When I was 15 I had to move high school after the death of my mother. I started to socialise at school and joined the investment club. It was a tough time for me and I desperately wanted to make friends and fit in. I wasn’t really into investing but a young man by the name of Chris Seaton was building their website and I loved computers so I wanted to help. Chris taught me how to program, first HTML websites, then PHP based apps, then C# and VBA native apps. Im pretty sure Chris invented the password manager before it was a thing too.
I spent the next few years at high school and sixth form trying to sit near Chris in lessons and talking to him on MSN Messenger and ICQ incessantly about programming, he taught me a lot and set me on a path to choosing computer science as my degree, I just copied him to be honest.
As a teenager, Chris (or Kit as some of his family knew him) wrote a computer programme, in his bedroom in Chandlers Ford, he called Password Safe. RIP Kit
So sorry for the loss you must be feeling. I met and talked to Chris just once, after a talk he gave in London, and found him utterly delightful as well as lucid on all things technical. Blessings and comfort to all who knew and loved him.
About 10 years ago he started a project with Ruby running on Graal before it was known as TruffleRuby. I still remember those HN submissions. SubstrateVM, Graal, The VM to rule it all. And as far as I am aware, he was the only one putting all papers about Ruby and Compilers Design in a single place [1].
I still remember a thread which I have bookmarked somewhere, where you have the lead of JVM, Graal, TruffleRuby, JSC, V8 and Spidermonkey along with another compiler expert arguing ( or in a heated debate ) about Dynamic languages. And when ever you have compiler related submission on HN, you will see him contribute his expertise on the subject.
He has been a valuable member of the Ruby and HN Community. I once joked "I am a simple man, I see Chris Seaton, I Upvote :)." I still remember I felt honoured when he followed me on Twitter.
As a fellow Rubyist and HN reader I know what you mean! There was always something mindblowing from Chris in the thread, usually multiple things. There's a big hole in my heart today.
My god this is awful. He was brilliant, accomplished, and kind. A few days ago he announced his 'permanent rest' (https://twitter.com/ChrisGSeaton/status/1599108759183577088). I'd thought it meant from the Ruby community and that the replies asking if he needed help were reading too much into the wording.
Like many mental illnesses, depression interferes with your perceptions. It's not that that love "wasn't enough", it's that a person deep in depression can't even accurately see or feel that love.
Yeah and it is especially hard for high achievers to ask for help or even consider that they should ask for help. I think its completely foreign to them.
Sorry, not trying to be a jerk, but unless there is actual comparative evidence, I don't think one can just assert that high achievers struggle in getting help any more than others.
It should be common knowledge by now, as the problem has been documented for decades and discussed here many times.[1][2][3][4]
As far as an actual citation: "Studies from Kjølseth et al. (2009), and our own findings (Szücs et al., 2020), suggest that older adults who die by suicide or have late-onset (mostly high-medical lethality) suicide attempts are often high-functioning throughout most of their life, and characterized as controlling, rigid, high-achievers, also high on orderliness (a conscientiousness subcomponent)."[5]
i wish some of these super smart people weren't so afraid of the harmless 'woo' that costs next to nothing, like read some old 70s book on primal scream into a pillow or try a radical keto meat diet or weird mental re-framings from people who are total quacks
The internet is full of 60 plus years of this stuff since the 60s, books and lectures and diy reprogramming you can find for free.
random 'outdated' books where 80 percent is fluff i've stumbled on one page of a random client story that just cut through time and space to reach me at that moment. I can't even remember the book title but I still remember the page layout, reading a paragraph at 2am and started bawling after feeling numb all year.
I've pieced together little bits of insight this way and each feel like growth and knowing some secret unconscious part of myself better. You never know what will crack the ice and get thru to you.
like who cares about evidence when that has gotten you nowhere in matters of the mind?
Hell, you can build a life going from placebo insight to insight if that's what it takes to keep on, why would that even be different than the lives on 'normal' people chasing hollow consumer goods?
it's still a life of trying things out to better know yourself and your world, which is plenty meaningful
I think maybe 5% of the time it isn't about love but the other 95% it is. A lot of people really are missing love.
The Netflix Series 13 Reasons Why seems pretty unrealistic except maybe it represents some unusual cases. In that series there are clearly people who cared about her but she was missing the caring of certain people (and I don't fault people for feeling bad because one particular person or a few doesn't like them). A lot of people don't have much loving attention at all though.
Yeah. The guy had what appears to be a pretty great life. Looking through twitter, there's photos of him with his kids and wife.
I just can't comprehend how someone can arrive at the decision to commit suicide, especially when you have a wife and children, and to then tweet about it. The human mind is an odd thing.
What's always resonated with me is David Foster Wallace's description, thinking of it as a decision is not the right way to look at it.
"The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling."
Trust me, been there tried to do that (June 1977 — I woke up several days later intubated/on a ventilator in the ICU). It's completely logical when you're profoundly depressed. If you haven't been there then you "just can't comprehend..."
I'm glad you made it through that experience, and hope that things have improved considerably since then.
I've never been seriously suicidal, but I did have a period of bad depression/OCD where I experienced what I later learned is called "derealization", where I felt cut off from everything in life and as though I was viewing the world through frosted glass. Once I received help and left that state, I was struck by how much it felt that everything I cared about was already gone. I can only imagine there's a similar feeling when people die by suicide.
When I had refractory major depression it felt like a terminal illness. I often hoped I'd get hit by a car or someone would kill me in a mugging. When you're depressed, people also often treat you like you have leprosy. However, now I struggle to empathize with others who are going through the same thing.
Thankfully I found medication and life changes that worked, especially moving to a sunny climate. I also recommend sobriety, it stops a vicious cycle with depression and dependence.
When I've been in that place, other people's kindness can feel like evidence that I'm hurting them -- that I'm drawing energy from them, that I'm a hole in the world that needs to be repaired but can't, that kind of thing. (That isn't to say that such displays of appreciation and love can't also be helpful and welcomed.)
Indeed. The human mind is wildly talented at lying to us in sometimes sinister ways.
