Two AI Pioneers. Two Bizarre Suicides. What Really Happened?

Beat me to the k5 connection. But Mindpixel consistently demonstrated an inability to translate his claims into anything remotely resembling reasonable thought. There's a now-lost-forever post in which he claims to have predicted a terrorist attack. http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2006/8/21/121745/650?pid=12... certainly sums up the silliness.

...and an even thinner line between scammer and AI guru. At least in web startups your popularity will decide whether you are doing something worthwhile or not. In academia, promises that "it will work tomorrow, I swear!" has historically worked very well while providing few results.

Why not quote them without a frame at length?

I really liked the linking used, it's nice to get quotes to put things in perspective but this took you into the story and gave you all these other documents and sites to explore. It was all kind of creepy really, I felt like a voyeur almost.. excellent article.

Because when you're smart enough to realize you're not quite smart enough, it's crushingly depressing.

I don't know. However, here's some hypotheses, some combination of which may be most of the reason:

Even if depression and suicide attempts aren't more common, very smart people may be enough more competent that they succeed more often. Most attempts at suicide don't actually result in death.

It could be that the easy wins in building a smarter brain happen to lead to a genetic predisposition to depression.

It could be that smarter people are more easily able to internalize that there's no ultimate point to life, and less able to just have faith.

You can see from their traits:

1) Super smart

2) Actively thinking every single day

3) Thinking how to solve hard problems

4) Too involved/focused with the area field they are in

When people called that RMS is nuts, sometime I wonder, is he really that nuts? He's fighting for a better world of software. But at the same time, he doesn't fight over super-hard-algorithm. RMS is still in touch with humans albeit he's fighting/arguing with them CEOs/PRs.

The rate of suicide is high among Grad/PhD students because they have to "think outside the box" every single day. They have to find a "breakthrough".

Sometime, "thinking outside the box" means to break all the logics and common sense around you. When you start bending logics, there's a good chance the situation will change the way you perceive things. You began to accept your "new logic" (as in this case, human is just like a program, disease equals to bug).

Maybe it's because smarter people tend to be less average. Less conventional. Less traditional.

Deviating from tradition is the only way to get amazing new gains. But the majority of deviations are mistakes and make things go wrong.

And when untraditional things go wrong, there is less support available to help deal with it.

The more intelligent you are, the more alien you are to a society designed and run by average (if not dumb) people.

As the above comments show, smart people tend to take things more seriously. Not that that's a bad thing, but I think it explains the extremes in the views of smart people.

Of course, I've just moved the question up a level here...

Who cares? It all seems so pointless

Another question, has it always been this way? I remember reading somewhere that our levels of depression and suicide are a historical anomaly. What is different between now and then?

i place my bets on existential depression

from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_giftedness#Depress... "A number of people have noted a higher incidence of existential depression [in the gifted], which is depression due to highly abstract concerns such as the finality of death, the ultimate unimportance of individual people, and the meaning (or lack thereof) of life."

they recognize the irrelevance of everything. it's not uncommon for all types of people to have these sorts of thoughts, but the very abstractive abilities of the gifted mean these are more than just thoughts to them. these issues are as clear, concrete, and tangible as a brick wall is to mere normal humans

compounding things is the fact that these gifted people hold nature in the highest regard, and see it as the only arbiter of truth. they can't escape the irrelevance of everything, because that's just how nature is

it's a painful QED

We may be confusing cause and effect here. It's their insanity (actually inferiority complexes) that makes them take over infinitely hard problems when one gets all or nothing - more often the latter.

This also reminds of Dangerous Knowledge (can't find it on Google Video anymore)

Material for anyone who wonders about this:

Jonathan Haight's research on conservative and liberal values:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2007/haidt

Kazimierz Dabrowski's theory of over-excitability and positive disintegration.

http://www.stephanietolan.com/dabrowskis.htm

http://members.shaw.ca/positivedisintegration/

Durkhiem's ideas about anomie:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie

> Does anyone know why?

Most of the gifted individuals suffer from existential depression. More here: http://web.archive.org/web/20061020235245/http://www.giftedb...

Because ignorance is bliss.

Excess bias on the analytical, thinking, and "doing" sides of a human life purges out the practical, hands-on, "not-doing" side that's deeply rooted to nature and connects you to reality. You need to spend time in the nature doing nothing to realize where you come from and that you're not in hurry to anywhere and to balance, you also need to exercise your brain and thinking to break the limits of what you can, thus redefining yourself as you go by life.

Why do so many people rag on that movie? Are they expecting it to be some kind of epic manifesto of open source culture, and then getting let down? It's just entertainment with a few extra morsels for hackers. When you look at it that way, it's easily in the top 20% of what comes out of Hollywood.

My Emacs doctor cares:

> I am the psychotherapist. Please, describe your problems. Each time you are finished talking, type RET twice.

  I want to commit suicide.

> If you are really suicidal, you might want to contact the Samaritans via E-mail: jo@samaritans.org or, at your option, anonymous E-mail: samaritans@anon.twwells.com . Or find a Befrienders crisis center at http://www.befrienders.org/ . I would appreciate it if you would continue.