
The Fight - relation
http://dcurt.is/the-fight
======
ForrestN
This, as any would be, is certainly a valid way to respond to a brush with
death. But implying that this is somehow a lesson to be learned by everyone,
suggesting that others should live their life this way, seems misguided to me
in context.

Contemplating your mortality shouldn't necessarily convince you to double down
on your current priorities (especially if those priorities are centered around
banal platitudes like "doing something remarkable with your life," which are
probably masks to keep you from thinking about what really motivates you.) It
should cause you to reevaluate them.

The fact that you will die, the fact that everyone you know will die, and the
fact that eventually the universe might become a field of equidistant
neutrinos means that it really, really doesn't matter what you accomplish. All
roads, if you stay on them long enough, lead to the same place. There will be
no progress. There will be no one remarking.

I would say that the lesson to be learned from thinking about death is just
that there's no reason to adhere to anyone else's values, or to feel pressure
to do anything in particular. You should do what you want, what makes you
happy, even if it's humble.

Existential steps backward can be a tool to remove yourself from things that
aren't really helpful, like for example a hyper-competitive capitalist rat-
race justified by language like "fight the status quo" or "great visions of
the future" that, instead of contributing to humanity, is mostly really about
love, insecurity, and fear of death (like so many human pursuits).

"Fighting" here, the battle between the heroic pursuit of accomplishment on
the one hand and the "insidious machine called quo" on the other, is just the
author reporting his own conflicts about what he wants to do. Part of him
wants to expend massive amounts of energy attempting to out-compete the people
he sees as his peers. But another part of him doesn't want to do that, which
is why he loses motivation and doesn't always end up behaving the way a hero-
CEO might. There is not some kind of evil, inherent inertia at work that all
people must fight against. Instead, there is only ambivalence and subconscious
motives.

In my opinion, if you really internalize death and it's implications, the
notion that you can justify prescribing ways of thinking or behaving just
starts to look absurd.

~~~
xianshou
The crux of your argument is the claim that, if the universe becomes a field
of equidistant neutrinos, no action or thought in the meantime matters. The
implicit assumption behind this view is that events only matter to the extent
that they leave a legacy. In particular, it asserts that things only have
ultimate meaning if they extend to temporal infinity. I believe that how one
reacts to Curtis's post, and to your statement, depends on the following
question: to what extent can something temporary and finite have meaning?

Imagine this scenario:

A man stands on the shore, miles from any other human presence. He is
desolate, alone. For the past twenty years of his life, he has worked
ceaselessly on a critical open question in mathematics, the solution to which
would make it feasible for humans to travel across galaxies. Educated at the
best institutions, mentored by the greatest geniuses of his day, and
encouraged by his incredible past successes in the field, he had begun to work
on the problem with as great of fanfare as can exist within an academic
community. Gradually, as he had toiled without progress, his reputation had
faded and he had become increasingly reclusive. Eventually, divorced and
estranged from his family, he had pruned away every aspect of his life outside
of this one question. The man walks slowly back and forth, wracking his brain
for what had gone wrong in all his previous approaches, what key had escaped
him.

In a blazing flash of insight, he understands. The wrong turns, the twisted
equations and garden-path lemmas, the towering perplexity of twenty years -
gone. He understands. It is true; it is real. With the mere publication of one
proof, even the sketch of the dazzlingly unlikely intuition, humanity will
dance across the stars within a century.

In the next moment, a titanic wave engulfs the coast, obliterating him in one
painless moment.

Does his epiphany matter? This is the limit of your supposition: a moment of
supreme realization and an achievement that only a few among billions could
hope for, lasting as short a time as could matter to a human being. What you
think of meaning in human life depends on what you answer to that question. If
you believe that his epiphany does matter, you also believe in the meaning of
temporary things - of what leaves an impression, but not a legacy.

In this case, the "fight against inertia" does matter, but only as the genuine
pursuit of a deeply felt aim, rather than lust for meaning swaddled in the
language of social contribution. To use the language of "Drive," people feel
most fulfilled when they have autonomy, mastery, and purpose; less
pedantically, we are only happy in the deeper sense when using our abilities
to their fullest extent. Chasing your visions and striving for achievement
matter as a consequence not of the goal, but of advancing towards it. It is
important to know that your goal matters to others, and that you have the
means to achieve it, but it does not register on the scale of personal meaning
whether it is ever achieved. Only the motion, the overcoming of inertia,
differentiates between personal meaning and lack thereof. Mathematically,
although everyone's life begins and ends at zero, that fact in no way
diminishes the value of the integral in between.

Happiness, success, passion and meaning are four qualities that attract some
of the most contentious attention from both HN readers and young people in
general. I would argue that they share a common quality: they are only
achievable at the highest level as byproducts of action, not goals in and of
themselves. Pursuing them directly drives them away; if the young Mark
Zuckerberg had been in it for the money, he would have gone to Microsoft, and
if the young Steve Jobs had made it his goal to find meaning, he would have
stayed on perpetual pilgrimage in India instead of starting Apple. The victory
of ambivalence and subconcious motives comes from mistaking the yearning
towards these things for the path that leads to them.

Internalizing death, if you believe in the meaning of temporary things, does
justify certain ways of thinking and behaving. It means knowing that you will,
relatively soon, be rendered forever passive and motionless. In the meantime,
you may as well move.

