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I did not know him or his work, but this helped give some color: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=8UvpDEsAAAAJ&hl

Certainly a loss. RIP

Early in my PhD we used Galaxy, which was a very popular platform to do bioinformatics/computational biology research. It enabled biologists with some basic programming knowledge to conduct relatively complex analysis and share them with colleagues. Definitely a huge contribution to the field. He's also involved in one of the biggest genomics projects in the past two decade, ENCODE and pretty much everyone in the field used some of its data in their research.

Its just a number, but 34k citations is a lot of citations.

We don't know the cause of death yet. Due to the overwhelmed medical system in Baltimore we may never know.

It wasn't suicide. Does anyone on this thread (besides me) know James? People, think before you post. Somebody died.

It's a stressful time. We should make sure to care of one another.

What was the cod?

That was my first thought too. After thinking for a bit I decided that this sad news is meant to be about James, not about the cause of death. Leaving out the cause of death keeps our focus in the right place and I can respect that.

Leaving out the cause of death keeps you curious. It's clickbait not compassion.

Clickbait? Seriously? This is someone in a research institution publishing an obituary for a colleague they just lost. Do you really think that anybody involved in this cares how many clicks the page gets?

Many times the death is announced before an official cause of death has been published. The journalist can ask the family, but they may not receive a response in time for publication (or the family might decline to offer a cause of death).

In almost all of those cases, there’s information as to why that’s the case. For example “foo was found unresponsive and the cause of death has not been determined.”

When a high profile or public figure passes away and the announcement intentionally leaves out cod info, 99% of the time it was a drug overdose or suicide. That’s just the sad reality of these articles like this.

Not sure why this comment is being downvoted. It's just a factual statement, when you see a very conspicuous absence of information about the cause of death in a young person it's almost invariably overdose or suicide. I thought that was common knowledge.

This is the university (his employer) celebrating his accomplishments and grieving over his loss. I don't think it's their job (morally or legally) to determine COD or even to speculate. Watch for an obituary in the Baltimore paper if you want to chase a funeral procession.

so satisfying purely egoistical curiosity of strangers is compassion? and making it about the person is clickbait? wow Orwell would be pretty proud.

if it was health related sharing such information can potentially save lives by prevention

i don't care about details if it was accident or suicide, they could at least say if it was sudden death (unlikely caused by health at such age) or long disease

If its relevant to the people he interacted with, it will surely be shared with them. No need to put it into an obituary.

I feel like when one is omitted (and the deceased was relatively young) it's usually suicide.

Lots of obituaries don't say. Although being so young, I'd argue in favor of what you said.

Definitely suicide.

I think university obituaries usually keep it more to the eulogy side of things rather than the informative/COD side.

Lots of reasons that it could be omitted. Drug overdose, drunk driving, private family.

Or it could be cancer. Sometimes families are private.

Nah. They would have said "after a long battle with......"

Given the community he was a part of that seems unlikely.

It's more a fact than a feeling though.

If they don’t volunteer the information it’s extraordinarily rude to ask.

Normally I agree, but during a time of global pandemic, it would make sense to at least acknowledge if it was or was not the pandemic that caused it.

Actually, in the pandemic it becomes a lot more irrelevant. It's not like the cause of a single death is very relevant when people die left and right.

If the death of an individual matters (it does), it seems only reasonable that the cause does too.

Why what are you going to do with that information?

Today? Nothing. But when someone looks at this 10 years in the future, they will be left guessing and assume it was the pandemic that was the cause as opposed to something else.

dude he was 40 years old, extremely young. Seems perfectly reasonable to ask why a young person has died out of no where.

Yes! It’s a very obvious thing to put on an announcement. So if they’ve omitted it they have almost certainly already decided that they don’t want to share, rather than just having forgotten.

You'd think everyone would be aware of the Streisand effect by now though.

Most people can pick up the hint that they don't want to talk about the cause of death for whatever reason and will respect that.

Right, but this is the internet. Every time you write an obituary without a CoD and post it on the internet, a not-insignificant number of people will ask what it is.

There is no such thing as post-mortem privacy, and this is especially true in cases of high profile or public figures death.

I’m not saying this is good or bad, I’m just stating a fact.

Are you talking about the legal situation and public record?

I'm talking about manners.

Manners towards whom?

Information is such a powerful commodity these days, and this dude probably had plenty of it. Have to wonder if this was ordinary suicide, or the Gary Webb two-bullet variety.

ps> suicide as safe guess

> to care for

> to take care of

Edit: my most humble and sincere apologies to the initial downvoters for offering a simple correction to someone who might not write English as their first language.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22779696 and marked it off topic.

Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22780144.

The meaning was clear, and it was a simple typo that a native English speaker might make. The correction was not malicious, but also not valuable.

It is not even a typo, both are correct. No?