It's hard to imagine if you haven't been there, but in the moment you are seriously thinking about it, your mind can truly convince you that your family/spouse/kids/friends/work/church/etc will all be better off without you, even though that is virtually never true. Don't trust your mind when it tells you things like that.
It's not a choice. It's not seen as a choice. The Choice is not between life-and-death but between suffering and ending your suffering. This is how the suicidal mind thinks. When suffering becomes greater than any other emotion it It's like a pressure that has to be relieved
"The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling."
The problem with this analogy is that it, in life, any problem representing fire is going to change. Aside from terminal illness. Wallace didn’t have the perspective to see that.
I would have to agree with you, from personal experience. About 5 years ago I believe I might have overdosed by mixing OTC medication by accident, it was a combination of neurotropics and other focus medicine or at least after reflecting on the whole ordeal I believe this to be the case. I’ve never been one to consider suicide, never understood how someone could take their own life but at that specific moment in my life I felt that I was literally losing my mind and at any moment could go crazy and I would rather kill myself than to go crazy. So to touch on what you said, even a person that would never, ever do that under any circumstances within a sound mind can absolutely do it if the pain or suffering is so severe that killing one’s self is the only way one can save one’s self from what they’re going through.
I learned through that experience that the mind can be so fragile. My situation was induced from over the counter medicine. My heart goes out to individuals that have to deal with something like this due to mental disease… it really is something that affects everyone one way or another.
My friend who suffers from depression said it was basically being in emotional pain all the time. She said she has thought a few times that ending her life would stop the pain. It's a horrible form of mental illness. It's pervasive and while she has a grip on it now, it's something she struggles with often.
I also have a friend who committed suicide a few years ago. He had 2 kids but as his other friends described, he had his demons since he was a kid. I wish I could have helped him more.
This bit really chimed with my brief contacts with Chris
> As a college dropout, I’ve always felt underqualified. Embarrassment about my lack of knowledge and credentials has driven me to study hard on my own time. But Chris never once made me feel out of place. Any time I had questions, without judgement, he would take the time to explain things to me.
I never once felt like he looked down on people who knew less than him, he just saw it as an opportunity to share what he knew with them.
In an industry that can sometimes be dominated by arrogant certainty, or people trying to demonstrate their brilliance, he was a breath of fresh air.
I met Chris at a couple of local Ruby meetups in Bristol when he gave talks. He was an extremely smart, but also very personable guy. He seemed to really love what he was doing and relished the opportunity to explain it to people and share what he knew. He had a knack for explaining things really well in a way that never patronised when talking to people who were not experts in his domain. He had a real love of communicating what he knew to other people and his passion for his projects was infectious and inspiring.
He was younger than me (mid 30s?), but managed to pack an immense amount into that time. He was one of those people I've met who I've immediately thought "I need to be more like that". Genuinely inspirational. His death is a real loss to the community.
I wish the best for his family and friends over the next few months. This will be a tough holiday season for them.
You never know what is going on in someone's life and no clue what was going on in his but I think working in tech is harder than people recognize / give credit (and may not have any bearing on Chris, I am not trying to speculate).
Please talk to someone if you are feeling hopeless.
U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 800-273-TALK (8255)
Having been on the other end of it... the reality is harsh. People say they want to know, but in fact... they mostly don't. The reality of it is hard to deal with. It can go on and on.
People have a lot of misconceptions, sometimes for good reasons (it makes life easier to endure). It's a lot like the pushback on #metoo or #blacklivesmatter or <almost anything linked to traumatic experience>. They want to make it your fault because then its not something they have to think about.
I think depression is mostly orthogonal to where you work, although stress may make it worse.
This was definitely my experience. It takes so long and so much effort to get out of a deep depression that it strains everyone around you.
If anyone's gone through or is going through something similar, I highly recommend "The Noonday Demon." It captures much of the subjective experience of someone going through a depression, and how weird and frustrating the experience can be for everyone involved.
https://www.amazon.com/Noonday-Demon-Atlas-Depression/dp/150...
I agree with this. Someone reaching out because they have a problem or need someone to talk to is perfectly welcomed. Someone who does so daily becomes a big f'ing drag on your life, pardon the expression.
My father did that to us kids after divorce, and our relationship has never been the same.
(For those curious, he didn't hurt himself, just became an angry, sad, drunk yearslong drag on us all).
I'd have preferred he not leave drunken angry voicemails every time I didn't answer the phone, and sought professional help. Which he did, eventually, but after 2 years of verbal abuse and telling us we were dead to him.
As someone who's been through depression and has an estranged son (for reasons that were never even articulated)... being angry doesn't help. Their choices may be no more free than our own.
Depressed people often do a lot of things they later regret. Doesn't mean they could have done it any other way, just that would prefer to not have done it.
> Sometimes the universe gives us tough choices.
Yeah, like accepting when an asshole reaches out or letting him kill himself. I don't think it is wrong to try to reach out when you are too mentally unstable to be nice to people, in fact that is probably the time when you should reach out the most because you are very likely to kill yourself then because that anger can easily turn inwards. But there really are no perfect ways to handle that, the best solution is to never get that bad to begin with but when you are there you can't really get out of it without burning something.
If you are struggling with self-worth, please read very carefully the posts of people who actually knew Chris Seaton. People value him by how much of himself and his time he was willing to give to others, not by some absolute measure of his skill. This is a capacity everyone has.
In fact, you probably have touched someone (if unknowingly) in a similar manner.
People who decide to go, very very often leave behind a heart shattered to pieces - unknowingly.
In the US, dialing 988 will also get you access to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. (Technically it is now the 988 Lifeline, but they both refer to the same thing[1].)
Chris often challenged me on discussions about UK politics. It is always important to hear different viewpoints, and I will miss that.
He lived within an hours drive from here. Which somehow makes it worse. This is not exactly Silicon Valley and people of his caliber are not everywhere to talk to.
He was pretty high up in the Army Reserve as well as his day job. It is humbling how much some people fit into a short life. My thoughts to his family and colleagues
I worked with him on TruffleRuby for almost six years, and knew him for a few years before that. I think every one who knew him is shocked and saddened by this news.