~~~
ForrestN
My point isn't that everything is meaningless necessarily. I would say that
the more one thinks about death the harder it is to make _arguments for
meaningfulness._ I wouldn't make an argument for meaninglessness, I would just
say that you can't really extrapolate a positive value system from the fact
that life is short.

It feels like you're arguing in favor of narrowing our vantage as a way to
preserve meaningfulness, which is totally valid to me. But it's basically
using a belief (the meaning of temporary things as you put it) as comfort. My
point, as was pointed out below, is that you may as well move but you also may
as well stay still.

As an aside, it seems strange that Jobs is the illustrative example here, as
if it's primitive that we should all want to be Him. Given the option to gain
a problematic and presumably painful personal life and what I understand was a
totally unnecessary early death along with creating apple and "changing" an
arbitrarily tiny subset of human history, that seems like a very easy thing to
decline. I take his decision to avoid treatment to reflect profound pain that
I would love to avoid.

~~~
thewisedude
I concur with most of your arguments, I do concur with you that there seems to
be over importance given to Job's personal-life than it should. But, your last
paragraph about Job's life seems to be out of line with your philosophy. You
are claiming that Job's death was unnecessary. Unnecessary in whose terms? Is
the purpose of life living the longest possible life? Here, by saying that his
death was unnecessary or untimely, you are implying there is a time for a
person of his stature to die. Now, its no more about making decisions that
make you happy or not worrying about the shortness of life, or the lack of
meaningfulness of life, but rather you are now preaching how somebody should
live their life(or make certain decisions) just like the author or the article
is trying to do.

P.S- I do think Steve Jobs contributed greatly to his field and I admire him &
his products. The arguments made above are purely for discourse

~~~
ForrestN
I guess I was making the observation personally that my priorities are very
out of sync with wishing for Jobs' life. I don't think anyone else should have
the same priorities as I do. I'm terrified of dying and would like to life as
long as I can. I would also feel badly if I knew I died earlier than necessary
for psychological reasons.

------
jgrahamc
Some time ago I came across an elderly man in some difficulty lying in the
street in London. While waiting for an ambulance he 'died' (no heart beat, no
respiration, no signs of life at all, blue lips and gums) and I immediately
did CPR on him until the ambulance arrived. Months later I learnt that he
survived.

