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gwern comments on Mike Darwin on Steve Jobs's hypocritical stance towards death - Less Wrong
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Comments (78)
Quite shocking. I'm surprised it hasn't gotten news coverage, especially given this whole 99% thing.
It's forgotten now, although the liver thing got a fair amount of coverage (I certainly remember reading about how he gamed the system to get a liver) at the time. And now that there is renewed interest, it would be uncharitable and mean-spirited to speak ill of the dead.
Why?
It's a tradition, like being nice to people on Christmas. There's no reason for Christmas in particular to be a day on which you're extra nice. But people aren't nice enough in general, so the tradition is a step in the right direction; I'm not going to criticize it.
Because it feels like adding insult to injury for those grieving, I'd imagine.
I wonder how the liver donor's family feels.
I'll agree with Nornagest on the insult to injury part, but there's also a second part:
If you talk about someone's failings after they die, but not before, then you seem to have been waiting until they were no longer available to defend themselves.
IOW: it seems cowardly, and dishonest. Because if they were still around, they might be able to dismiss your allegations.
Can I mitigate people's negative feelings by mostly offering cites of old criticisms?
That should help, but I'm not certain how much. The problem is that whatever the reason for the rule originally, it's now ingrained as a moral absolute in some people's minds.
Dunno; ask the normals. But I've read it so many times that they must have some such attitude.
Normals have a problem there. When a death is fresh and on everyone's minds, you're supposed to be nice rather than care about facts, truth and accuracy. But by the time you're allowed to care about those things, nobody is paying attention any more.
It is an anachronism from prehistory when the dead were presumed spirits, capable of hearing you speaking ill of them, and retaining power to injure you. The motivation is primal fear.
In my view the liver thing has gotten nowhere near the amount of coverage Mickey Mantle's did. And Mickey was just as widely respected and even hero-worshiped as Jobs. To me these are closely comparable cases. My memory may be distorted, but it seems to me that there is some zeitgeist shift.
I have a friend who cannot get a kidney transplant. His kidneys are failing and he is on dialysis and without a transplant his life expectancy is less than five years, but he is considered a poor prospect and can't get his name on a waiting list.
What Stallman said was uncharitable and mean-spirited. This I am not so sure. Livers are more precious than kidneys and to waste one is a really huge deal. (I do not know enough about medicine in general or Jobs case in particular to know about the accuracy of that wastage characterization.)
Never heard of him. I heard of Jobs, like, several hundred times.
I think it's a generational thing. When I mentioned it to my parents, they knew instantly what I was asking about and even knew the details of the Mantle thing. (Neither one is a pro sports fan, and their main familiarity is with football, not baseball.)
Oh, so he is a US baseball player. We get more iPods over here than we do baseball. That explains it. Worldwide relevance.
:s/be/be perceived as/
Good point, but I think your markup is broken.
EDIT: Never mind!
Seems to be working as I intended it. Do you perhaps suggest a different form of ad hoc substitution syntax?
Okay, it clicked for me on second reading. I would have used:
but your way works too.
That works too. Bold or italic? Hmm... I may try bold next time. It stands out more as an insertion while italic may be better for 'emphasis added' situations.