I'm sorry for your loss then. We followed each other on Twitter and I tried to plug the TruffleRuby and Graal work wherever I could as I really believed it is the future of Ruby. Beyond that what a brilliant writer. This single article helped me understand so much more about a language I've cherished for nearly two decades: https://chrisseaton.com/truffleruby/deoptimizing/
Desperately sad news. I never met him, he never met Me, but https://chrisseaton.com/army/ made a real impression on me. It’s the kind of thing that sits in your head and pops up from time to time. I found the level of dedication here alongside his professional success incredibly inspiring. Tragically, part of that article is about his young daughter.
This part had something about it that stuck out in light of the news (first just a bit, but then it kept going):
"My fantastic job with Shopify meets my physiological and safety needs, and the job is rewarding and intellectually stimulating (not many people get to work on their PhD work for so long with a team they’ve built around them and I’m very grateful.) But then what? What are you doing to feel alive and to know that you matter? How do you fit into something enduring and bigger than yourself? The Army challenges me every week, and those challenges better me and make me happier. I know that people are depending on me, and that if I don’t turn up and lead my Squadron then nobody’s going to do that for me."
Indeed, he seemed to have all the things that generally is believed to combat that trend towards darkness.
However, I recall my absolute lowest and the first time I entertained the thought to end it, the 'it' was specifically what it felt like to be in my body. It wasn't a matter of self-worth, it was to stop pain. The strongest reason I could come up with to wait for it to pass was the pain it would cause my mother.
Like you his article about the army reserve made an impression on me. I myself am a serving officer in the Canadian Army reserve and I reached out to him to connect. He was generous with his time and we were chatting about work, life, and army stuff this year. He offered help in finding me a role within Shopify and most recently he congratulated me on finishing my junior officer training.
Chris was not just a great technologist but also an officer and a gentleman. Rest in peace, Sir.
I saw this tweet and I was wondering about the language used there like "permanent rest" but was thinking he was going to delete his Twitter account. Will miss seeing his comments on HN and his contributions. RIP, Chris.
I saw this tweet just randomly in the AI timeline and brushed it off as him just being busy/done/taking a break from open source ruby work.. maybe moving on to something else or just picking a different hobby. Quite a shock to see this today
everybody did. it's horrifying now, but people as smart as Chris that are going to do it, are going to do it. They know that tipping the hand too early will result in forced prevention (something we as a society have messed up about but that's a separate post). He worded it that way on purpose. In my opinion as a kindness so he could say goodbye rather than just disappearing without a sound.
This cuts deep. Chris had a big impact on my current life trajectory, one that is still playing out -- which is why I was holding off on reaching out with an update. Now I'll never get that chance.
Chris seemed to be _everywhere_ and was always generous with his time, even to complete newbies like myself. He certainly set the standard, as one would expect from an Army officer. I'm not exactly sure what his experiences were like in active duty, but we lose way too many vets to mental health issues. If you know a veteran, consider checking in -- this time of year is particularly tough.
I hate when they say "passed away" -- here was a man in his prime, just the other week sharing knowledge of compilers at a conference, taken from the world.
Chris helped me frequently on the GraalVM slack, and it was nice to see his face in the comments of many of the threads here on HN that had to do with compilers and compiler optimizations. I will miss him.
I saw the headline, read all the words, saw "Chris Seaton" and thought "oh this is about one of our guys!" before properly processing the final bit. God damn what a fucking shame, I hate this. RIP chrisseaton
It's not implausible that many of us who work with Ruby owe our livelihoods to Chris, and his relentless efforts to progress the language and not just keep it relevant, but thriving. He will be missed so much by the community.
If you have a lower baseline of happiness, please do yourself a favour and read Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus.
It starts with:
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest— whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories—comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer.
Absurdism is a great way to live life and understand that nothing is worth killing yourself for.
As a teenage, Chris (or Kit as some in his family knew him) made pocket-money from a programme he wrote in his bedroom in Chandlers Ford call password safe. RIP
Between the childhood information and username, it seems like you're related to Chris. Are you related? I appreciate the little detail. It seems he's always been ahead of his time.
Know that he's had a huge impact on the Ruby community and the world.
I knew him online for years, but met in person for the first time last week. He spoke fondly of his ongoing trip and spoke with passion about tech projects.
The lunch was at a taco truck. He ordered a meal made of fries covered with various taco toppings. I remember pickled red onions at the very top. He left before the group was finished saying he had to go pair with someone. I felt uplifted about the interaction. I even brought it up to my spouse and my visiting parents when I got back from the conf.
I can only guess how he was feeling at the time, he seemed busy but cheerful.
I wasn't privileged to know Chris personally, but I was always keenly waiting to hear his latest achievements and insights. He was clearly talented, passionate, and compassionate. It is so very sad to see him go.
Depression is a full blown pandemic. For example, in the US in 2021, there were approximately as many suicide attempts as there were COVID deaths. It is so fucked up and so pernicious.
We (rightfully) encourage folks to seek help, but the very nature of the illness makes it difficult for them. Let's all also do our best to recognize the signs of folks struggling so that we can be there for them - to help them recover when it's so hard for them to even reach out for help.
I find the statistics surrounding death to be quite sobering. I was at an annual event with 1000 other people and for whatever reason got to wondering if everyone would return the next year. Being a nerd, some calculations occurred and it turned out that would be pretty much impossible as at least a few attendees would die (of any cause) before then. It's rather stoic but makes me appreciate things a little more.
The Ruby community has lost some fantastic people. Chris, Jason Seifer, Steven Bristol, Jim Weirich, James Golick, and Ezra Zygmuntowicz all come to mind. RIP.
Losing Ezra hit me pretty hard. He was a founder at Engine Yard, and I was a customer for many years. He landed me as a customer because he came out and met me, and without any sort of discussion about business or anything, he just dove into helping architect a solution. I was sold immediately.
Years later I worked closely with him on helping him get his 3D printer company off the ground. Sadly though, he died right in the middle of a very challenging time for him and his company.