Any brush with death makes you seriously think about your own mortality. I
know that watching this stranger's eyes go dead was quite life changing for
me.

~~~
JshWright
This is a field where a surprising amount of progress is being made. People
still tend to assume that CPR is mostly a token effort so bystanders feel like
they're doing something. In reality, high quality CPR + rapid access to an AED
can give just about any heart a fighting chance at beating again (assuming the
underlying problem is transient or easily treatable... if your LAD cardiac
artery is 100% occluded and half your heart has died, there's no coming back
from that...). Techniques like 'hands only CPR' are dramatically increasing
the willingness of bystanders to get involved and do something productive.

The area where really exciting progress is being made is in improving the
rates of survival to discharge from the hospital. Techniques like the
therapeutic hypothermia mentioned in the article are rapidly gaining
acceptance. ACLS (Advanced Cardiac Life Support, the standard of care for
acute cardiac emergencies, including cardiac arrest) now suggests that
providers should 'consider' therapeutic hypothermia whenever a return of
spontaneous circulation (ROSC) is achieved (I know 'should consider' doesn't
sound all that exciting, but the American Heart Association is an
(understandably) conservative organization, and doesn't make broad based
recommendations without a fair amount of data to base them on).

I could ramble on about this for a long time, there's a lot of exciting
research being done (continuous compressions, continuous EtCO2 monitoring for
evaluating compression efficacy and alerting when ROSC has occurred, even
really controversial stuff like withholding Epinephrine (a large scale study
from Japan has shown that while Epi increases the odds of achieving ROSC, it
may _decrease_ the odds of survival to discharge)). This is a topic near and
dear to my heart. I volunteer with my local ambulance service, and I'm very
close to my New York State Paramedic certification (just need to take the
exam). Calls like the ones described in the comments here are exactly why I
love doing this... The overlap between my work in EMS and my day job
(development) is bigger than you might think... Debugging is debugging... the
stakes are just a lot higher.

~~~
nvarsj
No offense to your passion, but I thought that CPR can be quite dangerous and
ineffective. Don't many doctors wear DNR tags because of this?

The wikipedia article [1] has some information on this. The survival rate is
something like 4% even though immediate recovery is around 40% (they survive
long enough to get to the hospital, where they die due to the underlying
condition). Meanwhile, the person has to suffer with the pain of broken ribs
or other damage from the CPR attempt.

1\.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiopulmonary_resuscitation#E...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiopulmonary_resuscitation#Effectiveness)

~~~
FireBeyond
As a paramedic, the "DNR" thing is part "folklore", part reality, but not for
the reasons you cite.

If CPR is ineffective, the result is death. Dangerous? Not particularly.

Most people wearing DNR tags (aside: even a DNR tattoo on the chest is not
considered legally binding against "heroic measures", unless signed by a
physician) do so to provide some measure of what the patient might want (due
to life expectancy, illness, etc).

Survival rate to discharge is HIGHLY dependant on many, many variables - I
mention elsewhere that in certain parts of the country, due to concerted
education and well managed/funded EMS systems, survival rates can approach 50%
to discharge. You are right, though, successful CPR isn't going to negate the
underlying cardiac condition.

If CPR buys a patient a year to five years, the pain of broken ribs is
probably fairly minor in the grand scheme of things.

There are, as mentioned, a whole host of advances. My home EMS system does
some fairly deep analysis of all CPR attempts and works to revise protocols,
including what drugs to administer, through to 'continuing compression through
defib shock' (studies done on medical students showing it to be a viable
possibility).

Ultimately, education is the key - the ability to get skilled compressions
more quickly on the chest, continuing to perfuse the brain and other organs
has a huge impact in survivability, as well as damage done.

------
huhtenberg
It's all good, but if you haven't had a close relative or a close friend die
or come close to it, then no amount of preaching - Live now! Fight the
momentum! Live it to the fullest! - is going to do any good. You have to
_experience_ it, unfortunately there's no other way.

My dad died suddenly two years ago. Just like that - here he is, poof, here he
is not. I tried to capture the feelings in a written form and then have people
relate. It does not work. It is a sort of experience that no one will re-live
willingly. It's just too damn dark.

~~~
rickdale
Going on 10 years, similar experience. People don't understand how much
suddenness of the death affects you. What I have come to realize is that there
is no right way to deal with people dealing with death. And that everyone will
deal with death differently. I remember at my dad's funeral stuff the number
one line I heard from people was, "if you ever need anything..." I didn't know
what that meant then, or now. But its a good line.

