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Comment by michaelwww | Hacker News Reader

> Steve Jobs

De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est (“Of the dead nothing but good is to be said”)

So Steve Jobs' reality distortion field should be able to have everlasting effect then? He was an asshole by all accounts in the workplace (I won't extend this comment to his personal life because on accounts, he seemed nice in his personal life). He was demanding, hard-driving, effective, and generally right. But he was an asshole. I don't think he gave a damn what people thought about his personality, because he could often say he was right. That doesn't change the fact that he was an asshole by all accounts in the workplace.

Don't shoot the messenger. I'm just stating the wisdom of the ages (Western Civ.) I would say it means the dead can't defend themselves. The dead are retired from the game and resting in peace. I would also guess that it means you should take your fight to the living acolytes where your words might have more effect. Also, I don't see Jobs' reality distortion field having much influence anymore: Apple seems adrift.

To be clear, I wasn't shooting the messenger, only the messenger's message. You'll note I didn't do any shooting at you directly. :) And I think there is a lot to be gained from learning from dead people, both their positives and negatives. Whether or not they can defend themselves is of little consequence to me, as I think they can contribute many lessons to society from beyond the grave if society is allowed to examine their past lives.

I didn't feel shot at, and I agree with you that we can learn from the dead. Calling Steve an asshole at this point doesn't seem right to me. Another phrase comes to mind is "Let us now praise famous men," which Wikipedia tells me is from a passage in the Wisdom of Sirach (2nd century B.C.) that begins, "Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us." I better get off this kick because I have work to do! The wisdom of the ages is a fascinating subject though.

It's really brave of you to speak so freely about a dead person. Maybe you and all of the other revisionist armchair historians can grab coffee after picking up your unemployment checks!

How is this brave or revisionist when most of the material I would cite was written when the guy was still alive? And I didn't exactly see any defamation suits? He didn't care because he was in a place where he didn't need to care. I'm not taking away from any of his genius, success, or vision at all. Stop with the patronizing tone.

Given all the nasty stuff we've seen Linus Torvalds write on public forums, should we say that Linus was absolutely a nice guy after he dies? That would absolutely be revisionist history. Speaking the truth would not take anything away from the amazing contributions Linus Torvalds has bestowed on this world, nor his self-evident genius.

Read about his treatment of his daughter Lisa (he finally came around but jeez...)

Ripped off the Woz...

Parking in handi-cap spots...

Buying a new mercedes whenever it came time to register his car cause he hated license plates...

His collusion with publishers to artificially inflate the cost of e-books...

The likelihood that he bought his way to the top of the donor list for a kidney transplant (that's more of a strong rumor than verifiable fact)

Or don't I don't care...

I respect his drive and his vision for his company and products, and how he got a lot of good work out of some talented people. That's it though.

While most of your examples do suggest assholery of one kind or another, I am not so sure about the liver (note, not kidney) transplant. If you were a billionaire and you needed a liver to survive, wouldn't you pay whatever it cost to get that liver ?

Maybe the world is a bad place and money shouldn't enter the equation at all, but resisting the temptation to take advantage of your wealth in this situation is not an asshole/not asshole test. It's more like a saint/not saint test.

Unfortunately you're asking the wrong guy, because I wouldn't.

I'd instead turn my formidable wealth towards "grow me a new liver tech" while waiting it out on dialysis. Shitty for me maybe, but I'm a big believer in egalite, as the French put it. I could then probably turn around and roll-out the new liver tech at an affordable cost for everyone and recoup my R&D, if I had survived long enough.

Well good for you, but this doesn't address my point. My point is that your decision would make you a saint. Making the other decision would make you a non-saint rather than an asshole.

Incidentally, you really need to let go of the kidney/dialysis thing. There is no equivalent of dialysis for liver disease. If your liver stops working they cannot hook you up to a machine, you either get a liver transplant in a day or two or you die.

you're right, I just woke up and my first thought was "why the heck did I talk about dialysis" when we were discussing livers. Also weird that it was my first thought upon waking!

my only excuse last night was that it was late, I was exhausted from a long day, and I kept conflating the two for some reason

cheers

He didn't seem very nice in his personal life.

This is not a correction, as the provided translation is fine. But because I have a personal interest in the subject, here's one that tracks the Latin a little more closely: De mortuis [On the dead, ] nil [nothing] nisi bonum [unless it is good] dicendum est [should be said].

I've heard this phrase floating around my whole life, so I was prompted to look it up on Wikipedia. I used the freer translation. According to Wikipedia, it's a Greek aphorism τὸν τεθνηκóτα μὴ κακολογεῖν (“Don’t badmouth a dead man”) attributed to Chilon of Sparta (ca. 600 BC), one of the Seven Sages of Greece.

As for Ellison, I think the Christian warning about mammon applies:

"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." - Matthew 6:19-21,24 (KJV)

Been a while, but I was taught that the gerund in Latin implied worthiness. So "dicendum" could be "worth saying".

I find it unlikely (though I have no Latin training beyond high school). That "dicendum" isn't appearing by itself; it's part of a syntactic construction, the horribly named 'passive periphrastic' with "est".

http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/latinlearning/qt/passivep...

As that page notes, it's the same construction as in "Carthago delenda est [Carthage must be destroyed]".

It would seem that Wikipedia agrees with my interpretation:

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

> It is used to indicate that someone or something (the referent of the noun it modifies) needs or deserves to be the object of an action.

Also some of this spills into common names of people today:

> The name Amanda is the feminine gerundive of amare ("to love"), and thus means roughly ... "worthy of being loved", ... Similarly with the name Miranda; ... "worthy of admiration" ...

To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth. -voltaire

Cheers, that's a wonderful quote.

And the truth is usually much more complex than a quick message like that allows.

It's easy to forget, but even very powerful people are just people and are prone to each and every failing less powerful humans, such as you and I, are.

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