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It's not clear that kids in Palo Alto really are killing themselves at unusually high rates over the long term. There was a recent suicide cluster there, but an

It's not clear that kids in Palo Alto really are killing themselves at unusually high rates over the long term. There was a recent suicide cluster there, but any event that is random will clump in some location some time, and maybe there is nothing about Palo Alto itself that produced the recent clump. For sure, any event that happens in Palo Alto grabs the connection of well connected people who can get lots of media attention for their concerns, so there has been a lot of reporting and commentary about this issue. This article kindly submitted for our discussion from the Modern Luxury website is just the latest in a large collection of articles by nonspecialists on suicide in Palo Alto. But maybe the problem will appear to go away as the random clumping of individual suicides occurs in some poorer and less well connected community next year. Of course I desire for all young people everywhere to live long, healthy, and happy lives, and if there is something toxic about the culture in Palo Alto, let's by all means do something to fix it. But one part of that effort is to better understand suicide and its prevention, a topic I post about fairly often here on Hacker News. (Check my other posts just from today. I research this issue a lot.) A lot of the commentary I have read about Palo Alto this year has been heavy on speculation but very light on verifiable facts, and I think, with all due respect, that an important issue like youth suicide deserves to be treated factually and carefully.

11thEarlOfMar 11y ago
'something toxic about the culture' My kids attend a different Silicon Valley school that has an academic culture that I find very difficult to understand. A very high number of students load up on college-level advanced placement courses starting their sophomore year. A 'B' is considered a failing grade. What is baffling to me is that the bulk of the pressure is peer pressure, and not directly from teachers or parents. It is typical that kids who transfer to high schools in other states wind up as valedictorians, where they'd barely make the top 10% here. Jocks, burnouts and socialites seems so, so long ago.
- jjtheblunt 11y ago
  Are there any jocks? Or, are all the kids only encouraged to worship academics?
  - paloaltokid 11y ago
    There are lots of jocks in Palo Alto but all the jocks I knew when I went to Paly were also academic high achievers.
  - 11thEarlOfMar 11y ago
    It's generally either-or. If you're a jock, you are not academic. The varsity teams are poor at my kids school because most kids in sports as freshman and sophomores drop out of the teams as juniors and seniors to focus more on academics. The sports teams overall are weak.
- branchan 11y ago
  I guess if you're a kid living in Palo Alto, you are living in an environment where everyone and everyone's parents are high achievers and that is what is expected of you. In order to get admitted to the best colleges, everyone is gunning for the straight A's. If all your peers are getting straight A's and you get a B, yea I can see how that can have an impact on you, seeing that that now takes you to the bottom of the rankings.
  - aout 11y ago
    I do not live in Palo Alto and I have never been to Silicon Valley either. I would like to ask what you think about this culture of over achievers telling their kids (via social pressure or directly) that they need good grades when all I can here is that you should not care about grades if you want to become a great entrepreneur. That seems quite a paradox to me but again, I'm just hearing echoes of propaganda from SF. Could it be that people actually buy the "entrepreneur / do-it-your-way bullshit" for themselves but fear to apply it to their kids? Also, I'd like to point out that most of the greatest scientific minds of our era did get mediocre grades in school (I'm not talking about the Gates or Jobs college dropout fairytale).
    - Swizec 11y ago
      It's simple: For every runaway-success person with crappy grades, there are ten people with great success and great grades, and a hundred if not a thousand people with no success (or even failure) and crappy grades. If you make a simple "expected success" calculation, much like the expected value concept, you will see that you should encourage your kids to have good grades. It really does make a difference, maybe not directly, but as a correlation with other stuff, most def. Basically, do not base your life strategy on black swan events. That works for VCs because they make a lot of bets. You are an individual and only get to make one bet. You want that bet to pay off. If you're going to be a black swan, your grades won't matter. If you aren't, and you likely aren't, they will.
    - malchow 11y ago
      "Could it be that people actually buy the 'entrepreneur / do-it-your-way bullshit' for themselves but fear to apply it to their kids?" I sense that this is a very wise observation. I know college dropouts with large homes in the Palo Alto area who take their kids on east-coast college tours via private aircraft. These kids might be better served getting lost in the Andes, but many parents wouldn't hear of such a notion.