As a side note, I was in AP comp sci at the time with only 4 other students.
Our teacher was an ex marine computer programming since the punch card days
and really strict and emotionless. My indian friend that was in the class with
me said that it was so sad and quiet in class the next day that they could
hear the teachers heartbeat. I'll never forget that line.

~~~
groby_b
That line means "if you need somebody, I'm here". It's there to let you know
that while you have to go through this by yourself, you are not alone.

But yes, words are insufficient. Even if the other person speaking them has
gone through the same pain.

------
tomhoward
It's a great post, but to me there's another message that Dustin -
understandably - hasn't focused on: "perfect health" is often (usually?) an
illusion.

Given what I've learned about health in recent years, I can't accept that this
guy really was in _perfect_ health; if he was, he wouldn't have suffered a
major cardiac arrest while simply jogging on a treadmill.

I think it's mostly a failure of modern medicine and modern attitudes towards
health that most of us walk around feeling and looking like we're in "perfect"
health, only to find all too late that a severe condition was lurking
undetected.

The answers may lie in fields like Quantified Self [1], or PG's suggestion of
Ongoing diagnosis [2].

But whatever the case, we're only just starting to scratch the surface of an
area that I think this post demonstrates is hugely important.

[1] <http://quantifiedself.com/>

[2] <http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html>

~~~
ryanwaggoner
_I can't accept that this guy really was in perfect health; if he was, he
wouldn't have suffered a major cardiac arrest while simply jogging on a
treadmill._

That may or may not be the case. I suspect that the vast majority of cases of
sudden cardiac arrest are attributable to risk factors, but probably not all.
Our bodies are pretty incredible, but not perfect. Sometimes they just
malfunction.

~~~
graeme
Do you have any evidence for that? Cardiac arrest is a pretty major
malfunction.

I'll grant that there may be a _few_ cases of spontaneous malfunction among
people with systems functioning optimally.

But I'd wager that given the knowledge someone had cardiac arrest, the odds of
something being wrong with their system are higher than 99.999%.

Specifically, I'd be interested in cases of spontaneous cardiac arrest among
hunter gatherers or other groups that largely avoid the 'diseases of
civilization'.

~~~
carbocation
See my parallel comment. Aside from a possible genetic defect, it's quite
possible that this person is healthy by all normally measured features. In the
general case, a hunter gatherer lifestyle would likely have triggered this
sooner, if anything.

~~~
graeme
A genetic defect, if not impacted by lifestyle, would do the trick. However,
'normally measured features' may not fully capture cardiac health.

I'd still like to see studies of cardiac arrest among hunter gatherers, or as
another poster commented, primates. Lots of genetic problems can be impacted
by lifestyle (epigenetics).

I don't know about about the condition you posted to say how lifestyle affects
gene expression in that case.

Assuming the disease isn't strongly affected by gene expression, my statistics
are likely off then. Wikipedia listed the condition as having a .2-.5%
prevalence.

------
pdx
For those of you who haven't had a CPR refresher in a few years, they now
heavily promote the use of AED's [Automated external defibrillator]. The
prognosis for recovery after CPR alone is in the single digits and moves well,
well into the double digits if supplemented with an AED.

Gyms, schools, and works areas should all have a $1000.00 AED onsite. I was
surprised that he had to wait for the ambulance to arrive before being
defibrillated, since he was in a gym.

~~~
grannyg00se
What are the legalities involved here? If you attempt to help are you opening
yourself up to potential blame and legal action? What about DNR wishes the
person may or may not have, or religious beliefs?

~~~
pdx
Nobody wants to live in a world where people find a dying person laying on the
floor and let him die because they're afraid of legal issues. The law protects
you from such nonsense.

Even if it didn't, in my opinion, no person worth a damn would allow that
consideration to color their response.

~~~
Jare
A few months ago there was an incident in China where a young girl was run
over by a truck while crossing a street. Nobody stepped in to help, precisely
because they were afraid of the legal consequences. The entire thing was
recorded on video, and it got a lot of exposure. It was horrific, the kind of
thing one wishes you had never seen or heard about.

