based on actual evidence, and that you wouldn't be f.cked up by the judicial system during the whole process (perdon my French). That's what happened in Aaron's case, he was f.cked up by the system, at least that's how I see the initial threat of spending 35 (or was it 50?) years in prison for something that didn't involve murdering young kids and raping them after the deed. A judicial system that depends on threats (doesn't matter if they're implicit or not) gets dangerously close to pure dictatorship.
  - rdl 14y ago
    Yeah, this is why police and prosecutors (and judges/juries) should be separate people. It's unreasonable to expect me to not want to kill someone who a couple years earlier was trying to kill me.
danso 14y ago
I guess the more profound tragedy, as I feel it, is that I always believed Aaron would be one of the best people to lead the fight against these problems (or at least, what causes them), and that the JSTOR trial was just a new, if difficult front.
- SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  I think many people in power got scared by the power he wielded in the SOPA/PIPA debate, which put a lot of pressure on getting him out of the scene. The AG was all too happy to acquiesce.
dinkumthinkum 14y ago
I think the difference is that Aaron is considered, directly, a member of this community, which is why there are different reactions than for Darfur or other injustices. Also, the issue, freedom of academic information is one that is very popular here in that it is a common topic of discussion.
pinaceae 14y ago
well, you need to kill yourself first to get this kind of support over here. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529484 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529484 the top commentator in this topic, edw519, back then wasn't that reflective. hindsight is 20/20.

meric 14y ago

"I am upset that we have a justice system that would persecute me the way it did Aaron." But it wouldn't, because we allow our fears to convince us to keep our thoughts to ourselves. And I am upset the very persons who are courageous enough to fight for our interest are eliminated, leaving us.

Fice 14y ago

Everyone blames the system but we should really blame ourselves first. We did not protest Aaron's prosecution enough, we did not make him feel our support. We ourselves allowed this to happen.

toyg 14y ago
I partially agree. I remember reading about his arrest thinking "uh-oh, this time he messed up" and kinda forgot about it, but I never realised he was facing the threat of 35+ years to life.

ohwp 14y ago

Today I had a strange thought: did Aaron kill himself because he thought it was the only solution to end the madness of the system?

yardie 14y ago
Sort of like the "Life of David Gale":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_of_David_Gale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_of_David_Gale
csense 14y ago
I think not. If he'd been planning to use his own death to bring about radical change, you'd think he'd at least have arranged for a suicide note to appear on his website after he was gone, or something. I haven't seen anything like that, and if it existed and was accessible to the public, I'm sure it would've appeared on HN's front page by now. Then again, if he was planning this, we could account for our observations by saying maybe he mailed instructions, passwords, documents and public statements to someone he trusted to make the greatest impact with it, and that person's sitting on the information, watching the momentum build, waiting for the most effective time to release it. The noise about this has been deafeningly loud for us in the tech community for quite some time, but only in the last day or so have I noticed this story being picked up by mainstream news outlets.

junto 14y ago

Whether or not the actions of the US government via the DOJ was the direct cause of Aaron's suicide will be debated at length. However, as both a cause and a "martyr" of sorts, Aaron's death has become a rather large stick to hit both government and the copyright lobby with. I hazard a guess that Aaron would have been happy for us all to use that stick with a vengeance. We should keep hitting these powerful lobbies with that stick until they break or the stick breaks.

guynamedloren 14y ago

I'm going through the exact same thing. I've been upset since Aaron's suicide and I just cannot figure out why it's affecting me in such a way. I didn't know him, and like the author, I have a difficult time feeling emotions for distant (yet immense) tragedies, including war and natural disasters. But this just fucking hurts. Maybe it hurts because seemingly reasonable, well educated people are behind this. This wasn't some looney that snapped and walked into a school with guns blazing. The people responsible are representatives (in one way or another) of the United States of America. Land of the free. Home of the brave. Supposedly good people. But they can do this (thanks to the wallets of hard working American people) and will probably get away with it? They have this kind of power? They can ruin a person's life for a victimless crime, even when the alleged 'victim' chooses not to pursue legal action? That's a devastatingly scary thought. And it's not just Carmen Ortiz and Steven Heymann. Our justice system is wrought with corruption, and that's scary, because it's probably the best justice system in the world (or at least touted as such).