The Ruby community has certainly lost a lot of people like Chris and Jim (yet another selfless giant) and Ezra.
The only consolation I can think of is how many more selfless people are in the Ruby community still. And not just the Ruby community, but so many communities just like it.
It never hurts to reach out to people, even if you think they won't respond. If you appreciate someone, tell them. It doesn't need to be over the top praise (unless it is over-the-top-praise-worthy).
It can be simple. For example, I just sent this to someone who I was thinking about just now: "<name>, thank you for taking the time to patiently respond to comments in the PR I submitted. You helped clear up some confusion that I wasn't even aware I'd introduced when describing <the implementation of a complicated thing>. You freed up at least a few hours of my day, which I'm really grateful for."
The Ruby community also seems to attract a lot of fantastic people. I'm not a part of it and never have been but from the outside looking in it looks like one of the most welcoming eco-systems out there.
You're not wrong, but I also think there are fantastic people in most communities oriented around creative, technical projects. I've just been getting into Python as wow, there are certainly some hyper productive interesting individuals there! HN too, of course ;-)
One thing Rubyists were particularly good at, though, was rapidly adopting new methods of sharing ideas, such as screencasting, git, blogging, Twitter, etc. so a lot of Ruby and Rails ideas spread more quickly than they might have from other communities. Currently the Rust and ML communities seem to have this sort of edge.
What strikes in particular about the Ruby community is - in order - a lack of being judgmental (also with respect to other eco-systems) as well as being very welcoming to beginners. That combined with the showing-by-doing attitude has my respect, this is something that should be a standard to live up to.
I feel Chris was a very intelligent human, who conveyed complex information, in a human-digestable manner, that many others of us struggle with.
I saw him present in Manchester at our ruby meetup, and later online.
We interacted a little about jobs at Shopify. But there didn't seem to be a part-time option for me. Something I need due to some health issues of my own.
I wonder if we as a group of ruby loving people, and the wider tech industry, can learn from this? I don't know.
It seems no matter what was said, the outcome would have been the same? I guess we'll never know. It's likely that those who worked with him, and were trusted, will perhaps say more intime. I hope they do not feel bad in any way. But perhaps there's aspects his family and close colleagues will be able to share intime, when things are less hurtful so we can learn a little from how to help others in this situation?
Big hugs to those close to Chris. And big respect to those writing amazing blogs in his memory.
There's no particular guarantee that this will stick around either as Github/MS changes policies down the line. Some guaranteed long-term archive like archive.org would be better.
Right. I don't know if that GitHub account will be around forever, but you can clone it now and build the site. If it came to it, we could host on another domain. I'm just suggesting that we don't need to worry about archive.org getting every last bit of content.
Years ago when I was around 14, I stumbled upon Chris's Katahdin project and thought it was such a cool idea I had to try it out. I spent quite a bit of time trying to get set up with it, and not knowing much about C# couldn't really figure it out myself. I ended up reaching out to Chris before giving up on it, not expecting much. To my surprise, Chris spent several hours helping me out and answering my (probably very dumb) questions. I was shocked at how helpful and welcoming he was. Despite the relatively brief encounter I can easily say Chris was one of the kindest programmers I've had the pleasure of interacting with.
It's hard for me to express how much this title hit me when I read it. Like many in this thread, Chris had an enormous impact on my path as a programmer and I'm quite sad that I never got the chance to properly thank him. RIP, Chris
I just opened my first issue two weeks ago in concurrent-ruby and he kindly offered me help. In the end I feel like I have wasted his time, because it was a different problem. I wish I expressed more gratitude. I'm grateful for everyone in the Ruby and OpenSource community
> In the end I feel like I have wasted his time, because it was a different problem
Every issue is an investigation. It's normal for the breakage to be in some place non-obvious. Don't beat yourself up over it or let it hold you back from opening issues in the future. If you can provide a good reproduction you'll speed up the time to get to "oh here's the bug" or "not my problem" which is really helpful to maintainers.
> I wish I expressed more gratitude. I'm grateful for everyone in the Ruby and OpenSource community
There's never enough in hind site. Let's all pay it forward a little more
A few days ago chris responded to a silly comment of mine on here (completely unrelated to ruby or compilers), and when I saw it I thought, "oh, it's Chris Seaton! I hope he's doing well!"
Chris was also well known in the London Java Community and contributed to multiple events, conferences, bringing his expertise in a thoughtful and kind way to folks who were often 1-2 stacks above the runtimes and compilers space .
My conversations with him about JVM design, GraalVM and Ruby were some of the most memorable and fun times I’ve had running around the conference circuit.
Thank you Chris for unselfishly sharing so much with us and leaving the world a better place, you will be missed.
I only met him once, fairly briefly, and exchanged a few messages about our shared interest in compilers. But he seemed like a nice guy, and it's incredibly sad to see this.
Seeing some of the comments here how people valued him, it seems like maybe sometimes these sentiments of gratitude are not expressed until after someone passes. It works if folks cherish the time they have, and remind people of how they appreciate them while they're still on Earth in their body.
I had lunch with him on Wednesday and wish I said more.
I also worry about the hidden pressures of praise. A overly critical inner life can interpret it as “I like you as long as you are useful” which is of course not the truth.
I have appreciation for the creators in my life, even when they no longer create.
>I like you as long as you are useful” which is of course not the truth.
I think that's the problem with depression disease: no matter what most people tell you, your brain will find a way to use it to dig the hole deeper.
My wife has battled with minor depression and anxiety her whole life. I learned that more than trying to say things to cheer her up in the moment, i was more useful by looking for treatment.
This is a point that is often missed in the conversation about depression. In the middle of a major depression, literally nothing you can say to the person will cheer them up. The best you can do is be near them, express love, and try to help them maintain sleep/eating/exercise and therapy.
no matter what most people tell you, your
brain will find a way to use it to dig the
hole deeper.
"I've got them fooled. I'm a fraud, they just don't know it."
"They're just being nice."
"This good person's kind words and actions are wasted on a piece of crap like me. If I wasn't around, they could 'spend' that kindness on somebody who actually deserves it. I'm hurting the world just by being here."