On the other hand, and thankfully this was a much minor event, my wife once
got a traffic ticket for moving her car a few meters past a red light in order
to make room for an ambulance. Something like that is enough to make you think
twice.

~~~
apawloski
Can't speak about China, but most states in the US have laws to protect people
with the proper training from legal exposure (for example if you're giving
proper CPR and break a patient's ribs).
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law#United_State...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law#United_States)

------
bpatrianakos
Just over a year ago my favorite uncle died suddenly in a freak car accident.
Besides his immediate family, my mother and I were the very first ones to make
it to the hospital where he was DOA. They took us in to see him one last time
before he was sent to the morgue or wherever they take the bodies of those who
die in the hospital. Everyone says great things about people who are recently
deceased but I must stress that he was an extraordinary man. Really. And I
thought that long before he died. Seeing his lifeless body there was shocking.
What got to me the most was seeing the lifeless expression on his face. He was
a man who was always smiling and more full of life than anyone I've met. The
contrast between the live man I knew and the heap of dead flesh I saw will
stay with me forever.

From that day on I have thought about death at least once a day since and
always remind myself that every fear I have and every psychological block that
keeps me from being who I want to be and doing what makes me happy is an
illusion. It's not real and it can't hurt me. But it also reminds me that my
hopes and dreams are meaningless too. But if I'm going to be alive I might as
well live happy regardless, right?

Unfortunately, the problem is that knowing this has not changed my behavior.
There's this weird mental barrier between knowing you have a short life and
need to really live it and actually doing it. And so despite knowing this
truth and coming to realize it in such a traumatic way, I still don't live it
nearly as often as I should. I suspect many people are like that. I don't know
why that is but I hope someday we can figure out how to go from knowing how we
need to live to really doing it in a real way.

------
alexkus
Those in the UK (or soccer fans in general) will be more aware of this due to
incidents involving Marc-Vivien Foé who collapsed and died during a game, and
more recently Fabrice Muamba who survived a cardiac arrest (his heart had
stopped for over an hour but was receiving CPR[1] during this time).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc-Vivien_Fo%C3%A9>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Muamba>

After the Foé incident there was a lot of promotion of the Cardiac Risk in the
Young charity in the UK <http://www.c-r-y.org.uk/> who do ECG and
Echocardiogram screening for those between 14 and 35 for a donation to the
charity.

I got myself tested a couple of years in a row (until I turned 36!) as I was
doing a lot of long distance (>200 miles a day for multiple days) cycling and
my HRM showed me that I've got an atypical heart (resting heart rate down to
~40bpm at my fittest but I could regularly see >200bpm on my HRM whilst
playing 5-a-side and I could average ~185bpm for an hour without feeling
uncomfortable at all). A chat with the cardiologist after the scan(s) put any
fears at bay, whilst mildly unusual there's nothing fundamentally wrong with
my heart, if anything it's just a little smaller than average (hence the high
HRmax).

Thoroughly recommended and you won't be wasting their time as you'll be
helping support the charity by donating.

1\. From, among other medical staff, a consultant cardiologist who just
happened to be at the game, the same cardiologist later treated him throughout
his stay at hospital.

------
edanm
This really reminds me of Paul Graham's post from a while ago, talking about
things people in the future will think are weird about our time.

One of the things that struck a chord with me from pg's post: In the future,
people will get regular health checkups to prevent problems _before they
happen_. I don't know about this particular case, but it makes a lot of sense
to me that many people who seem to be in perfect health, might not be. Today,
the extent of checking up on yourself is mostly taking a blood sample, talking
to a doctor, etc. And it's not done that often, either.

In pg's future world, people would check themselves out several times a year
(maybe more), with machines that catch many of the most basic problems. In
fact, I'd wager that one of the most promising avenues for advancing humanity
is to develop better, more affordable tests to check for common problems that
we can cure with some foresight.

------
swilson7
In my final year of university, I worked on a project to build a device that
induces therapeutic hypothermia. Following graduation, 3 friends and I decided
that there was enough need for this device to pursue the venture full time. We
won a few business plan competitions, received funding through a small
incubator, and set out to improve the outcomes of cardiac arrest patients.

Two months in to full time work, the four of us were walking back to the
office from from lunch when one of my colleagues collapsed of a sudden cardiac
arrest. Similar to Dustin's friend, mine was immediately treated with
bystander CPR and first responders were on the scene within 5 minutes.
Unfortunately however, my friend was not as lucky as Dustin's. He is no longer
with us today and it's devastating to think that his life was taken at the age
of 24 by a cardiac arrest.

As someone who has been extremely close to this topic for the past year, I
can't stress enough the importance of basic understanding. People who seem to
be "very healthy" can still be impacted by cardiac arrest. A sudden cardiac
arrest is not the same as a heart attack. Bystander CPR and the use of
automatic external defibrillators can have a significant impact.

"SCA kills more Americans than lung cancer, breast cancer and HIV/AIDS
combined." [1] So please spend some time understanding the risk factors that
contribute to cardiac arrest, take a CPR course, and educate those around you.
I really believe that a single individual can have a significant impact in a
situation such as this.

[1][http://wwwp.medtronic.com/Newsroom/LinkedItemDetails.do?item...](http://wwwp.medtronic.com/Newsroom/LinkedItemDetails.do?itemId=1347640295807&itemType=fact_sheet&lang=en_US)

------
rdl
All reasonably-sized gyms should have Automatic External Defibrillators
(AEDs). CPR on its own is not incredibly useful on its own (although it does
buy you time for paramedics to arrive).

They're only about $1k, which is about 25% of one of the treadmills. I'm
surprised it's not mandated by law.

------
shocks
A very close friend was in a car accident that put him in a category 3 (GCS)
coma for two weeks. Worst two weeks of my life... Until my girlfriend was
electrocuted and hospitalised for two weeks barely able to move her body.
Worst two weeks of my life... Until I lost a close friend overnight. Bam.
Gone. Forever.

Life is meant to be lived. Unfortunately, that is a lesson you can only learn
by yourself.