On topic: James Taylor appears to be brilliant, accomplished and could have produced more for several more decades. What a tragic loss for his family & science.

that was uncalled for

Wow. I didn’t drop an insult or anything.

Intent doesn't communicate itself on the internet, so the burden is on the commenter to disambiguate: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu....

When you post to a large public forum like HN, you're broadcasting to thousands. Public broadcasting is not like communicating face-to-face with one person. It's volatile, because the odds of somebody hearing something different from what you had in mind go way up. If you were speaking on, say, television, this would be obvious, but the medium here is more intimate. It feels like personal communication but actually is public communication (or rather, is both), which brings risks. The risks get worse as the community gets larger.

What do to instead? You need to think probabilistically. On the one hand, you're talking to a single person, the person you're replying to. But you're also talking to a statistical cloud of thousands of readers. With the statistical cloud, the question is: what is the probability curve of the reactions the community may have to this comment? If somebody somewhere gets activated, they will rush to the thread to make objections; that in turn will activate others, and off we go. That's how threads go haywire.

You're not responsible for any individual reaction—someone might just be in a bad mood, or have some weird issue—but you are responsible for the "probability curve" of your comment. The expected value of your comment is something like the sum of the areas under that curve: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

There's no need to get the probability of a flare-up down to zero. That's impossible. You just need that part of the curve not to be too high. If your comment gets a hostile reaction from one random reader who goes on tilt for whatever reason, that's no big deal because the community won't support it. They'll contain the damage for you. But if the curve is too high, chances are that the community will take it badly—or rather, that some subset will. If the entire community takes it badly, that's also no big deal; the comment will simply be flag-killed. Such posts have a negative value, but it's small. But when one segment of the community takes a comment badly and gets activated, and then a second segment gets activated by their activation, we end up with flamewars—entire subthreads with negative value.

The issue isn't whether you intended such reactions, it's whether your comment would likely give rise to them. That probability is higher if...actually, let me put this positively: that probability is lower if your comment includes markers to disambiguate intent. There are many ways to do that, but the shorter ways are best (e.g. "off topic, but"; or "in case it's helpful"). Even just a little calibration acts as flame retardant. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Doesnt have to be an insult to be unnecessary and inappropriate in context

HN can be brusque.

The original correction was also taken as brusque. The problem is that HN is a large audience that feels like a small one. It's great that it feels small, because we get more intimate discussion that way. But its actual size means that the long tail of possible reactions is really fat.

I also appreciate that it strives for a higher SNR than the average site.

However, HN also has felt quite intolerant to serious views deemed heterodox on more than on occasion.

It can be fascinating to look at the karma score, see it take a hit, and wonder what orthodoxy I have offended.

We’re not trying to safely deploy a nuclear reactor here.

Redirecting out of some vague appeal to authority over English, gaps native readers can “ paper over” cognitively and non native readers won’t even know is a rule is low effort attention seeking.

You are not the topic here.

Please don't take a thread further into flamewar. You've actually got an observant point here, but framing it as personal attack ("you are not the topic") and name-calling ("low-effort attention seeking") is not the way to go.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think polite minor corrections shouldn't be shunned. A lot of people are not native speakers and they do make mistakes (also a lot of native speakers make stupid mistakes every time as well).

This is how people learn the subtleties of a language. We all know what this person was trying to say, but it was not the right way (even though in linguistics right or wrong are "flexible").

It's a forum where people routinely type comments quickly on mobiles with their thumbs. There will be lots of typos and grammatical errors. I see no sense in wasting time when the meaning is well understood. If the meaning is unclear, asking (not correcting) seems appropriate.

This is true, but it is very impolite to respond to a comment like that with a correction. Context is everything.

there should really be cause of death in articles like this, makes you wonder how can someone so young die and what lesson you can learn from it regarding your own health

i don't need details if it was accident (car, OD whatever) or suicide, but I would like to know more if it was health related, it's quite selfish to hide such information which could save some lives by prevention and inform about someone's death

either keep it private within family including death itself or share at least a bit details if you go public

As I've aged, I've stopped giving fucks about work, promotions, rat race, work politics and triviality for minor gains in work. I find petty wins at work meaningless. I would much rather spend time with my family, kids, nature and cheap travel.

And I've become this once I saw people starting to die young around me, making me re-evaluate my priorities.

Am I alone?

I was already on that trend by noticing that I get more pleasure from my side projects than my 9-5 job. That also lead me to the FI/RE mindset.

Then two years ago, 3 people I knew died including the young son of close friends. Death used to be something for older people, now it's a clear possibility for me and my family too.

Last year I took 3 months off to travel around the world with my family (wife, 2 yo and 4 yo). Most of my older colleagues congratulated me and told me they wished they had done the same at my age (35). Friends my age were mostly concerned about work (impact on career, getting permission, etc) or convinced it's impossible to travel with young children.

On that note, any tips for traveling with young children?