"They're lying, and now I feel worse because they're lying"
"I hurt so bad inside, and it hurts so bad to wear this mask and graciously accept the praise"
"I hurt so bad inside that I wasn't able to accept the praise graciously, and now I actually feel even worse because I've been so rude to this nice person who praised me"
Yeah. It's a struggle.
Even when you logically know those things are false and it's "just the depression talking" it's very hard to break out of those thought patterns.
(Which is why practicing positivity and gratitude -- keeping a gratitude journal, etc -- is actually an effective part of treatment for me. I'm not sure if it's because of specific neuronal pathways being reinforced by specific repeated thought patterns or what but, from a practical perspective, I try to treat positivity like a muscle that I need to exercise)
> A overly critical inner life can interpret it as “I like you as long as you are useful”
That's me after most praise: "you say you like me because the stuff I can do will help you, or because you have some unstated aim to take advantage of me, or because you don't know that it could have been so much better". I don't know when, but at some point any expectation of honesty in praise just went out of the window. Because of that, obviously, I also don't praise people as much as I should, because I expect they would react like I do - with obvious repercussions on social interactions.
I find some of the best advice for adults is found in advice for handling small children (I've got two kids).
The new research/trend is to try to praise behavior rather than outcomes (or in addition). The other bit is to focus on their actions instead of it's impact on you. For example "I'm proud that you won that baseball game" places the focus on me and on the outcome of winning. Versus "I saw you really focused out there in the outfield, I know getting distracted between bats is easy and you've come along way."
It's a very new way of speaking for me, but the more I practice it the more natural it comes. My family aims to "catch someone in praise" a few times a day. We also celebrate celebration. I.e. if I say something nice about someone, then they turn around and say "you get a point for giving a point."
This is really insightful and I'm going to try and do more of this!
Versus "I saw you really focused out there
in the outfield, I know getting distracted
between bats is easy and you've come a
long way."
A wise mentor told me a variation on this a long time ago. He mentioned that one of the most powerful things you can do is simply let somebody know that you recognize what they're doing or how they're struggling.
example: "I see you working on those reports! There are a million of them coming in every day, and you're cranking them all out yourself."
You don't even necessarily need to praise them, per se. (Although honest praise is of course very cool) Just the act of letting them know, and noticing is super powerful.
Agreed. For many, myself included, receiving praise for an outcome gets internalized as setting that outcome as the minimum bar. It applies more pressure. For some, they hear that the outcome is valuable and punish themselves psychologically for not achieving it sooner. For some, it's even more complicated than that.
A few years ago, I was managing the most impactful engineer I've ever been around (and I've seen a lot great engineers in my 30+ year career that included stints at several startups including my own, going through a a pretty big IPO, working at a FAANG as it came to dominate it's area, etc.). It was her first job and the team was stacked with high performers. We were directly responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenue. Three weeks into her career, everybody on the team was going to her when they couldn't figure things out. Just a phenomenal mind with a capacity for dealing with technical complexity and finding business value that I would have previously thought impossible. Of course that led to a lot of praise from me and everyone else. Every time I praised her for an outcome, she withdrew further, eventually getting to the point that she wouldn't say anything in one-on-ones other than short answers to direct questions. A few months in, the CEO (without telling any of us beforehand) used a slide from one of her design review presentations to inspire the company with the kinds of technical->business wins we were now achieving as a company - it devastated her, making her want to change careers. A month later, she tried to reject a significant salary increase.
Nine months in, she made (and corrected) a minor technical mistake. I mentioned it to her in our next one-on-one. As I did, she leaned forward and her eyes got big. She peppered me with questions until she understood my perspective on it from every angle. The more I spoke about it, the more she perked up. After seeing this response, I decided to try to find deeper "criticisms" to bring up with her. She was so good that it was HARD to find anything at all. Eventually I thought of what level she'd be at in ten years and framed things as "here are skills you have that you're not fully exploiting to be as impactful as you could be." It instantly turned our interactions inside out. She went from zero trust in me as her manager to complete trust in me as a life mentor in ~30 minutes.
Later I asked her why that worked and she said it was one of the few times in her life that she thought someone understood her faults and still valued her. It's just what you're saying about letting people know you see them and what they're doing, not just the outcomes they are a part of and how it affects you. I'm lucky to have learned so much about engineering, management, and life from my interactions with her.
One of my heroes, Fred Rogers, was very good at this 50+ years ago, saying things like "I like you just the way you are."
She absolutely is a force of nature. But she has a giant heart and is passionate about the entire team sharing in each others' successes and everyone being respected. The result is that the people around her feel like they are doing the best work of their career because they are a true team. People came away with a better understanding of what they are capable of, and not feeling small at all.
I'm retired now. I delayed my plans around retirement until she moved on. One of the few things that would pull me out of retirement would be the chance to be led by her on a team doing work I feel passionate about.
You are not alone. I think it goes all the way back to high school or middle school for me. Its when you realize the gold star stickers were behavior manipulation or something and then see it everywhere.
If he indeed committed suicide out of depression, I would imagine that maybe he realized after years of relative successes that nothing, no achievement, no appreciation/gratitude by others, will cure his depression. At least that wouldn’t be an uncommon pattern for high-intellect people with severe depression.
This is very common actually. Phil Stutz (a famous psychiatrist) calls it the Snapshot. Basically the Snapshot is the misbelief that if we achieve certain things we will be happy. It's a form of wishful thinking. Instead you have to focus on and enjoy the journey because basic reality is pain, uncertainty and constant work.
There's a Netflix documentary on Stutz (called "Stutz") with Jonah Hill that is quite good although abbreviated on its coverage of "the tools".
As someone who suffers dysthymia and occasional major depression on top of it, I'll never stop being grateful that I figured this out early on in life.
When I was 11, I got my black belt in Tae Kwon Do. A couple years after that point I grew disillusioned with continuing to practice martial arts altogether because I realized that the achievement didn't make me happy. In some ways, it made my depression worse at the time and it just took me a few years to figure that out.
