I want to change the focus here from all the negativity that was existent in HN to some positive stuff -- andrewljohnson's defense of Aaron, which now shows his incredible insight.
1) I don't think Aaron made more than six figures from Reddit. Soon after acquisition, he went on walkabout, and then he got canned. He probably got some money, but did not vest most of his share.
So, don't worry - he's poor enough for your pity and support.
2) As to your second line of thought, that we should punish him because he consciously broke the law... I disagree with anyone on this forum who says that Aaron didn't know the potential consequences of his actions, and therefore should not be punished. But I also disagree with you.
This was a victimless crime, and the only ones pursuing it are some relentless G-men. Where is the corporation or person that has been wronged? Who, in the public, wants to pillory Aaron? What did Aaron gain? Do we really need to make an example of him, so this doesn't happen again? Is this really good a use of taxes?
My reaction is just shame and disgust... I mean, really? This brilliant kid is going to jail because of civil disobedience? Just so we can show there is still a book than can be thrown?
The prosecution's perspective is warped by incentives - we should never care about how prosecutors feel or think - they are just tools of the people. Prosecutors need convictions, promotions, and press to succeed at their jobs. At this point, it's not JSTOR who wants this case prosecuted, it's just government agents. And they are just going through the motions.
It may be up to a jury to do the right thing - they stand a better change of being unbiased, thankfully for Aaron.
> I disagree with anyone on this forum who says that Aaron didn't know the potential consequences of his actions, and therefore should not be punished.
What's terrifying to me is that I could have ended up doing the same thing. You're on a fast network, you have a bunch of PDFs you want to crawl, you're particularly handy with python... why not? It's in the same ballpark as doing a site-rip.
God dam I hate the term "man up", it really is a hugely degrading phrase. If someone is having a hard time and asks for the help the worst thing you can do is tell them to "man up" or "get over it".
Thank you, not sure I could have phrased it any better. I'm not sure many of us will ever fully understand what Aaron went through, something obviously dark enough that he felt the only way out was to take his own life. If some of the condolences and sympathy on offer right now had been given back then maybe a brilliant mind would still be alive. Hopefully all of us will think twice before dismissing calls of help with "man up" from now now.
Given Matt's from New Zealand, he would have been exposed to an excellent series of advertisements on depression by a former top All Black - John Kirwan. Kirwan, who was arguably the best All Black of his era, talks frankly about depression, mentions in one that toughening up is the last thing to do, and that the best way to help is to seek help, do the little things that make you happy and so on. It was a brave thing to do, and incredibly powerful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ9yRhCiLfAhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxBikj3kRcohttp://depression.org.nz/
The disconnect here is a simple one: how big a peril Aaron was in was not communicated clearly or effectively on the page asking for help. Apparently this was because of some legal constraints. I think that's what threw a lot of people on the wrong track entirely. Had they been in the possession of the full set of facts I'm pretty sure they would have reacted differently. See the page for yourself: https://free.aaronsw.com/ , it is as non-descriptive as it could possibly be.
Even so, these careless and unfounded words must have hurt tremendously, much more so than had nothing been said at all.
> Even so, these careless and unfounded words must have hurt tremendously, much more so than had nothing been said at all.
It angers me to think that HN could have contributed in any way to the dark place Aaron ended up reaching. More so because many of those comments bothered me at the time and I neither knew Aaron nor the severity of the situation. They were unwarranted even in absence of the full story.
I'm sorry but which "careless and unfounded words" are you specifically referring to? Set among these events, and with a great many people assigning responsibility all over the place, this kind of thing strikes me as nothing like responsible or precise.
It was a fundraising post for legal defense. Not a plea of mental health distress. People expressed negative opinions of the request, some in light of the presumed financial position of the defendant. Are we seriously discussing review of those remarks simply for their psychological supportiveness?
Not terribly long ago I had someone on hn tell me to "lighten up". Up until that point, I appreciated his sincere effort at respectful two way communication. At that moment, I decided he was being a dick and not worth talking to further.
I don't see where it matters if you can tell if someone will bring drama or not. It is pretty disrespectful to assume that someone making strong/emotional statements is merely a drama queen. They usually have their reasons for feeling strongly.
In this context, here's a hint: don't blame the sufferer. You don't tell someone with Multiple Sclerosis to just exercise more or a poor person to just make more money. It's facile and cruel and unhelpful.
Depends on the context and situation. Between friends, its a pretty good phrase to tell your buddy (regardless of sex), to be the responsible party and take some positive actions. I would never say it to a stranger or someone I didn't know well, but to a friend that needs to hear it, yes.