- bluemeniscus 11y ago
  I highly recommend arranging a screening of the documentary "A Race to Nowhere". It was an eye opener for me and other parents in Los Alamos (a NM town with many similarities I think) and places this peer pressure into proper perspective for parents, kids, as well as teachers. cf http://www.racetonowhere.com/about-film http://www.racetonowhere.com/about-film
- geoelectric 11y ago
  Not that I think this is conscious, per se, but I think part of it might be driven by the need for their school to be a "top school." It's not enough just to take AP courses and get As, the overall ranking of the school you do it at ends up affecting your admission chances. Staff might have similar concerns around funding. That probably puts a lot of pressure on all the students to keep up the standard, probably past a level that makes sense for any diverse student body.
mathattack 11y ago
My sense is that it's cultural, and not clustering. The kids have an awful lot of academic pressure. In most schools, the mediocre football players just give up on the team. These kids don't feel able to quit the academics. Seeing the guards at the Caltrains is very sad.
- paloaltokid 11y ago
  I agree that it's cultural. The pressure growing up in Palo Alto is unbelievable.
sonoffett 11y ago
The mantra of the fundamental materialist is always "it is only a coincidence" and it is quite useful to recite to explain away topics that might make one uncomfortable. Another good one is "correlation is not equal to causation" (except when it agrees with my preconceived reality tunnel). If you repeat it enough times or with enough conviction it might even start to sound true! I attended Gunn in 2006 and this was happening in waves before I got there and continues to happen in waves since. There are guards that sit by the tracks (sometimes 24/7) to look out for students who are looking to take their lives in this specific way (buy them a coffee or donut on a cold night, they'll appreciate it). This is occurring at one of the most educated, affluent areas in the world. Hell even Radiohead poked fun at how perfect the place is. My AP CS class covered topics that weren't even included in my undergraduate CS degree at top ranked UC, and my social network from this school is more influential than any networks I made in college or graduate school. If the suicide rate did meet some statistical "norm" then that would be exceptional. Why are kids killing themselves in utopia? Why are some of the worlds most intelligent, rich, and power adults burying their children? EDIT: "paid guards" -> "guards".
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- AdreKnowChrome 11y ago
  SGTM +1
- mbillie1 11y ago
  > Why are kids killing themselves in utopia? Why are some of the worlds most intelligent, rich, and power adults burying their children? I think the ideas that Palo Alto is "utopia," and that intelligence, wealth and power are all you need to make your children happy, are really quite telling. Perhaps expensive houses and influential careers are orthogonal to children's happiness and well-being, or perhaps even an intensely competitive career- and wealth-focused environment has negative side-effects with respect to one's family? I don't think that suburban ennui is anything new, and equating affluence and education to happiness is short-sighted in my mind.
MichaelCrawford 11y ago
I was a telephone volunteer for the Suicide Prevention Service of Santa Cruz County in the late 1980s. It is common for suicides to happen in clusters whose numbers cannot be explained by the clustering which does indeed happen in random number distributions. Having experienced suicidal depression for a number of years, and having attempted it several times, I can speak from experience as to why the clustering occurs: profoundly depressed people find creativity difficult. Suppose you wanted to kill yourself, were quite desperate to make it all end. But to do so you'd have to obtain the means of your own destruction. That's pretty hard to do, when you can't even get off the couch to make your breakfast. There are all manner of ways that we could take our lives, but they don't occur to most people. Having a specific mechanism suggested to use - where the "suggestion" is provided by someone who does take their own life - provides us the mental wherewithal to obtain it ourselves. It is for this reason that groups such as I once volunteered for, advise the press not to name the specific means use, when reporting on suicides.
- MichaelCrawford 11y ago
  Please permit me to be wildly off-topic but for a moment: A regard it as obvious by inspection that any truly random sequence of numbers will contain arbitrarily many sequences of any arbitrary sequence of numbers. It is for that reason that I regard one time pads that consist of truly random numbers as insufficiently strong cryptography. That is, while exceedingly unlikely, the cleartext "attack at dawn" could well encrypt to the ciphertext "attack at dawn".

