It's morally repugnant to blame someone for their own death from cancer like this. People do it all the time with Steve Jobs as if it's okay because he could be a jerk at times.
It's absolutely not a fact that his cancer could have been cured. That is wildly incorrect. It's more than likely he would have died in any case.
Yes, of course his odds would have been improved had he treated it as early as possible but each cancer is extremely specific and no one in the world knows if he could have survived it.
Dealing with a diagnoses like pancreatic cancer, and taking a few months to gather the courage for surgery is a very human reaction and not atypical.
It's not blaming him to mention that an immediate surgery would have vastly increased his chances of survival.
And it wasn't a lack of courage it was a misguided belief that he knew more than his doctors.
I'm also not blaming my beloved grandfather either when I mention that smoking likely killed him in the end and he knew that years before.
Jobs was a very smart guy with all the means to improve his situation but decided against it. For me it's a lesson to consider where my closely held beliefs could be wrong.
He waited 9 months to listen to his doctors -- or anyone -- by all accounts instead trying to cure it with diets and spiritual fads.
Genentech CEO (and PhD in Biochemistry) Art Levinson: he "pleaded every day" with Jobs and found it "enormously frustrating that [he] just couldn't connect with him"
Andy Grove: "Steve talked to me when he was trying to cure himself by eating horseshit and horseshit roots, and I told him he was crazy"
--
Marc Andreessen: "Steve Jobs was 'one of the most disagreeable people in the history of humankind,' and that was part of his genius."
He was an obstinate man who thought he knew better than everyone else. Sometimes he did. This time he didn't.
Steve Jobs's entire job for thirty years was recruiting, listening, and working with experts in various fields. He never would have succeeded without being able to accept that other people knew more than him in certain areas. He worked with doctors very successfully most of the time.
My take is that he was scared and acting out of fear. Hoping against hope that his bullshit alternatives would work because he was so terrified of having his body "opened" and "violated" by a major surgery. Maybe that fear sometimes masqueraded as arrogance but that's still just fear.
Like many others, you seem excited to be able to judge Steve Jobs on this point. To judge and laugh at him for his arrogance killing him. When in reality you're judging and laughing at a pancreatic cancer patient for procrastinating on their surgery out of fear.
Steve Jobs found success by doing just the opposite: not accepting the status quo / accepted wisdom and disrupting it.
In this way Elon Musk is very similar. That gets you EVs where none existed and it gets you crappy self driving by eschewing LIDAR for cameras only. It gets you rockets that land themselves and it gets a flat concrete launchpad obliterated by the first Starship launch as others warned.
If you'd said merely "I think it was fear, more than arrogance" that could have been an interesting discussion, but instead you've been making it strangely personal throughout.
Frankly I dont care enough about Jobs to be "excited" or "laugh" or whatever accusations you are throwing around the thread -- they reflect more on you than on me.
You're the one judging a cancer patient's response to their diagnoses. I'm the one pointing out how wrong that is. So yes, it's about you personally and your actions. Not just you of course.
We are all flawed. I think Steve Jobs was less flawed than most of his critics. Maybe less flawed than myself. The difference is we know everything he did wrong in his entirely life because it's so well documented.
I don't know why you feel the need to white-knight the man, and I find it especially rich that you somehow think that he's "probably less flawed than his critics" whom you know nothing about, but statistically probably don't park in handicap spots, rip off business partners, or abandon their children during their formative years (his denialism about the paternity test seems to resemble that of the surgery).
I said his personality--the one that led him to rip off Wozniak along with his other actions (positive and negative)--likely led him to die [earlier]. But in your view the true moral failing was not in these acts which actually harmed other people, but in merely making an observation about how the man's personality likely ended up harming himself too.
It's not "morally repugnant" to tell the truth; that charge is what's morally repugnant.
From ChatGPT:
"it’s widely believed by medical experts that Steve Jobs might have had a better chance of survival if he had pursued standard medical treatment sooner.
Jobs was diagnosed in 2003 with a rare type of pancreatic cancer — a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor (pNET) — which typically grows much more slowly than the common and far more lethal pancreatic adenocarcinoma. When caught early, pNETs can often be treated successfully with surgery and other conventional therapies.
Instead, Jobs initially delayed surgery for about nine months while trying alternative diets and other non-standard approaches. By the time he agreed to surgery in 2004, the disease had progressed, and although he lived for several more years, the delay may have reduced his overall odds."
"He said he had a curable cancer and he should have taken the treatment."
He never uttered this sentence. You're making it up (lying).
Supposedly, he did say "I didn't want my body to be opened...I didn't want to be violated in that way,"
Which shows a man struggling to come to terms with his diagnoses, desperate for alternatives, and eventually gathering the courage to undergo a major surgical operation.
>It's morally repugnant to blame someone for their own death from cancer like this.
No, it's rude and weird to chastise someone for rightfully advocating treatment. He didn't state that he didn't want to risk the horrors of treatment with the end result being the same -- he spread disinformation. It is good he died, because when others repeat his disinformation, we can point back at his death as evidence against his beliefs.
You weigh the feelings of a dead billionaire higher than the lives of young people with hopes and dreams.
It's very obvious that people, seeming you as well, take some delight in the idea that Steve Jobs killed himself with arrogance.
That is morally repugnant. He was a pancreatic cancer patient coping with his diagnoses the best he could manage. The fact that he was a "billionaire" has nothing to do with it. He was a human and all sentient life is sacred in my view.
You also do not actually know the facts of the case. He did not spread disinformation to anyone. He was intensely private during this entire period and very little information is known for a fact.
But by all means enjoy your mocking, judging, and condemnation of cancer patients. I'll continue to find it morally repugnant.
In the spirit of assuming good faith on HN, I'd like to critique a particular line of thought you keep repeating, that is continually met with hostility.
You continue to generalize criticism of Jobs as an attack on cancer patients as a whole, despite people citing specific behaviors and actions unique to jobs.
I can't interpret this as anything but emotionally manipulative sophistry that reads to the viewer as you shielding Jobs behind a vulnerable group, and that isn't ever going to be received well.
If there's another way to read this in light of the facts, I'd appreciate an explanation.
For what it's worth, my interpretation of their line of reasoning is a touch different: that judging any cancer patient for their response and reaction (even Jobs) isn't right.
That could have been an interesting position to discuss were it not infused with so much judgment (ironic) for the commenters--making it personal and putting everyone on the defensive.
Because I think the fundamental disagreement is whether anyone considers themselves to be "judging someone [Jobs] for their reaction/choices in the face of cancer." I can see that point, but as you say, I disagree that's what is happening.
I might counter with, "does having cancer make a person immune to criticism? If not, then where is that line?" Indeed I think the other issue is treating criticism as equivalent to judgment (something maladaptive but all too common).
But I think you have the general idea: the tricky part (as you allude to) is that people are making criticisms/observations about Jobs (as a whole) and the story of his cancer is, well, part of his story too.
This thread was borne of the story of Steves Woz and Jobs. One takeaway was Woz was "naive", Jobs was shrewd, Jobs took advantage of Woz: don't be like Woz and get taken advantage of. What I was pointing out was, well that may be so, but who was better off in the end? Often one's strengths and one's weaknesses are two sides of the same coin (like with Musk).
Steve's friends pleaded with him and said what he was doing was bullshit. Were they morally repugnant too?
There's a lot more to fairly criticize about this. Mostly the system that allows it but also him for taking advantage of it.
And yet it's basic human instinct to do what's possible to survive. I admit that I would have done the same and I wouldn't believe most people who would claim otherwise.
So which personality worked out better in the end?
(Rhetorical question, not a disagreement with anyone)