The women I have hung out with haven't taken offense when they had the phrase used on them, and one did use it on me (it was something I needed to hear at the time although I was in a bit of a snit for a couple of days because of her saying it).
Thinking about it, there are a lot of phrases and ways to express things that I wouldn't use on a message board or to people I didn't know well. To the people I know well, I'll use any phrase or approach that I think can reach them.
Also, I do not see and equivalence between "man up" and "get over it". The former is asking a friend to take some responsibility and action, the later is asking them to get beyond their feelings while assigning no responsibility.
I don't see how anyone can read that phrase in that thread as referring to Aaron's _depression_. It was entirely in the context of taking responsibility for his _activism_, and under a presumption that he had considerable resources.
Something particularly bugs me about edw519's comments in the thread you linked to and the recent one about the tragedy -- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5047571. It's an odd contrast.
A more cynical observation is that users with high "karma" point totals earn this by parroting the majority opinion or otherwise treating comment threads as a game.
That's not an observation, it's a conjecture, and one that is fairly baseless. many things operate according to a power law. If karma is like that, a small number of users will end up with a shitload of karma points even if they aren't attempting to game the system.
There are many factors that could contribute to a power law for karma distribution. One conjecture is that other users tend to "trust" high-karma users and therefore tend to upvote their comments just because they have high karma.
Another is that high-karma users receive gratification from using HN and therefore use it more. Which leads to getting more karma.
Either of the two conjectures I advanced could explain a small number of users having a disproportionate amount of Karma.
Both conjectures bear out in my experience. A third one:
High-karma users have followers. I've left comments on very old stories in out-of-the-way places and found them voted up. So we accumulate karma faster in part because people are simply more likely to see our posts, because they go out of their way to do so.
high karma people have a halo effect (while that sounds a little like one of the others ones mentioned) I think it's distinct.
I had an experience the other week with the halo effect as follows.
I was somewhere and struck up a conversation with a man that I believed to be the actual head of a top 10 law firm in the US (a distant relative who I met for the first time). With a private jet, home in Aspen and a few thousand lawyers under him. While I was talking to him, I was noticeably aware of literally how important he seemed on one hand, and how "down to earth" he seemed on the other. (He actually didn't seem that sharp to go with who I believed him to be, in a George Bush kind of way.)
But the halo was still there (I was doubting my instincts all along).
After speaking to him for 45 minutes or so I asked for his card. It turned out that he wasn't the head of the firm, he was the son of the head of the firm (he was a senior partner none the less).
Your own profile provides an excellent example of this phenomenon -- you have a "must-read list". Valuable contributions from the past mean certain people get noticed more in the present.
I don't know; consciously recognizing this tendency in myself is one of the reasons I deleted my reddit account and seriously scaled back my contribution here. I observed behaviour in myself that I found distasteful, but it wasn't before that behaviour had become entrenched and I had become a top-100 poster on HN (by overall karma) that I noticed it. I can easily postulate a reality wherein others, as I did, unconsciously adopt hivemind opinions so as to maximize the social validation of karma without realizing that they're doing so or intentionally gaming the system in that way.
The popularity of contrarian viewpoints on sites like HN and reddit are absolutely because people reward people more for expressing those views. Even just as a trend, it is worth considering.
If you think it was easy for Ed to post what he did about Aaron's legal troubles, you don't understand the sentiment on HN at all. He posted that comment because that's what he believed at the time.
It's not the comment that makes the votes, it's the voters. I tend to view high "karma" comments as resonating with the geist. If they're pandering to the crowd, they're just giving the crowd what they want to hear. So, sure we can scapegoat the panderers, but the fingers should possibly point elsewhere.
Some users get upvoted fairly quickly by username alone, too. Think pg, edw519, patio11, tptacek; I've noticed comments from them will have upvotes in seconds, regardless of content. It's just name recognition, for better or worse. pg could probably leave a comment saying only "This is a comment." and get a hundred points of karma off it. (I'd pay him to try.)
So, to an outside observer, you might suggest that these users game Hacker News but the real answer is that they have an audience. It's debatable whether that's their fault, on a case-by-case basis, though.
Then you could probably say it goes the other way: a large part of the community feels a certain way because Ed says so (in the top position), or Thomas says so. I've noticed the atmosphere of a thread change after a comment from a "well-known" person is left, rather rapidly on occasion. The momentum of a community like Hacker News is an interesting study, and although I didn't get an opportunity to watch the thread under the microscope, I bet a large part of it was shaped by Ed's comment.