0xABADC0DA 14y ago
> The people responsible are representatives (in one way or another) of the United States of America. Land of the free. Home of the brave. I don't get this at all... Harvard fellow uses MIT's network surreptitiously to violate the terms of service to download a nonprofit's entire database and then give it away for free, putting them out of business. Gets busted and charged with crimes. Where's the problem here? Ok the prosecutor may have been overzealous, but we do have an adversarial system and it was Swartz's bad decisions that brought the hammer down. They didn't plant drugs on him. He wasn't doing it to feed his family. Sorry to all the people here that knew him personally, and to whom this is a personal tragedy, but this is not the kind of travesty of justice that you are making it out to be.
- toyg 14y ago
  35+ years in prison for "checking out too many books at once" is not a travesty?
  - 14y ago

creamyhorror 14y ago

Reposting my comment from a forgotten thread, because I think the sense of loss many of us are feeling should be channeled into actions that may conceivably do some good: --- 1. What concrete steps can people take to prevent cases like Aaron's from happening again? What enduring commitments can be made, and to what causes or organizations? 2. Who should we be listening to and supporting who is of like mind with Aaron, and has been neglected so far? Who is doing good work out of the public eye, like Aaron was? I join you in commiseration. I'm going to look for a local organization to join in support of online freedom. Perhaps find a club to mentor promising youth in tech. I hope the Americans here will take every feasible step in correcting overzealous prosecutors (and nonetheless calling for justice where it hasn't been meted out). Aaron's passing must not be in vain. ---

deleted 14y ago

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ak39 14y ago

I'll tell you why you're upset. You're upset because you are precocious. And decided. And certain. And dare I say sometimes morally certain! Aaron was an absurd hero who chose not to revolt. He just didn't imagine himself happy, so he agonised about the futility of living with every breath he took. He remained a stranger in his own life even with each new career summit he topped. Ultimately he chose to check out thinking that was the only way from the inevitable. Tragic. It needn't have been. Like most of the high achievers of Aaron's age, your generation has achieved so much so quickly that you've missed the barely audible slow burning whisper of your own existential questions. The din of success, of the ceaseless twittering of Twitter, of the vacuous flapping on Facebook and the daily showboating wankery of blogging has made you forget that it's the SILENCE that matters. It's the silence of your thoughts to yourself that will answer your questions. Slowly and with meditated patience. I'm upset too. I'm upset that his parents have to deal with this tragic loss, that his surviving loved ones are looking for answers to this tragedy. I'm upset that traditional methods of calming, of seeking, of surviving are lost to this generation - a generation addicted to instantaneous Google-fed answers and one that is now gyrating to hokey lyrics like "partying & bullshit", "we're gonna die young"* ... :-( This generation that obviously knows a great deal about internet startups and computer science, and Batman and world peace knows very little about how to answer their own questions about a meaningless existence. Their parents did it. Same shitty world, shame shitty life - they made it! How?? Finally, I now know what a pointless Sisyphean desk job has to offer to a young person: how to suffer patiently without self-destructing. How to fold, without going all in on the flop. Much love, AK ----- * I like the songs, btw :-)

anu_gupta 14y ago
Seriously, if you think this generation has a monopoly on glamourising the "live fast, die young" ethos, you haven't been around for very long. But excellent attempt at using someone's suicide to vent a lot of your anger at today's kids.
- ak39 14y ago
  <Quote> Seriously, if you think this generation has a monopoly on glamourising the "live fast, die young" ethos, you haven't been around for very long. </Quote> I didn't say that really, did I? I've lived long enough to hear more than one case of rapid success claiming a suicide victim in the field of arts. We all know them. Many of these cases are often dismissed as some sort of underlying pathology and the rest as inevitable result of the individual's pathetic circumstance. All of course inadequate in truly explaining the "storm inside". But guess who the high-achieving rock star child prodigies of today are, if not the erstwhile artists? The new kids have given up their piano keyboards for computer keyboards ... and there are plenty more of them in every second suburban basement than there are talented musicians, actors and artists today. And they are winning! And good for them! But some of the winners are even dreaming, no - decided, about ideals like social justice, equality, freedom. No amount of black and white binary talent will help answer the grey of these concepts that have plagued humanity since the beginning of human conscience. Wisdom is a slow cooking dish ... that's never going to be ready. I guess you'll just have to grow up, kid. (I'm sorry to sound patronising but there's no point in blaming the morons at MIT, the tits at JSTOR, the vindictive FEDS or the rotten capitalistic system. All really irrelevant.)

gws 14y ago

"Aaron Swartz is what I wish I was." I am too a cold, rational bastard and yet I've found myself fighting tears over and over these last two days. And I barely knew who Aaron was until two days ago. But I think the OP nailed it, for me and I'm sure for many more. I can still recall when I was an idealist as a child and a young teen. But I preferred to become cynical rather than suffer from injustices in the world. Much easier to be above, untouched, than fight for change and inevitably suffer, a lot. But we still viscerally admire somebody like Aaron, somebody who took the hard route, somebody we could have been but hadn't the courage to. That's why we suffer so much today, the best part of us has died.