~~~
JshWright
Despite the name, comas aren't generally categorized by GCS. If they were,
most of us would be walking around in a "Category 15" coma all day...

------
phren0logy
It's only trite because it needs to be repeated so often.

~~~
vitalique
Yes and no. This is a very personal, very delicate subject, almost impossible
to be expressed in or understood from a single random post at a random blog.
Sadly, constant repetition of this particular appeal usually leads to cheap,
bleak, even personally and socially irresponsible substitutions like YOLO
movement that have very little in common with the level of awareness and
appreciation of being alive that OP has acquired (and lost, and acquired
again).

~~~
unimpressive
>even personally and socially irresponsible substitutions like YOLO movement
that have very little in common with the level of awareness and appreciation
of being alive that OP has acquired (and lost, and acquired again).

I'm pretty sure YOLO is a joke. At least I've never heard anyone say it
without at least a hint of facetiousness in their voice.

------
barbs
I know the person he's talking about in this article, he's an old friend of
mine from primary school, he's only a little bit younger than me. It was a
shock to everyone. He was incredibly fit, in the prime of his life and
everything.

I'm on the other side of the world from him now, but it was still a bit of a
wake-up call. Inspired me to go travelling, something I'd been putting off for
ages.

------
dakrisht
Fantastic. Great start to the week. Everyone go out there and fucking kill it
this week.

------
FireBeyond
As a tangential aside, reading the opening paragraph of this article reminded
me - in the US, if you have cardiac arrest, you want to have it either the
counties surrounding The Mayo Clinic in Minnesota or Puget Sound:

While cities like Detroit, Chicago and New York have less than 10%, down to 2%
survival for /witnessed/, VF/VT (ventricular fibrillation / tachycardia, the
rhythms an AED can shock) arrest (i.e. the "best" cardiac event to have),
Rochester Minnesota, and the three counties of King, Pierce and Thurston
(Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia) have above 40 to nearly 50% survival.

Learn CPR.

\-- a paramedic

------
galapago
The romans used to say.. "memento mori".

------
notlisted
Heart attacks in young people (under 35) are rarely related to smoking or high
cholesterol (unless accompanied by morbid obesitas) and more often undiagnosed
heart or congenital issues (hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, et al.), related to
drug abuse (cocaine, weight loss drugs) and/or eating disorders (bulimia).

Memento mori, carpe diem, but know that your chances of being struck with
heart attacks at a young age are very slim. If it runs in your family, get a
screening, but other than that, don't worry too much.