Recently I've learned how Hacker News threads are living organisms, and I've noticed the impact of the commentary that I make. If you pay close attention, you'll be surprised at how the thread evolves and grows, particularly based upon what's in the top position.
That exchange was ridiculous. I brushed his ego by correcting him on what is supposed to be his core competency, and he resorted to bullying and fallacious reasoning rather than admitting he was wrong.
It took some work, but I managed to corner him.
I didn't want to lose this argument because he was trying to make me look foolish when I was technically right. Since he has a lot of street cred, I feared that a lot of people would take his ramblings as correct.
And some did. I got at least three down votes on the first message.
Where is the contrast? edw519's past remarks remain consistent with the one you've linked to in your comment. Expressing the idea that Aaron should be expected take responsibility for his actions does not imply any ill will on edw519's part.
Why does this issue have to be made into something so polarizing? With many here, it's either you believe Aaron should've been able to walk away scot-free, or you support an oppressive, overreaching, corrupt government, and the efforts to limit free access to information. Isn't it?
Does anyone here who has paid any attention to Ed whatsoever believe he would have written that comment had he known that Aaron had already been financially ruined by an overzealous prosecution that had confronted him with a dilemma of pleading guilty to 13 felonies and spending 6 months in prison or taking a crap-shot at 6-7 years in prison?
NOBODY KNEW THESE DETAILS AT THE TIME. Aaron was apparently prevented from sharing them. They are shocking. It is not reasonable to get angry at people for reasoning through questions and failing to account for secret information.
No, but he did assume he was asking for funds simply because he wasn't manning up. How many hundreds read/upvoted and made the same assumption? He should've held his judgment, especially with the weight he carries around here. I've been reading his comments for years. I know he's a good guy, but I still think it was a stupid comment to make.
No, but he did assume he was asking for funds simply because he
wasn't manning up
How can any comment ever be made on the internet about something happening then if every commenter is expected to a) assume they know very little of the situation b) not make judgement c) later be held accountable for what they've said based on information not known at the time?
Do people need to start including disclaimers when they comment? "This comment is based on my understanding of the situation as presented by the article and would be revised if new things come to light that are not included in this article"?
I don't understand this sentiment at all. What's wrong with simply not commenting? HN isn't a semi-private coffee shop; this whole post illustrates quite nicely that what is said here is public and long-lasting.
Let's try this on for a little more discomfort: what do you think the odds are that Aaron himself read the comments of a few threads posted here about his case?
Your entire argument here seems predicated upon people absolutely needing to comment on things that they have no special knowledge of. I don't think that's very defensible.
> what do you think the odds are that Aaron himself read the comments of a few threads posted here about his case?
About 100% or so. That's the bit that hurts the most.
The simple solution is this: If you're going to say something positive, absent information feel free to do so.
On the other hand, if you're going to say something negative you'd better make damn sure you know what it is that you're talking about. If you don't those words might take on a life of their own at some unspecified point in the future.
Jacques, incidentally, I think you deserve some praise for being a real stand-up guy here. Aside from being generally a heck of a decent person, you're one of the few here who seems to have taken some actual action throughout this -- reaching out to Aaron to offer assistance, and, later, contacting Lessig to follow up on the EFF's involvement.
I don't think I deserve any praise at all. I had my eyes firmly closed when it mattered (and I really should have known better) and nothing came of the things I did.
I got the impression he just thought Aaron was guilty of a crime, and consciously committed it to make a difference, so Aaron should accept the legal consequences that go with that.
Hindsight is 20/20, and perhaps knowing Aaron was the type who would do something like this would prevent someone from commenting entirely, but it wasn't necessarily a stupid comment to make.
The most important lesson that I have learned from this whole incident is that defending yourself from a federal lawsuit AVERAGES $1.5 million.
I had no idea it was that high. I think few of us did.
If I had seen that conversation (I missed it) and known that fact back then (I didn't), I'd have definitely corrected Ed at that point.
Also shocking is that the purported punishment is so far out of line with what people have gotten in the past. Based on previous examples like Robert Morris (accidentally shut down most of the Internet) and Randal Schwartz (cracked passwords for many accounts at Intel - yes I'm aware of the extenuating circumstances) I would not have expected any jail time to be involved for this "crime".
That shocking discrepancy is why I was so fast to sign the petition to fire this particular prosecutor.