Music has consistently sustained me since then. It's both an endless journey of self improvement and an activity that's possible to purely enjoy in the moment. It takes so much of your brain at once to perform music that you literally cannot be stuck in your head with your own thoughts, instead you reach a state of mind where there is no ego whatsoever, just total flow-state focus and the experience of the present.
Music is pretty much my primary hobby at this point for the exact reason: it has a near-infinite skill ceiling, highly creative, improvisational, and it can be both a private and public pursuit. It is the ultimate grounding to the present moment, and it provides very good feedback when you start drifting out of it. It demands a very high degree of awareness and rewards you accordingly. Truly magical.
> maybe he realized after years of relative successes that nothing, no achievement, no appreciation/gratitude by others, will cure his depression.
The real kicker is that the cure for this is not free either.
I'd say the cure is to starve the broken part of yourself that needs achievement to justify itself. To do that, you must consciously break the cycle of over-achievement and focus on well-being as a higher value over achievement. This is a lot of work, as you're patching up the hole that achievement was trying to fill, and it is slow going.
Eventually you can have a better relationship with achievement, but there's a cost: you no longer see it the same way, and other people can sometimes detect that about you. You'd choose your own well-being over achievement most times. Because it broke you once, it is harder to have the same hunger for it you once did. And that's good: it means you learned and you changed. (Sometimes I think the fact we can make these big changes at all is a profound miracle.) But, people can see that as aloofness, detachment, or disengaged. It is none of those things. It is kept at arms length the same way a former alcoholic might deal with a drink: extremely cautiously and deliberately.
Seeing some of the comments in reply here from folks who find it hard to give or take gratitude, it seems a lot of people see what is being talked about as praise. But appreciation is distinct. Praise is: you are good or your skills is good. Appreciation/gratitude is: you really made a difference to me.
You can never go wrong just honestly and vulnerably saying, "I appreciate you because...", and telling someone how what they did really help you out, or let them know you appreciate them because they made a difference to you, you're just sharing how you feel sincerely. Whatever happens, you said what you could at the time.
As for accepting expressions of gratitude, people may have ulterior motives that you may correctly suspect, in which case...be happy, a frenemy has revealed themselves to you, and the fact that they see you as important enough to their interests to try to manipulate is its own form of compliment...or they may simply be imperfectly trying to express how much of a difference you made to them, like everybody else... Either way you can choose the meaning you take from it and find something to feel happy about or use.
It reflects poorly on your if you always suspect other people saying nice things to you, for one you have such a low opinion of others, and of your own impact, but also you miss many chances to find something good. For examples: someone may have been trying to connect with you, because they appreciate you, but by suspecting them, you pushed them away, and hurt them. May as well at least try to see the good and give a chance to it: you may be helping someone more than you know by doing so.
This is devastating. I worked with the same supervisor as Chris after he finished his phd. He interviewed me and played a key role in getting me the scholarship. I often joked that he raised the bar so high that it's not worth trying to meet it. I always admired his drive for learning and ability to do things at high quality.
RIP, Chris.
Damn, I hated this guy's HN comments but he seems to have been a fine person who people loved. I probably come off the same way to everyone else here, but the people around me love me.
Makes me wonder if this is a property of the interaction mechanism. Let me set an unacceptable maxprocrast and leave this place alone.
He basically announced his ‘permanent-rest’ via twitter. So sad but grounding for all of us to remember that there are things way more important past the marvelous inventions we can code or make.
For learning purposes, anyone knows what was his major cause of frustration?
Suicide is very personal, should be treated as an extremely complex issue that its uniqueness for each cannot be expressed in details correct enough to respect the regretted.
I know you just want to know if any major points could stand out to bring some understanding, and they are probably some, but it's important to treat it as a might be relavant, but always small, piece of a the vastness of one's mind can be.
I would have agreed fully with you for most of my life, but having now lost half a dozen friends to suicide, I think we're making a big mistake by not talking about it honestly and openly. Not only is it much harder for the friends/loved ones who are left in the dark about what happened, but it misses opportunities for learning and understanding. Most people who have never been ready to kill themselves have no idea what it's like, the hopelessness, the weariness, and worst of all the lies your mind tells you.
I do insist on being classy and respectful, particularly for the family members, but I wish as a society we would talk openly and honestly about these issues instead of high opacity implications.
> I do insist on being classy and respectful, particularly for the family members, but I wish as a society we would talk openly and honestly about these issues instead of high opacity implications.
Yes, I did not want to mean that the right way was silent mourning. I merely wanted to express that full understanding is not achievable, and that the truth is lost with the life, and lost forever. To me, everything said with this idea kept in mind is respectful, and from there talking works.
>Suicide is very personal, should be treated as an extremely complex issue that its uniqueness for each cannot be expressed in details correct enough to respect the regretted.
Can you elaborate on what you mean here? Are you saying that every suicide is unique and out of respect for the dead we should not try to understand it?
It's mostly about the relationship about the understanding than the understanding itself. You can try to understand, but not believe you understand, the deceased will never be there to correct you if you're wrong.
Frustration is just a word. It's maybe not the optimal word for it, but we understand what's meant: the situations on the inside and outside that made him consider such a choice.
Keep in mind many people on HN (incl. me) don't even speak English as a first language.
I do think it's interesting that it's so widely stigmatised (illegal even) though: like we've collectively decided life is meaningful and must be lived to the best of your ability, deciding there's nothing in it for you and you don't want to take part is not (with very niche old-age && ill-health exception) allowed.
Weird, when you step back and think about it isn't it? If you're agnostic/atheist at least.
I would speculate that the societal stigmatisation of suicide is a form of social "guard-rails" that might keep someone from stepping to far in the wrong direction during a moment of weakness.
It might be the last thing that saves them when they are not in their right mind and have lost all hope and perspective. In that moment anything that can be done to protect them should be done because there is always hope, even if you can't see it right now.
One of the things I often hear said about people who attempt suicide but fail by jumping is that they have a moment of clarity on the way down that their problems are not a big deal and are solvable except the current one of imminent death.
Not sure if this is true in all cases and what the outcome for these people is after time passes, do they still feel depressed or are things better for them.
