3 ms·

It's great to see PG leap immediately to the defense of Swartz in that thread, and that the comment was voted to the top.

waterlesscloud 14y ago
The top reply to pg in that thread is dcurtis, and should maybe give everyone concerned a bit of a pause. EDIT- dcurtis says Aaron is egotistical in his blog posts, as a comment on a post that asks what Aaron has ever done. The parallel to recent threads about dcurtis is eerie, to be honest. It's jarring enough that it should make everyone on all sides of that issue take a step back and get some perspective. As pg says in that thread, egotism is a common flaw in bright youths. Perhaps some...not tolerance exactly, as guidance away from the flaw is a reasonable response, but maybe a realization that it's to be expected. And in the big picture, maybe it shouldn't really count much against them anyway.
- dcurtis 14y ago
  It certainly gives me pause.
Alex3917 14y ago
Yeah. It's also interesting to watch this posthumous deification happening in real time, especially since so many people (who mostly didn't know him) considered him to be kind of a dabbler and a fuckup while he was still alive. Not saying all the praise is a bad thing or unwarranted by any means, just an observation. I never actually met him, but we shared a small footnote in history together: literally we were both cited in the same footnote of a book on the history of Wikipedia.
- jacquesm 14y ago
  What bugs me a lot more than the meanness in either of those two historical threads is some of the stuff that happened in the last 3 days. That's the part I can not get my head wrapped around. It really bugs me.
  - graue 14y ago
    You mean his death? To say that it bugs me would be an extreme understatement. Like many, I immediately felt devastated, even though I'd never met him. If you are referring to other stuff: What else happened in the last 3 days that bugs you?
    - jacquesm 14y ago
      Some of the stuff people have been writing in these threads is so unbelievably callous and insensitive that I really wonder what drives us all to do these things.

waterlesscloud 14y ago

The top reply to pg in that thread is dcurtis, and should maybe give everyone concerned a bit of a pause. EDIT- dcurtis says Aaron is egotistical in his blog posts, as a comment on a post that asks what Aaron has ever done. The parallel to recent threads about dcurtis is eerie, to be honest. It's jarring enough that it should make everyone on all sides of that issue take a step back and get some perspective. As pg says in that thread, egotism is a common flaw in bright youths. Perhaps some...not tolerance exactly, as guidance away from the flaw is a reasonable response, but maybe a realization that it's to be expected. And in the big picture, maybe it shouldn't really count much against them anyway.

dcurtis 14y ago
It certainly gives me pause.

Alex3917 14y ago

Yeah. It's also interesting to watch this posthumous deification happening in real time, especially since so many people (who mostly didn't know him) considered him to be kind of a dabbler and a fuckup while he was still alive. Not saying all the praise is a bad thing or unwarranted by any means, just an observation. I never actually met him, but we shared a small footnote in history together: literally we were both cited in the same footnote of a book on the history of Wikipedia.

jacquesm 14y ago
What bugs me a lot more than the meanness in either of those two historical threads is some of the stuff that happened in the last 3 days. That's the part I can not get my head wrapped around. It really bugs me.
- graue 14y ago
  You mean his death? To say that it bugs me would be an extreme understatement. Like many, I immediately felt devastated, even though I'd never met him. If you are referring to other stuff: What else happened in the last 3 days that bugs you?
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    Some of the stuff people have been writing in these threads is so unbelievably callous and insensitive that I really wonder what drives us all to do these things.