I think that's part of the point, as someone else said; that we should reserve such stark judgment with the expectation that we don't know all the facts. Ed was pretty clear in his opinion, but probably would have held a different one had he known all the facts. To be honest, that supports the idea that he (and I; I agreed quietly) was wrong at the time.
I've taken that lesson to heart personally, just from this thread alone.
Also remember that the top comment position often goes to a 'contra' position with regard to the story. The reasons for this are many: the supporters have already upvoted the headline; those drawn into any comment thread are disproportionately those with some qualifying/contentious point to make; commenters in general may skew to skeptical/negative viewpoints compared to all community readers.
Relative ranking of comments are not opinion polls and should not be construed as such. 'The HN community' is rarely of one measurable mind about anything. Finally, caring much about what the net-total click-voting is on any particular item may be a sign of misplaced priorities or insecurities. What's right and what's good is not dependent on anyone's polling.
Are you suggesting that this is what people should do, which might be a nice sentiment, but not particularly relevant to the issue at hand.
Or are you suggesting this is what people actually do, to the point of upvoting a comment past all others to the number 1 position. In this second case, I think you have a long way to go to prove your point.
I don't seem to have commented on those threads. But if I had, most of my thoughts now are similar to how they were then.
Fully in support of his goals. Mixed feelings about his methods. Thinking that civil disobedience gains some of its moral authority from being willing to pay a price. But that the price in this case was completely out of proportion to the violation. Thinking that the feds never should have been involved.
Pretty much where I am now, with the added anger/pain about a young man who had already contributed more to the world than most people ever will being hounded to death in a showcase prosecution.
"If I had ... been asked ... whether Aaron’s actions were “wrong”, I would probably have replied that what Aaron did would better be described as “inconsiderate”. In the same way it is inconsiderate ... to download lots of files on shared wifi or to spider Wikipedia too quickly, but none of these actions should lead to a young person being hounded for years and haunted by the possibility of a 35 year sentence."
I'm honestly baffled by this question. He didn't just not support what Aaron did, he treated him badly when he requested help and discouraged others from helping. ("man up?" it's difficult to be more contemptuous in so few words.)
After reading that original post I wouldn't have called this newer post a contrast. I would have just assumed that his "OH NO" post was an expression of sarcasm from a very, very mean person. I am happy to assume that others are correct and that this probably isn't the case, but still, the contrast is very clear.
> I would have just assumed that his "OH NO" post was an expression of sarcasm from a very, very mean person.
It isn't, please take my word for it. Ed is definitely one of the good guys and mean is an adjective I'd never ever use to refer to him. He's helped countless people here with his insights and care and I'm pretty sure that if he could take that stuff back that he would do so. Words said carelessly can come back to haunt you, the only way to avoid that is to never speak, or to only speak in weasel words. Ed is not very good at weasel words and I consider that a good thing.
You can disagree with something someone does and still feel bad when they die. I don't understand why that is a contrast.
Did you feel bad when Steve Jobs died, even if just for his family and friends? Did you ever say anything critical of Steve Jobs? That doesn't make it a contrast...
> You can disagree with something someone does and still feel bad when they die. I don't understand why that is a contrast.
You're not reading carefully enough. The post we're discussing goes beyond disagreeing with what Aaron did. That's not the issue. The expression of contempt - "man up" - and the message that asking one's friends for help is a mistake is troubling.
An unforseen event will make you regret critising [Apple/SteveJobs/Qualcomm/bananas]. In otherwords... stop trying to assign blame to someone for this. We didn't know his intention, nor is anyone directly responsible for it..
It sucks that he killed himself, but its not something you could have prevented unless you were there.
It is an interesting thread...I had wondered why Aaron hadn't beat the drum for support but clearly he hadn't yet won the support of the community...I didn't post in that thread but I could see myself thinking, "He's a successful startup guy, why does he need our money?"...which apparently fueled some of the skepticism back then. I guess it's worth keeping in mind when assessing MIT's soul-searching: how many of the people involved then also thought, "This privileged bratty kid can take his lumps?" and let the issue roll as it did?
I wondered the same and checked out the submissions & comments of AaronSw. He had stopped commenting 140 days ago.
And some of the comments on that submission are just downright acerbic. I'm sure Aaron would've checked them and decided HN wasn't going to help him (honestly after such reaction, why would anyone think otherwise).
I view HN as a community/forum of mostly "business hackers" (for obvious reasons: startups, duh). By analogy, I wonder: would a "business hippie" be more or less sympathetic to the original "hippie" goals? In either case, while I don't consider business and hippie/hacking to be a contradiction, I do think it's a tenuous combination that can easily re-frame one's original values unsympathetically.
