You don't solve a problem by running away from it. This guy would have been very useful. He just needed counselling, attention and love to overcome the 'darkness and his ghosts'. But I don't think he was smart. He might have been clever in class and books but smart and brilliant people don't take their own lives. Brilliant is misused here. Anyway R.I.P.
> He might have been clever in class and books but smart and brilliant people don't take their own lives.
Honestly: How do you know? Should I invoke Alan Turing or look up suicides on Wikipedia?
I think we, who are not going through these kind of things, tend to underestimate just how damaged people can be. I'm not saying he made the right choice, but I'm definitely saying that it's not as clear cut as you imply.
Maybe he's defining "smart and brilliant" in such a way that his statement is tautologically true? It's obviously pretty silly otherwise. Of course, such a definition is also silly, since it has such a large mismatch with the conventional definitions of those terms.
Whilst I did not vote this down, I think that the whole smart/dumb thing is purely subjective. You may think its dumb to take your own life, but that is your own opinion, with no regard to the perspective of the person who it is actually happening to. I may think its dumb for a person to murder another innocent person, however I may also think its acceptable for a suffering cancer patient to take their own life. From the note that was left, it is clear he was suffering , and no matter how much help you "think" he would have gotten by taking another route, the fact is that he saw this as HIS way out. So why should we judge him by calling him dumb ( or at least not smart). You may have done things differently, but maybe you haven't felt the way he did either. Suicide is something that many people think can be avoided by other methods ie counseling, drugs ... but in reality some things you never "get over" or "solved", and denying them the right to take their own life is in my opinion paramount to torture.
Really? Who are you to tell someone he just needs 'counseling, attention and love'? I can tell you from personal experience counseling, attention, and love can very much be not only unproductive, but can easily make things worse. It's tiring to hear people say that the aftermath of event's that mark you like this, such as being raped, witnessing murder, physical abuse and torture, killing (be it a person from an enemy army or protecting your family), are solved by:
- Going into counseling, as sometimes it's just not enough.
- Getting attention, as it's a distraction that can sometimes make falling back into the 'darkness' more painful.
- Love, as more times than not it's easy to not be able to let go of the pain and transmit it to your loved ones and hurt them because of it.
It's easy to judge other people when you're living a sheltered life and you have some delusions of grandeur about how people with X and Y attributes should behave in a certain way that has been lodged in the back of your mind because of your upbringing or religion. The fact that you can so easily say that smart and brilliant people don't take their lives is a clear indicator that you really don't have a grasp on what being smart or brilliant is, but more important than that, it clearly shows that you have not had to go through anything as traumatizing as what this man went through.
In reality when you've gone through traumatizing events such as this, there is only one thing that will define if you're suicidal or not, and it's if you are strong enough to live with yourself, your 'darkness', and knowing someone else is either alive and unpunished, or suffered an undeserved and painful death.
I've seen stuff you could get out of a Saw movie, and sadly had to live a violent episode defending my home and loved ones (despite a middle-upper class upbringing, I did end up living on the crappiest and violent part of town on a small room with 2 other persons sharing a bed). Because of what I've lived I can tell you three things: smart/brilliant people take their lives because they can't deal with the feelings, not because they're actually dumb by some morality troll's standards; things like this mark you for life, and no amount of counseling can turn you back into someone you once where, though that doesn't mean that you can't live with the events or your decisions (In my case it gave me the most untrusting and uncaring character, which is something that affects every relationship I've had, romantic or otherwise); and people that act judgmental regarding things like this are doing so because they have this grand ego which gets fed by making others feel like they're beneath them. No one who has ever had to go through something as traumatizing as this would have the the heart (or the balls) to say the bullshit you've said.
Be more respectful and stop letting your nonsense morals talk crap of other people that deserve at least the silence of the witch-hunt people holding the pitchforks.
I really don't understand the respect to this particular comment. I think kwoks expressed himself slightly awkwardly, but are the downvoters suggesting that this guy did the smart thing by taking his own life?
Probably some if them are, but I think most are reacting negatively to the suggestion that no one who kills themselves is smart. Note that this is different than saying that the suicide itself is a 'smart' decision. Perhaps they feel it is disrespectful to a former friend who's intelligence they respected?
The OP seems to equate 'smart' with evolutionarily successful. While there is no question that removing yourself from the gene pool before reproducing is lousy evolutionary fitness, I can certainly understand looking at the world and deciding that one just doesn't want to play that game.
For the most part I think the downvotes are because the post is offensive and lacks insight, not because people are applauding suicide.
Way to go HN. Instant downvote due to violent disagreement with an unpopular sentiment, not because the poster failed to add anything to the discussion.
I don't think it's a failure to contribute to point out that rational people( and here we would presume that brilliant programmers are generally rational )would conduct their lives and solve their problems rationally.
Physical trauma that occurred and ended 20 years ago is not the kind of thing a rational mind would choose suicide as a solution to.
I understand that the "feelings first" zeitgeist of modern America makes this kind of thinking unpopular, but for some reason I thought unpopularity alone was not considered an appropriate rubric to downvote on HN.
Or perhaps the poster is being downvoted for the cruel and sloppy generalization, just like the one you just made. Exactly what does this contribute? Brilliant programmers are "presumed" to be rational; suicide is an irrational act; therefore... what?
"Physical trauma that occurred and ended 20 years ago is not the kind of thing a rational mind would choose suicide as a solution to."
Childhood sexual abuse is not the kind of thing that lends itself to a rational emotional state. If you read Bill's note, you'll observe that he recognized this fact, sought help, and obtained little. Maybe all he needed was someone like you to tell him to "get more rational".
Yes. For instance, someone who is given an impossible choice, during war may commit suicide to show his disagreement. Rationality is sometime cultural, which is difficult to accept to rational minds, including me. For instance, in old China, if someone did something very bad against you, the "rational" way to get revenge was to commit suicide in front of the door of this someone. It would bring an awfull lot of shit on his head, more than what you could do by staying alive...