But, if that is the general experience, then it makes sense for society to stigmatize the action.
I guess it's the same as with the death penalty: it's a decision that's very permanent and irrevocable. Someone may be convinced that "there's nothing in it for them" now, but are you really sure they would feel the same in a few months or a few years?
I suspect that is very seldom the case. Depression is cyclical. There are moments of joy and content. I think it speaks to a loss of hope in society at large.
There are moments of joy and content, but for myself I always personally know that hell is just over the hill. Doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy things. But I suppose there comes a time when some people just get too tired of it all. I also personally believe the act of taking your own life is utterly courageous… every cell in our body’s are designed to want to live. Pushing fast fear of the ultimate unknown is something else. And anyone out there who says crap like “the cowards way out” is an absolute pea brain in my eyes.
Being downvoted for these points is a clear (and uncomfortable for mentally healthy people to digest) example of why depressed people often feel it’s pointless to speak and be honest about their thoughts. Because they feel no one wants to hear them.
There is a fine line between being honest with your thoughts and indulging in unhelpful solutions as anything other than unhelpful. Life is not about living on the terms you choose. You inherit the terms under which you are to live. Rejecting those terms is indeed cowardly. Being able to adapt is what takes courage. (And I say this with full awareness of my own limitations as well.)
Calling someone a coward is insulting regardless. Let's not put that label on folks near the edge - you have no idea what they dealing with. It might bring you to your knees far earlier.
Absolutely 100%. We hear it all the time though. And imagine how hurtful it is for families and friends to hear that drivel about a loved one. Makes my blood boil.
It's not about putting a label on anyone. It's about making sure it doesn't inadvertently become a model for others. No counselor or friend is going to be there when they are alone and make the decision.
To some people simply living for some time requires more courage than any reasonable person would muster in a lifetime. Reprimanding them for not having even more courage seems a sad thing to say.
Proposing suicide as a solution. It is quite cowardly, because you are rejecting the terms life handed you. Courage is persisting through to finding a way of living on those terms.
In absolutely no way on earth did I propose suicide as a solution - what vile nonsense. Maybe read something properly before throwing a damaging allegation like that. Pfft.
I’m done commenting any more on this topic with you.
> There are moments of joy and content, but for myself I always personally know that hell is just over the hill.
Is the belief that "hell is just over the hill" rational? Or is it a self-fulfilling prophecy? Maybe that belief is in itself one of the major causes of that "hell"–and, despite thinking that you "know" that, not genuine knowledge at all, rather a harmful delusion
You can’t give a depressed person hope though. And even if you could box hope up, how would you make it last? At the end of the day, depression is a chemical imbalance and hope isn’t going realistically fix that - maybe that depression is a result of brain injury, like a nasty bump on the head that has permanently damaged the way the brain works… Depression is a long way off being solved.
Depression is a state with causes. Remove the things that make it persist and it will go. If you’re talking about a chemical imbalance that itself is abnormal and could only truly respond to treatment like drugs (e.g. like schizophrenia and lithium) then I agree, but most depressed people have “normal” brains that are in a currently unhealthy state, so I’ll avoid arguing exceptional cases.
I’m also not suggesting that hope cures depression, I’m suggesting that hope prevents suicide. Basically, why kill yourself if there is hope? Depressed people aren’t being rational but then neither are optimistic people, each with their own distortions of reality. However, they’re not delusional, you might call it a state of hyper-realisticness that actually distorts through the destruction of possible branches in reasoning. An optimist thinks “it’ll be sunny tomorrow“, a depressed person thinks “it won’t be sunny again, ever”. Neither requires reasoning for their position snd can easily dismiss any given, but it can be done. Reason with an optimist and you will deflate them and they will react badly, usually we avoid this because it has little upside. Reason with a
depressed person and they will also react badly but the upside is that it may sow the seeds of their remission.
Regardless of all their defences, distortions and dismissals, if they can be convinced there’s hope it will keep depression from being suicidal.
In fact, I think it is a very harmful myth. When people become falsely convinced that their depression is due to a "chemical imbalance", it encourages them to see their current mental state as something fixed and unchangeable – and then that false perspective helps to sustain and worsen their depression
Even that suggests that living life is some kind of 'default' or 'obviously correct' state, that anything else has to supply sufficient reason to deviate from. Why should that be so, really? Just because we are born into it?
To be pithy: why must death justify itself, but not life?
Well put. I often see people who are not depressed who use optimism towards depressed people, because optimism will cancel out an ephemeral despondency as it doesn’t really require evidence or reasoning beyond “it’ll get better”. Depression is too well bunkered in for something like that.
Optimism provides a useful safeguard against depression in the first place. It's called the optimism bias. If people think too realistically (or, perhaps it's better to say glumly because it may still not be realistic even if more realistic) without regular doses of optimism that realism may turn into longer periods of despondency, and we know where that leads.
As I recall, around 80% of people have the optimism bias. The rest are prone to depression.
Murdering your self is still murder. There are other victims besides the person committing it. The reason why it is a taboo subject is because it is contagious in a way. When the idea is broadcast at large, there is an increasing likelihood that people on the edge will follow through. Suicide should not be romanticized or indulged.
I wouldn't say I agree but can understand the point of view.
I think a lot of people would feel differently about someone who takes his own life because of a terminal illness such as cancer, where it's seen as a way to end up in the same place while avoiding a lot of pain and suffering. "Death with dignity." So why don't we feel the same way about someone with painful, debilitating depression? We don't really understand how to cure depression. We have some drugs that help some people, analagous to what narcotics do for people in physical pain. But we don't understand how to cure depression, as we don't understand how to cure cancer. Maybe someday we will, but what does that do for the people suffering today, who just want a way out?
This comment exemplifies a pattern of rather useless comments that I've seen a lot of online recently, that are analogous to "contradiction - stating the opposing case with little or no evidence" on the argument pyramid: when a commentator X states a thing, commentator Y states that that thing isn't true, with no supporting evidence, but more importantly no additional value or elaboration added - just saying "that's wrong" without explaining why, or saying what is actually the case.