This might the single most illuminating comment here about how this tragedy was allowed to reach its terrible conclusion. It perfectly illustrates the indifference towards unjust laws as long as they concern somebody else.
And to all those people that suggested seeing things from prosecution's vantage point -- now might be the time to also consider how Aaron might have felt reading those comments.
Sometimes it takes a shock for people to reconsider their position, especially if what they're really doing is defending their own lack of action. Let's not run to judge the people who posted in that thread many months ago.
Personally, I gave up on participating in any kind of activism about 10 years ago, partly because I didn't feel we were getting anywhere and the next generation didn't seem to care. I feel pretty uncomfortable about that now.
My first thought on hearing about his death was thinking of the picture of the boycotters singing together in the Montgomery jail. We don't have songs of solidarity any more. Instead it's months of indictments and pre-trial proceedings and motions and legal fees, all over things we didn't even see happen in the first place, in a snarky community that will tear people down at least 50% of the time. I can't really think of a less effective resistance strategy.
It's also mostly fueled by indifference and self-interest, not activism. Most file sharers just don't care that they are breaking the law; they want to do what they want to do. If these laws are to ever change we're going to need to start downloading and sharing on the Capital Steps, or get arrested for printing free books for poor kids. We are going to need to be prepared to go to jail ahead of time, before they decide to come after us. That way people like Aaron who don't have the support network and preparation aren't the only ones facing this.
Unfortunately, in my experience the existing activist networks are not the place to start. The anarchists just want to relive the 70's, labor is watching their power dwindle and is focused myopically on the little that remains, poverty campaigners are burned out from fighting years of losing battles and the Occupy, anti-globalization and professional activists seem perfectly happy to march just to be doing anything at all. Many people can agree on the problems, but few people can agree on the solutions (much less small, concrete steps to get there) and so they don't accomplish anything. In intellectual "property" rights laws, however, I think we have a well-defined problem where direct action could be effective.
I don't know that they would, or that they should. Aaron's actions were not a matter of some simple black & white reasoning. Some of the comments come across as harsh criticism for someone who has recently passed, but these were comments before he passed. The context cannot be separated from the content in this case.
I hold a lot of the same views as Aaron. This is especially true in the case of the PACER incident, which is speculated to have been a source of the malice on display from the Justice Department, but I also recognize that a lot of the reasoning presented by edw519 and tptacek (just a couple of examples) is sound. It's entirely possible for there to be sound arguments on both sides of a discussion.
I'm still in roughly the same place I was. He was smart enough that he knew or ought to have known that what he was doing was illegal. I feel bad for the guy in an empathetic sense, because he believed in what he was doing, but not bad enough to cough up my own money for an almost hopeless defense.
Definitely agree that both sides of an argument can have good points. If you don't see that as being the case here, maybe read this: http://lesswrong.com/lw/gz/policy_debates_should_not_appear_..., which is part of the "Politics is the Mind-Killer" series on LessWrong.
That discussion seems much more favorable to Aaron. The top comment's supportive, and even his detractors, like 'bstar77, are measured in their criticism:
> I sincerely hope that he gets the punishment he deserves which should be a firm slap on the wrist. I'm uncomfortable with the idea of him getting any jail time
I'm starting to suspect that HN discussions have a pretty strong snowball effect where it begins to seem like everyone agrees with the early comments near the top.
It sucks that people were so harsh in the first thread. One big takeaway from Aaron's story for me, is that whenever someone is facing federal prosecution, consider that a huge risk factor for stress and mental breakdown, and err on the side of sympathy. This also reaffirms my principle of siding with individual humans (Aaron) over institutions (JSTOR, MIT, DOJ). I'm not out to get anyone if they're the former inflicting a minor institutional flesh wound on the latter.
> I'm starting to suspect that HN discussions have a pretty strong snowball effect where it begins to seem like everyone agrees with the early comments near the top.
There are several 'patterns' that have emerged over the years, the snowball is definitely one of them, especially if one of the first commenters is one with name recognition on HN
> This also reaffirms my principle of siding with individual humans (Aaron) over institutions (JSTOR, MIT, DOJ).
I've tried to make that point elsewhere but unsuccessfully.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
If you are going to advocate free information transmission, then you better open up your finances to prove you are bankrupt if you ask for funding. Especially if you are successful.
Our government is sick because our culture is sick, and our culture is sick because masses of individuals are sick, and few of them want to look in a mirror. And I am most definitely thinking about many of the posters here at HN.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529484