------
noonespecial
My grandfather is 96, he's been on dialysis for nearly 2 years now. He has
zero kidney function and a tumor that has literally taken the place of one of
the kidneys. His mind is sharp and he's totally lucid.

He won't let us sell his cars. He believes that he's going to get better. He
talks about it all the time. "As soon as I get better, we'll..."

It doesn't matter if one lives 20 years or until the heat death of the
universe, everyone has the same experience. Death is unexpected and unwelcome.
And completely inevitable.

~~~
delinquentme
> Death is unexpected and unwelcome. And completely inevitable.

DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

~~~
noonespecial
As for death at 20, I'm with you, but as for the latter example, I'm open to
suggestions on ways to prevent the heat death of the universe. I'm not
entirely sure there's anything I can do about that.

------
dmor
It's not trite. Especially when things aren't working, and it would be so safe
and warm and simply to stop wanting to do extraordinary things and sink back
into momentum, inertia, the rhythm of everything that has ever been or will
be. Not that I wish any of you to have a huge loss, or near loss, but once you
do it is galvanizing - if you let it reach you at the core. As others on this
thread have said, memento mori.

------
warrentr
Im curious to know the suspected cause. Since he was young, it seems like it
was <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertrophic_cardiomyopathy>

~~~
JshWright
There are plenty of other cardiac abnormalities that can cause sudden cardiac
death. Wolff-Parkinson-White (and other conduction pathway disorders),
prolonged Q-T syndrome, etc...

------
nate
An interesting bit about Steve Jobs (from the biography) was that he had a
foreboding feeling that he'd die early. That also seemed to encourage him to
work against the status quo before it was too late.

------
siscia
It was an amazing article, really, it get a tear out of me.

Thank you for sharing so much.

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anigbrowl
Fighting is a waste of energy. Find your flow and go with it.

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greghinch
And depending on which country he lived in, this whole episode either cost
nothing or has saddled him with crushing debt for the rest of his life

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simplegeek
Why do people get heart attacks in such a young age? Is it life style,
something in genes or etc? Are there things one can do to reduce risks?

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aswath87
Inspired by Steve Jobs' quote mentioned in the article, I built this thing
that reminds us about how much time we really have: www.lifing.it

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sown
I never really understood what those words meant, "Live life fullest, live
like its your last day, etc"

Can anyone tell me what that really means?

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melc
I agree, i believe we should not forget death to help us fight the ordinary
vain reality. Thanks for sharing this.

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charlieflowers
"I had once again become a cog in the insidious machine called quo." That is a
masterful turn of a phrase!

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philwelch
Memento mori.

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peterhajas
You know what's really classy? A giant kudos button at the bottom of this
page. Awful.

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marshallp
He's given the typical FOOLISH response people give after brushes with the
death plague - live life to the fullest.

How about instead thinking of ways to fix the problem. That can also be
considered - living life to fullest - and also fixing the problem.

In his case, he could have considered how can cardiac arrest be better dealt
with. Have drones nearby that automatically go towards the patient and revive
them. What's involved in that, collecting the data, manufacturing drones etc.
etc.

The entire world is focused with having the latest shiny bullshit from the
mall/walmart. Go there and see the masses of consumerist idiots picking up
plastic crap and clothes like monkeys. How about they instead spend that time
crafting a pitch for a new invention that solves a death-related problem on
kickstarter. There are 7 billion people, probably only a few thousand of them
are working towards actually worthwhile things.

Living life to the full doesn't have to mean buying or building crap to
fulfill child-like urges to see shiny things, it can instead be using the "god
given" brain to tackle the most important challenges, of which survival is
number 1. Animals probably look at humans and think what retards, they
themselves spend all their time trying to survive.

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ahoyhere
This is the most sincere and human thing you've ever written, Dustin. Bravo.

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bashzor
I can not +1 this enough

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adrianwaj
"Running at the gym" ..so many people do it, but wouldn't the energy be put to
better use building something? Running barefoot outside would be my choice..
getting grounded and Vitamin D. Gym running is a weird sensation, and
unnatural: it's more a striding exercise. Gyms can also be very dirty. But
good that he recovered, he should try and work out the how and why so it
doesn't happen again.