For instance, here, value would be added by stating what are the actual causes of suicide - or even adding research that supports your point even if you don't want to talk about what the actual causes are.
Apologies if this is the wrong time to ask, but there probably won't ever be a better one. I didn't know him, but often read his comments here. I frequently found them to be... frustrating. He seemed to have a particularly literalist bent, and would often seem to focus on small seemingly irrelevant inconsistencies rather the bigger argument. He usually wasn't wrong, but it made me wonder whether he was autistic, or otherwise out there on the Asperger's spectrum. I'd been meaning to ask him, but never found the right opportunity.
For those of you who knew him in real life, did this carry over? Or was I misreading him, as is so easy to do online. I don't ask this flippantly. I lean in the literalist direction myself, and often am unduly frustrated by the imperfections and inconsistencies of the world. Life's not easy if your mind demands a world that makes sense. It makes me wonder if this outlook was part of what pushed him over the edge. Thoughts?
I will admit that when I put 2 and 2 together and realized who he was here (in my mind, for whatever reason, I've always read his username in my head as Chris Eaton, not Chris Seaton), I was conflicted. The image I built up from years of his commentary did not match the portrait painted today by people who knew him much better.
I think there's a lesson there. Comments are just that, comments. Try not to read too much into them, they are severely lacking in the necessary context. Assume good faith in the absence of something very explicit that suggests otherwise.
One of the HN rules, and one that I think would vastly improve on line discourse if others followed it. I have to go on FB from time to time (since that's where a community I follow is based) and it's horrifying how quickly and often things spiral out of control, when the protagonists are probably pretty OK people IRL.
Even if someone is being a jerk, responding in this way can often make them pull their head in.
Seems that the testimonials from others on here show that he was nothing but lovely, I don't think that making observations like that on a post like this is terribly appropriate though.
It is probably cultural. In some it is forbidden to talk behind people who died other than positively. In some, possible to say things like this. I guess.
If you’ve never been clinically depressed and suicidal I can understand how you feel that way. But depression is treatable, and suicidal thoughts are generally not rational nor “typical,” even for the person experiencing them. But they feel like ground truth at the moment. But with help that moment passes.
There are some that it never does, and I can see an argument there’s no point in letting them suffer forever. There are some that have rationally decided to end their life and they’re not feeling suicidal per se but are making a choice.
But the VAST majority of the time the suicidal intention passes, and their future self likely is glad if they got help.
Source: I’ve been depressed and suicidal. I am not now and I love life. But I remember clearly how differently I thought at that time.
My experiences as a person who has been suicidal, who has been close to suicidal people, and who has had friends who committed suicide all tell me that it's not as simple as "wanting to die". The same person can feel completely different about their continued viability as a living person within the same hour. The version of that person who wants to continue living is just as worthy of respect. And we can only reach out to and support the people who are still alive.
The most apt analogy (to my experience) is that in general, suicidal people don't want to die, but it's like they're trapped on the 20th story of a burning building and sometimes the fire seems to be under control but right now they're nearly overwhelmed with smoke and the heat is bearing down, and they're at a point where jumping seems like the best alternative.
And how relieved they could be if a fireman could put out the fire, or pluck them from that ledge to safety.
In the same analogy, there is still a time when jumping really is understandable; there are situations (Robin Williams comes to mind) when suicide really is a rational option.
It is a mental health issue, it is treatable, and it is preventable.
There is a lot of literature on the topic, and awareness is an important aspect to treating this mental health issue. I never got the sense people are shaming the person, or there is a lack of respect. Additionally, where "thoughts and prayers" will hardly provide any actual good (YMMV), a suicide hotline might be the saving element for someone who may also be suffering.
Had to finally make an account just to respond to a subsection of this comment.
>I wish people would stop treating suicide as a mental illness... like it’s somehow wrong and an intervention is needed.
>When someone wants to go, let them go.
There are circumstances where I would be inclined to agree, such as terminal illness. However, this generally doesn't match my understanding of mental health or suicide at all and might be exactly opposite. There is zero chance I would follow your guidance if someone came to me expressing suicidal thoughts and I really don't believe anyone should. I am not knowledgeable enough to defend that view so I hope someone with a deeper understanding of mental health can chime in.
You appear to be telling others to respect choices or beliefs, yet you don't seem to be respecting the choices or beliefs of others. Ironically, your comment also feels remarkably unempathetic to me.
> There’s not a single individual there who is all smiles and mentally balanced after taking those calls.
The same issue exists in the police, in front-line medical staff, and also psych services. I have gentle friends that seem to cope with some awful shit at their workplace, and obviously we all have to deal with it in our own lives. We unfortunately don't live in a world of ideal happiness (work or personal).
In New Zealand the suicide line is run mostly by volunteers, a selection bias for the caring and empathetic, so it is choice of the volunteers to help. Perhaps you are only considering the downsides, without balancing the ledger with the upsides?
Do you think that employing emotionally detached people would be an improvement?
I think you're wanting to honor him. I think there's a way to do that that also doesn't glamorize or encourage or increase the odds of future suicides. I found this post to be helpful:
>like it’s somehow wrong and an intervention is needed.
>When someone wants to go, let them go.
Strong disagree, especially in cases where they have family and loved ones. Children and grandchildren have a moral right to continue seeing and enjoying time with their parents and grandparents. Spouses have a moral right to continue enjoying life with their beloved best friend. Outside of family I would say there probably isn't a moral right, or at least a significantly diminished one, but suicide takes away the positive influence and presence that someone has on their friends and community.
The only part of your post that I do agree with is that we should stop euphemizing news about suicide. I had a friend from high school who committed suicide while serving in the army in Iraq, and the official press release from the military made no mention of his cause of death. He was in a non-combat role that wouldn't have put him in any danger of getting shot or blown up. It wasn't until a few years later when I ran into his sister that I found out the real reason (though I had my suspicions).
I spent the next few years at high school and sixth form trying to sit near Chris in lessons and talking to him on MSN Messenger and ICQ incessantly about programming, he taught me a lot and set me on a path to choosing computer science as my degree, I just copied him to be honest.
I’ll miss you Chris