It’s fashionable to lament the death of tech genius Aaron Swartz. But I find it hard given to passages like the one below from New York Magazine’s Wesley Yang which quotes Swartz’s girlfriend on his personality and his mindset leading up to his suicide:
“He had this thing about not being able to bring yourself to do things you don’t want to do,” Stinebrickner-Kauffman said. “Everybody has to do things that they don’t want to do. And we all know that it’s really annoying and maybe even painful. But those kind of things were even harder for him than for most people.” Swartz had said that he would rather spend the rest of his life without a fixed residence, sleeping on other people’s couches, than work at an office job that he did not want to take. “He occupied a higher plane where everything was thinking and writing and doing and meeting with people who were really interesting and smart. And he filled as much of his life as possible with that, far more than anybody else I know. But when it came to having to do something that he didn’t want to do, he couldn’t do it.”
Yang concludes :
In the end, he didn’t want to be the martyr he has become. The suicide that eventually thrust him into that role was also an attempt to evade it, by evading trial. A weekend side project on an issue he didn’t even care that much about anymore was keeping him firmly ensnared in the past, and might even blot out the new life he was entering.
Change doesn’t come without a cost, and Swartz and his followers wanted change. The dilemma here is that if the people who want change know that there will be a cost to change before they set out to enact change, do they have room to complain when change’s cost is called due? The resistance, usually in the form of court proceedings, is a requirement of the entire process of enacting change. Because those seeking change will only be slowed in their desire for change when they meet some sort of resistance. But change-seekers also seek that resistance. They gravitate to where they will be resisted.
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“He occupied a higher plane.”
Heh. Another navel gazing dilettante bites the dust.
This is probably the best article I’ve seen regarding his death.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2013/01/the-end-of-ragequitting.html
yeah, that was a good article. i wish a mainstreamer had the balls to say that Swartz was just a quitter just like so many of the video gamer hacker types he was hero to. there are plenty of criticisms to be leveled against MLK but he wasn’t a quitter. Swartz shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath.
From what I’ve read, it seems that despite his high intelligence, the guy had the emotional mindset of a 13 year old. He was living in Neverland. He killed himself rather than face the “adult” world, almost out of petulance.
Re. gym tweets: I’ve taken up one Ryu’ism, as it’s quite good — in real life no longer say “I’m going to the gym.” I now say “I’m training.” This morning I was doing shoulder work with dumbells and when I thought of it in those terms I kicked ass on my last impossible set.
“He occupied a higher plane.”
His girlfriends’s words, not his, in the guy’s defense. There will always be that small subset of very bright teens and young men who are seen that way by others. A girl in my early 20s said that about me adoringly. Those individuals are sometimes referred to as natual aristocrats. Needless (or maybe needful) to say, you gotta get dirty and connect with reality. If you stay on that “higher plane” you will wither away into a fool or a faggot leftie and you can’t take any shock life hits you with.
“They gravitate to where they will be resisted.”
I’ve gotta digest your last paragraph some more. It’s interesting. It woudl be good to see an elaboration of that idea.
PA, do not woudl us
He was getting a serious beat down from highly trained professionals who had an almost unlimited budget. Add to that the fact he was one of the folks both liberals and conservatives love to ridicule and abuse. He didn’t have anywhere near the social or moral support that any of the modern victim groups have.
i read his comments
“yeah, that was a good article. i wish a mainstreamer had the balls to say that Swartz was just a quitter just like so many of the video gamer hacker types he was hero to. there are plenty of criticisms to be leveled against MLK but he wasn’t a quitter. Swartz shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath.”
Lots of people have fought the feds in court. All of them loose. Our government has a conviction rate higher than former government of Iraq. You may not have noticed, but we live in a police state that crushes all opposition. Suicide is an honorable way out.
Red,
Swartz was scared; I don’t think he was honorable in any way. He was suicidal before any of this happened anyway. I think that someone like Thomas Jane Ball was much more honorable than this guy.
Before you break the law, you should determine whether you can handle the punishment or not. There is a good chance you will get caught. If you can’t, don’t do it.
While the guy was smart he seemed quite naive in his idea that the internet and scientific research should be completely open and free. The world, due to human nature, cannot function that way. Trying to fight against that Goliath is almost impossible.
Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg all found a way to work within all the systems required to bring about high level meaningful change.
And he could have been out in months rather than years with a plea deal, going to prison for his beliefs would have been the honorable thing to do. While there he could have written a manifesto to give his cause even more credibility.
Or plan to commit suicide if you get caught. I vaguely understand what he was fighting for. Maybe it was a noble cause, but it doesn’t sound nearly important enough to die for. Not many other people seem to be worried about it. It sounds Aaron had mental problems to begin with, and then he got into more than he could handle.
You’re right. Resistance is what we want. Dashing oneself against the grindstone is what leads to self-improvement. Not everyone has the mental disease of needing to get better all the time or seeking pain. It can be maddening.
I don’t know if I believe those gym tweets. It comes from the inside and it’s there all the time, not just in the gym. One cannot be moderate politically and extreme in the gym.
PA, check out this segment up to maybe 6 minutes in.
