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David_Gerard comments on Farewell Aaron Swartz (1986-2013) - Less Wrong Discussion
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I suspect from his writings undiagnosed (and untreated) bipolar - the descriptions of the depression, the tour de force creativity runs. I could be seeing this through bipolar-coloured glasses, of course - I don't have bipolar, but I have loved ones who do. It's scary shit, and frequently really hard to treat in any effective manner.
I think his self-ideal must have been, a person who solves problems, important problems that need solving. And that is why he didn't seek help. Perhaps he was used to solving problems by himself, perhaps he didn't even trust other people to solve them correctly. So he simply ignored or endured the depression and the physical illness when they occurred. And he managed to survive that lifestyle for his first ten years as a hacktivist, but eventually he ran up against something that he couldn't topple or dodge, so in the end he chose that solution which also offers final relief.
I would argue suicide is only weak evidence of mental illness. You may be overly primed to search for evidence of mental illness or usual features because of the suicide. I only point this out because I see the fundamental attribution error a lot when people talk of similar circumstances.
What makes you think that? "Twenty-seven studies comprising 3275 suicides were included, of which, 87.3% (SD 10.0%) had been diagnosed with a mental disorder prior to their death."
It seems I am too incompetent to make myself understood.
I would just like to register my preference that those who retract comments leave the original text in place. In most cases, I believe the retraction itself serves the purposes of retraction pretty well, whereas replacing the text is sort of overkill and detracts from the conversation.
I generally agree, but I can see the point of making an exception in cases such as disclosure of confidential information, potential basilisks, etc.
Agreed.
It's not that simple. Sometimes the illness is perfectly treatable, but in practice you're never able to get treatment before you die, unless one of the people you talk to goes far beyond the call of duty and drops their whole life to help you get treatment and magically divines how and when to help instead of behaving like a bull in a china shop and making everyone else terrified of mentioning depression.
Oh, for Pete's sake! I understand you were describing a view you don't share, I was just pointing out middles in the dichotomy.
Based on that, curing all forms of insanity would reduce suicide dramatically, by about an order of magnitude; but it's only about 3 bits of evidence, which you could argue is fairly weak evidence.
"the descriptions of the depression"
Ah he explicitly talked about having troubles, I thought you where speculating based on your divination of his writing in context of this discussion.
He didn't talk about how the tour de force creativity runs felt (as far as I've found so far), I'm taking his observable body of work as evidence of them. So looking at his body of work and seeing mania as well as depression is surmise on my part.