krrrh 14y ago
I think you nailed it for me with having to confront out best selves and their absence. It's why I keep thinking of this George Orwell verse where he cursed his own cynicism upon meeting an idealistic young soldier in Barcelona (hat tip to Hitchens): For the fly-blown words that make me spew Still in his ears were holy, And he was born knowing what I had learned Out of books and slowly. Later on he ends: But the thing I saw in your face No power can disinherit: No bomb that ever burst Shatters the crystal spirit.
- limist 14y ago
  And a hat tip to you for sharing this poetry, which so perfectly expresses the feelings some of us have reading about Aaron's life, and seeing his smile in photos.

edw519 14y ago

Aaron Swartz is what I wish I was. Please don't compare yourself to anyone else. It's pointless, disempowering, and generally a waste of time. Your "best you" is what I wish you wished you were. I am a bright technologist... You are not alone. There are many of us here, like you and like Aaron. ...but I've never built anything of note. The things you build do not have to be famous to be "anything of note". Do people use the software you have written? Do they benefit from it? If yes, then it is most certainly "of note". I have strong opinions about how to improve this world, but I've never acted to bring them to pass. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. That means you're normal. 99% of us are in exactly the same boat. We go about our daily business, taking care of ourselves and those close to us, making the world a better place in a thousand little ways. Think of it this way. We're all just one great big football team. The Aaron Swartzs and Steve Jobs of the world are the quarterbacks and ball carriers whose names are in the press all the time. But they would accomplish little if it wasn't for those of us around them who block and tackle all day long. Don't be upset that, up to this point, you've been a blocker or tackler. Be proud. And realize that your turn to carry the ball has yet to come. I have thoughts every day that I would share with the world, but I allow my fears to convince me to keep them to myself. Congratulations. You have just taken the first step toward addressing that issue with that statement here on Hacker News. Now please take Step 2. Start a blog. If it's anything like this post, then I want to read it. And others, I'm sure, will want to also. If I were able to stop being afraid of what the world would think of me, I could see myself making every decision that Aaron made that ultimately led to his untimely death. You don't know what really led to Aaron's untimely death. No one does. The decisions you make are just one input to a complex process we still don't understand. So go easy on yourself and don't jump to unnecessary conclusions. I am upset that we have a justice system that would persecute me the way it did Aaron. Many of us are upset about this and a lot of other things too. But we won't allow any of them to stop us from living our lives fully. You can be upset about things in background and still have a wonderful happy life in foreground. Give it a try. I am upset that I have spent 27 years of my life having made no discernible difference to the world around me. I bet if I asked those close to you if the felt they same way, I'd get a resounding "No!" Maybe you should, too. Most of all I am upset that Aaron's work here is done when there is so much more he could have accomplished. Agreed. I guess that means that each of us now has a few more things to add to our own To Do Lists. Thanks, John, for the great post. Best wishes for feeling better and getting on with it. Ultimately, that's what we hackers always do.

ck2 14y ago

We're upset because Aaron was an activist while many of us capable of doing what he did, just sit on our couches or comfy chairs. We're upset because the full legal power of the government was used as a weapon against him almost as if he was mass murderer instead of his "crime" being just setting information that was technically free in the first place, actually free. We're upset because instead of waiting pensively for what his sentence would be and protesting what would undoubtedly be unjust, all we can do is remember who he was and triumph his cause in the hope that this won't happen again. He didn't deserve to feel this was his only way out and he had so much more to contribute based on his past accomplishments. I guess the problem with us identifying with Bradley Manning in comparison is he didn't do things like contribute to RSS and Markdown. But the information he set free is just as important.

killerpopiller 14y ago
imho the american mentality is a hysterical and one can observe this in esp. in media induced reactions. A friend pointed out Aaron Swartz is our Lady Di of the hacker culture and it fits nicely. The US (loony) laws and the US "justice system" is fueled by that blinding hysteria in which commensurability is just a muted voice of reason far away. I wish Bradley Manning would receive this fierce reaction of an actual influential lobby like us. And he didn't take the easy way out.
- twoodfin 14y ago
  Explain to me why what Bradley Manning did should be legal.
  - gknoy 14y ago
    I don't feel that what he did was legal. On the other hand, the way he has been incarcerated and treated while in military prison seems excessively cruel.
    - rprasad 14y ago
      Cruel? He hasn't been excuted for exposing private government communications, including internal communications on national security issues and correspondence with foreign governments. That is potentially treason, and just a few decades ago he would have been summarily executed after a quick, brief trial.