11thEarlOfMar 11y ago

'something toxic about the culture' My kids attend a different Silicon Valley school that has an academic culture that I find very difficult to understand. A very high number of students load up on college-level advanced placement courses starting their sophomore year. A 'B' is considered a failing grade. What is baffling to me is that the bulk of the pressure is peer pressure, and not directly from teachers or parents. It is typical that kids who transfer to high schools in other states wind up as valedictorians, where they'd barely make the top 10% here. Jocks, burnouts and socialites seems so, so long ago.

jjtheblunt 11y ago
Are there any jocks? Or, are all the kids only encouraged to worship academics?
- paloaltokid 11y ago
  There are lots of jocks in Palo Alto but all the jocks I knew when I went to Paly were also academic high achievers.
- 11thEarlOfMar 11y ago
  It's generally either-or. If you're a jock, you are not academic. The varsity teams are poor at my kids school because most kids in sports as freshman and sophomores drop out of the teams as juniors and seniors to focus more on academics. The sports teams overall are weak.
branchan 11y ago
I guess if you're a kid living in Palo Alto, you are living in an environment where everyone and everyone's parents are high achievers and that is what is expected of you. In order to get admitted to the best colleges, everyone is gunning for the straight A's. If all your peers are getting straight A's and you get a B, yea I can see how that can have an impact on you, seeing that that now takes you to the bottom of the rankings.
- aout 11y ago
  I do not live in Palo Alto and I have never been to Silicon Valley either. I would like to ask what you think about this culture of over achievers telling their kids (via social pressure or directly) that they need good grades when all I can here is that you should not care about grades if you want to become a great entrepreneur. That seems quite a paradox to me but again, I'm just hearing echoes of propaganda from SF. Could it be that people actually buy the "entrepreneur / do-it-your-way bullshit" for themselves but fear to apply it to their kids? Also, I'd like to point out that most of the greatest scientific minds of our era did get mediocre grades in school (I'm not talking about the Gates or Jobs college dropout fairytale).
  - Swizec 11y ago
    It's simple: For every runaway-success person with crappy grades, there are ten people with great success and great grades, and a hundred if not a thousand people with no success (or even failure) and crappy grades. If you make a simple "expected success" calculation, much like the expected value concept, you will see that you should encourage your kids to have good grades. It really does make a difference, maybe not directly, but as a correlation with other stuff, most def. Basically, do not base your life strategy on black swan events. That works for VCs because they make a lot of bets. You are an individual and only get to make one bet. You want that bet to pay off. If you're going to be a black swan, your grades won't matter. If you aren't, and you likely aren't, they will.
  - malchow 11y ago
    "Could it be that people actually buy the 'entrepreneur / do-it-your-way bullshit' for themselves but fear to apply it to their kids?" I sense that this is a very wise observation. I know college dropouts with large homes in the Palo Alto area who take their kids on east-coast college tours via private aircraft. These kids might be better served getting lost in the Andes, but many parents wouldn't hear of such a notion.
bluemeniscus 11y ago
I highly recommend arranging a screening of the documentary "A Race to Nowhere". It was an eye opener for me and other parents in Los Alamos (a NM town with many similarities I think) and places this peer pressure into proper perspective for parents, kids, as well as teachers. cf http://www.racetonowhere.com/about-film http://www.racetonowhere.com/about-film
geoelectric 11y ago
Not that I think this is conscious, per se, but I think part of it might be driven by the need for their school to be a "top school." It's not enough just to take AP courses and get As, the overall ranking of the school you do it at ends up affecting your admission chances. Staff might have similar concerns around funding. That probably puts a lot of pressure on all the students to keep up the standard, probably past a level that makes sense for any diverse student body.

mathattack 11y ago

My sense is that it's cultural, and not clustering. The kids have an awful lot of academic pressure. In most schools, the mediocre football players just give up on the team. These kids don't feel able to quit the academics. Seeing the guards at the Caltrains is very sad.

paloaltokid 11y ago
I agree that it's cultural. The pressure growing up in Palo Alto is unbelievable.

sonoffett 11y ago

The mantra of the fundamental materialist is always "it is only a coincidence" and it is quite useful to recite to explain away topics that might make one uncomfortable. Another good one is "correlation is not equal to causation" (except when it agrees with my preconceived reality tunnel). If you repeat it enough times or with enough conviction it might even start to sound true! I attended Gunn in 2006 and this was happening in waves before I got there and continues to happen in waves since. There are guards that sit by the tracks (sometimes 24/7) to look out for students who are looking to take their lives in this specific way (buy them a coffee or donut on a cold night, they'll appreciate it). This is occurring at one of the most educated, affluent areas in the world. Hell even Radiohead poked fun at how perfect the place is. My AP CS class covered topics that weren't even included in my undergraduate CS degree at top ranked UC, and my social network from this school is more influential than any networks I made in college or graduate school. If the suicide rate did meet some statistical "norm" then that would be exceptional. Why are kids killing themselves in utopia? Why are some of the worlds most intelligent, rich, and power adults burying their children? EDIT: "paid guards" -> "guards".

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
AdreKnowChrome 11y ago
SGTM +1
mbillie1 11y ago
> Why are kids killing themselves in utopia? Why are some of the worlds most intelligent, rich, and power adults burying their children? I think the ideas that Palo Alto is "utopia," and that intelligence, wealth and power are all you need to make your children happy, are really quite telling. Perhaps expensive houses and influential careers are orthogonal to children's happiness and well-being, or perhaps even an intensely competitive career- and wealth-focused environment has negative side-effects with respect to one's family? I don't think that suburban ennui is anything new, and equating affluence and education to happiness is short-sighted in my mind.

MichaelCrawford 11y ago

I was a telephone volunteer for the Suicide Prevention Service of Santa Cruz County in the late 1980s. It is common for suicides to happen in clusters whose numbers cannot be explained by the clustering which does indeed happen in random number distributions. Having experienced suicidal depression for a number of years, and having attempted it several times, I can speak from experience as to why the clustering occurs: profoundly depressed people find creativity difficult. Suppose you wanted to kill yourself, were quite desperate to make it all end. But to do so you'd have to obtain the means of your own destruction. That's pretty hard to do, when you can't even get off the couch to make your breakfast. There are all manner of ways that we could take our lives, but they don't occur to most people. Having a specific mechanism suggested to use - where the "suggestion" is provided by someone who does take their own life - provides us the mental wherewithal to obtain it ourselves. It is for this reason that groups such as I once volunteered for, advise the press not to name the specific means use, when reporting on suicides.

MichaelCrawford 11y ago
Please permit me to be wildly off-topic but for a moment: A regard it as obvious by inspection that any truly random sequence of numbers will contain arbitrarily many sequences of any arbitrary sequence of numbers. It is for that reason that I regard one time pads that consist of truly random numbers as insufficiently strong cryptography. That is, while exceedingly unlikely, the cleartext "attack at dawn" could well encrypt to the ciphertext "attack at dawn".