Travel light, buy what you need along the way. Take long flights during the night so they'll sleep. Take trains/subways instead of cars/taxis as they'll be able to walk around and interact with other people. Mix activities for adults with thing that they would enjoy (zoo, parks, fireworks, ...). Hype up some of the things they'll see the next days so they'll be excited to see it. Let them pick some of the restaurants and activities.

I went the complete opposite. Travel is nice, sure. But my biggest fear became my legacy? When I die what will I have left behind for other generations? For my kids? For my friends?

Now I work thrice as hard. I want to exit this world having made a difference and having made it better.

This is great! Thanks for your perspective!

No, but it's healthy not to be judgemental towards others' life choices.

Some (many) people chose not to have kids, they find meaning in life through other channels. This biodiversity is very welcome.

I don't think eschewing parenthood (plenty of good reasons not to) is a negative thing.

But parenthood (adoptive or otherwise) is a key piece of the human experience.

I don't see any judgement in gp's comment. GP seems curious to know if there are others who think like them.

There's no judgement in my comment (maybe you are trying to read between the lines with your own projection). I don't care if you want kids, family or not. You do you.

I just want to know if there are others who get the futility of the rat race just as I do.

The vast majority of my 40+ friends see #dayjob as just another piece in the puzzle of life.

It's still recommended to enjoy it within reason...

No friend you are not .. i sit here, childless, family-less, and share the same values, and honestly wishing you the best.

Currently broken (illness, but i work on), probably like your young friends .. if i am lucky some day, I hope to have a family of my own, and be able to simply sit ...

Tired of the rat race, if i could, i would simply travel to thailand, and live in a hut.

More power to you and yours, stay safe <3

Of course not, but demography and expectations over here are skewed to the left side of the life trajectory. Cheers and take care.

Nope. You are not. I too have learnt to enjoy what I do or do what I enjoy. My earning is pure joy instead of materialistic milestones. End of the day we have a microscopic life. All name/fame are fake & fade in grand scheme of things.

I'm over fifty too but very much like what I do. The reason might be that I'm self-employed and work from home most of the time. And Epicurus is my hero. I have friends who are professors, and I wouldn't want to swap. They have little time left for science. Most of it is marketing and close combat with administration and politics. Very exhausting.

For anyone else reading, Epikur is known as Epicurus in English.

edit: OP edited it to Epicurus as I posted this!

Yes not alone but if you don't at least pretend you're the best worker bee and kiss the right behinds, you'll be put on by lowest 10% and the next RIF.

You are definitely not alone.

Although I don't plan on a lifelong "rat race", I want enough success to enable me to take multi-day motorcycle trips or own a ranch. I plan on pulling out of the rat race by 35, definitely by 40.

That's not to say I'm not finding time here and there to enjoy now.

What's keeping you from doing that motorcycle trip now, I mean other than the virus?

I'm relatively young, but I kind of feel this way. Even reflecting on a 100-year lifespan, life seems too short (and pointless) to be dominated by neurotic stresses fueled by pride or social pressure, even though it's highly pragmatic to be. Hell, you can say that WAY more convincingly about any langs or frameworks we fuck with, too. xD

But that said, I'm comfortable financially, so I can afford to sacrifice that pragmatism, AND this is probably more emotive disaffection with "the system, man" than wisdom and experience about what's worthwhile talking.

was that word "cheap" necessary?

What does cheap insinuate? Could you clarify?

Nope.

The most sobering of this was as I aged, and really began to see the ageism in interviews, hiring, selection for "regular roles" (meaning not a role where you would be a particularly specialized SME) - the ageism is really bad.

Especially in OPs/DevOps types of environments; I know that I have talked myself out of a job telling them that I had one position where i didnt have a day off in 18 months due to running an ops team and being literally on call 24/7 for 18 months.... I said that I was not interested in doing or being that any longer.

(They clearly wanted a hungry, younger Ops leader who didnt have a life or kids or would be a complete 'slave' to the role)

I don't give a crap about the SV rat race at all - which is why I left it for working in Cannabis tech (although it has its own set of problems - and there are a lot of techs who also left for cannabis and are bringing some cancerous mindsets to the industry...)

With age and time comes wisdom.

also an argument for why they prioritize the opposite....

Did that for 3 years too, and im burned out, and you know whats funny? Spent most of the money trying to triage a back issue no one could solve.

My back gets better when i dont go to work, bitter, right? Im not even old yet, and i have no idea what to do. Something inside is screaming “no.” And it feels hopeless

Dare I mention I find it incredibly rude to focus the attention on yourself without even mentioning the deceased?

You might have a point if they were relatives or something like that. But if you don’t actually know the guy there’s really no reason to be that mournful, or you’d be pretty busy with it seeing that like 3 people die per second.

I think its actually ok, we come together to support each other. The dead are already resting, unlike the living.

Id say check your youth hubris, and let people vent. Death is a bell, not a jailer.

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