EuroCoder 14y ago

While I sympathize with the tragedy of Aaron's death, I have to agree that he is receiving a disproportionate amount of attention. Take away his association with the HN community and the Internet, and his case is not nearly as tragic as many others. Take the Guantanamo inmates who committed suicide. They were innocent and were imprisoned without any control over the situation. Aaron chose to break into the MIT network closet and JSTOR (though I agree that the punishment is way too harsh, there should be no punishment at all). But everything Aaron did was by his own choice. The people in Guantanamo didn't do anything at all. Their situation is much more infuriating, much more tragic, and deserves much more attention.

julianpye 14y ago

Maybe it's similar for you to how many people were surprised by their level of grief, when Princess Diana died. Girls growing up in the 80s grew up on the fantasy of being like her, chosen and given wealth and fame and becoming a queen. And then she didn't buckle up and the entire childhood fantasy died right there with her in the tunnels of Paris. This trauma has changed England's emotional landscape for good - no more stiff upper lip. So you saying 'Aaron is what I wish I was' is the correct analysis - Aaron had everything that we here strive for - he was recognized for his potential when he was a teenager, he had been accepted by YC, was part of a successful exit, was a highly respected and idealistic Internet activist and intellectual... These are the goals people strive for when they tell themselves 'if I only could achieve XYZ, then I will be happy - I will put all my energy into XYZ, because it will eventually be worth it'. The reality is more complex. Even with all these achievements, the highest potential that we can strive for can be destroyed. In his case by the beast of depression when driven by senseless persecution through the political apparatus.

vph 14y ago

Aaron Swart is an example of people whose technical ability (IQ) exceeds their other ability (EQ). His technical ability allowed him to accomplish great technical achievements; it also let him get into troubles at work or with the law, which together with his fragile mental health eventually got him.

npsimons 14y ago
With all due respect, is EQ really that important? We keep getting told that it is, but EQ never won a war; EQ never sent anyone to the moon; EQ didn't cure polio. Maybe cases like Aaron Swartz are a wakeup call to us a society, not that we need to be more "emotionally" intelligent, but that a society with severe hangups chews up and spits out its best and brightest, to its own detriment. Say what you will about his activities not being in the accepted norm, or his mistakes, but the way we treat mental illness in this country is something we should be ashamed of, and I'm not just talking about the medical establishment.
- vph 14y ago
  EQ is that important. Simply because you don't live in a vacuum. You live and communicate with other people. You can be as technically capable as you can, but if you keep pissing people off, you won't go anywhere. Now in addition to this, if you are mentally fragile, sooner or later you will be shocked by what society has for you. It is not the right time to analyze Aaron Swartz, but if you look at what is publicly written about his tenure at Stanford, Reddit, etc., you will see what I am talking about. Is it that important? You bet.

shaunxcode 14y ago

I know absolutely why I feel so upset. He was part of my tribe. Though I never met him, or even directly engaged with him, I was very aware of him and took direct inspiration from his actions. I have dealt with the death of close peers in the past who were part of my tribe. I was younger and more prone to succumbing to anger and spite - now I know the best thing I can do is to honor their memory by maintaining the impetus we once shared.

etherael 14y ago

The state has for as long as I can remember disgusted me, amongst many other things, exactly due to behaviour like this. Murdering thuggish religious zealots are a lot less sympathetic than anti authoritarian information crusaders, but the hysteria pitch here is eye opening to me at least from the perspective of people being so incensed by the fact that their government could be involved in such a thing. Look around; the state is not your friend and it never has been, look at the statistics for democide in the previous century if you need any more proof. It's mindboggling to me that with all that goes on, when the blowback of business as usual in a modern western nation state hits closer to home people are actually shocked and amazed. Look at the representatives of the law here on HN bleating about the nature of the offense in question as within the strictures of the law and thus beyond reproach and simply a symptom of a system that needs further tuning; This is how the state operates, this is what it runs on. Changing this fact doesn't require a simple tuning of a few dials here and there, it requires a fundamental re-examining of the central role of the westphalian nation state and the gears and levers upon which it operates in the modern world. To be fair and admit my biases, yes, I believe castrating the beast is necessary, and this is just one more on a practically endless list of bullet points that demonstrate this. As important as what happened here is and as much as it is nice to see people actually appearing to finally notice what is being done in their names and with their tacit consent, I simply can't see that actually happening. In a few weeks people will become resigned to the fact that they have no actual power and cannot make any actual change. The depressing fact of the violent and compulsory nature of state authority coupled with it's extreme innate resistence to any kind of actual, real change are simply too entrenched for just this event to actually make any more difference than the millions of others just like it that ended up hitting some other tribe instead of ours. Pity.

rprasad 14y ago
The state is not a person, and ergo cannot be your friend. However, the state is a collection of persons, both elected, appointed, and hired, and many of those persons can be your friend. Indeed, I count a number of such persons among my friends. In a democracy, the state is what you make of it--it is your family, friends, and neigbhors. It is not some monolithic evil construct.

bradleysmith 14y ago

Thank you for this post. I've also been wondering about the depth of my emotion on this event. I have looked up to Aaron Swartz mildly in the past, but the turn of events and subsequent reactions have occupied my attention greatly since. I too wish to be more like Aaron Swartz in many ways, and I too am strangely moved by his story and his passing. Reading my thoughts in someone else's blog is appreciated.