Maybe it was a noble cause, but it doesn’t sound nearly important enough to die for.
Of course it wasn’t. Swartz just got caught up in the ludicrous ideology of information communism — the goofy, deluded anti-intellectual-property movement that took off in the late ’90s.
It’s so pathetic, really: The whole thing began as a little circle jerk of teenage assholes scrambling to justify why it was OK to steal music on Napster. It didn’t take long for it to transform into this sort of firebrand activism with its own romantic moral code and opportunistic heroes (Larry Lessig et al.), with clunky Steve Albini essays passed around like sacred texts.
When you get down to it, Aaron Swartz died for a cause that started with a bunch of pimply 15-year-olds who couldn’t even have defined “copyright” before Lars Ulrich asked them to stop stealing his shit.
Off topic but you’ll like this Chuck:
IIRC, the guys over at Danger and Play chastised you for being a rayyyccciiist. Well I randomly came across this old post from the site with the following excerpt:
http://dangerandplay.com/diversity-is-racist/
“I would not dislike D.C.’s shortage of white women, as I myself am a racist. I really don’t care for white people. They are generally conformist and boring. White women want me to take them to wine bars to ring up $100 tabs. I like the idea of a wine bar, and last night at a 12 oz. rib eye (Prime), slabs of Manchego cheese, and slathered roasted almonds, walnuts, pecans, and almonds into refrigerated honey. I just don’t like wasting money, which is the white woman’s obsession.
White women, moreover, are conformist bores. Want to have something to discuss with a white woman? Ask her about Yoga, Pilates, cupcakes, Harry Potter, and Twilight. Thus, I entirely disagree with Roosh’s point. Take my white women, please.”
“When you get down to it, Aaron Swartz died for a cause that started with a bunch of pimply 15-year-olds who couldn’t even have defined “copyright” before Lars Ulrich asked them to stop stealing his shit.”
I basically feel the same way. I remember when the Napster controversy hit – it seemed pretty cut and dry theft to me.
A coward’s way out. Suicide.
“Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg all found a way to work within all the systems required to bring about high level meaningful change.”
Exactely what change would that be?
I’ve had many an arguement about this before, but 99% of people commenting here are never going to do anything based on their beliefs. It’s just a place to blow of steam. Trying to resist Cathedral directives is something that will cost you nothing less then everything and probably end in complete failure. If your not at that point there is really not much point complaining.
And you?
“Of course it wasn’t. Swartz just got caught up in the ludicrous ideology of information communism — the goofy, deluded anti-intellectual-property movement that took off in the late ’90s. ”
LOL, information communism is the core of the entire PC computer revolution. From the beginning of personal computers people were sharing, giving away, and stealing copy righted code and designs at an insane rate. Without all those geeks sharing and stealing like madmen your PC would cost 10k and apple wouldn’t even exist as a company. They had to pick up a version of UNIX which came from information communism at Berkly to keep their entire company afloat. What you call intellectual property, is really informational Marxism were ideas, thoughts, designs, systems of organization is owned by the state and the dividends of this ownership is only given out to companies who fund the left.
“I’ve had many an arguement about this before, but 99% of people commenting here are never going to do anything based on their beliefs.”
On a national and cultural level – probably correct. But on a personal level, that’s completely wrong (obviously).
“Or plan to commit suicide if you get caught. I vaguely understand what he was fighting for. Maybe it was a noble cause, but it doesn’t sound nearly important enough to die for. Not many other people seem to be worried about it. It sounds Aaron had mental problems to begin with, and then he got into more than he could handle.”
Lara, he got caught stealing public domain documents that jstore was charging a back a copy for. Once he had the docks he was legally allowed to do anything he wanted with them and he planed to publish them. Both jstore and MIT dropped the charges against him and jstore even agreed to put the data he was downloading into a free downloads for anyone who wants them. He figured if got caught the worst that would happen is trespassing and being sued for violation of terms of agreement. The government tossed the book at him for helping to defeat SOPA.
Most brilliant people are a bit messed up in the head. It’s likely their genius is a result brain changes that increases intelligence at the cost of normal brain functions. Read up on Issac Newton for a very extreme case of this.
BTW, are only well balanced people who handle social pressures well worthy of life? If not you might want to get ready for the stone age. Geeks built your world and for you all to shit on them because they’re not like you is pretty damn short sighted.
a buck a copy*
The vast majority of JSTOR content is not public domain. Academic journals in general are non-profit but they aren’t public domain. They aren’t publicly funded and most academic journals have ad space and subscription fees.
Also what public domain content is on JSTOR is free for anyone, which was already the case back then as well.
He should have used his intelligence to take a few of the satans down with him.
@Red
“Most brilliant people are a bit messed up in the head. It’s likely their genius is a result brain changes that increases intelligence at the cost of normal brain functions.”
Maybe, or maybe they just go through the same up and downs the rest of us do, but are better able to articulate it, write songs songs about it, in other words, make it sound interesting. Also, depending how successful they are, they are probably indulged by other people, which allows a person to wallow in their problems.
Before you break the law, you should determine whether you can handle the punishment or not.
Funny stuff