28 Year-Old CEO Of Bitcoin Exchange Dead After Possible Suicide | Hacker News Reader

28 Year-Old CEO Of Bitcoin Exchange Dead After Possible Suicide

newswatch.us

20 pointsmistermumble12 comments

Some headlines from this website's Politics section:

"Texas Vote in Primaries Shaken By Tea Party Influence" -- ok, I buy that

"Michelle Obama Now Requires 26 Servants" -- A bit sensationalist and link-baity without more context, but I'd believe it

"Rand Paul Is The GOP's Early Presidential Front-Runner" -- Maybe, depending on who you ask

...scroll down...

"Obama Activating Secret 'Death Squads' To Target Gun Owners"

"Obama Family Discovered To Be Part of Secret Muslim Terror Operation"

Ok, this is no longer news, or even op/ed -- we're well into creative fiction writing at this point...

It's depressing how many Conservative conspiracy theory websites are out there. It's even more depressing when people link to them as if they are real news websites.

This was reported on Feb 27th.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/02/27/american-ceo-of-singa...

Sad story, however.

Okay, so I'm not a conservative(I saw the newswatch comments) but I am definitely suspicious when I see the suicide of successful people. Is it too extreme to begin correlating? Am I crazy, have I listened to too much RATM? This is the first account I've ever made on HN- I'm saying this to convey my gravitas- I'm usually a lurker. I have an immense amount of respect for the people who voice their opinions here. I am not attempting to troll. But I see people like Aaron Schwartz, people who held key positions in finance(http://business.financialpost.com/2014/02/18/jpmorgan-banker...), Shane Todd (http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/3563156/) ...it just makes me wonder. The last article suspects the Chinese(all except for Schwartz were in the same country!) And then some point to Zionists, or some kind of American petrodollar oligarchy...I'm not attempting any unified theory here, but I do sense a trend. Maybe it's just a trend in assassination style- with the level of transparency afforded by nonstop media, the only way to kill your enemy (something that in past times was probably regarded as a regrettable necessity and something the public was to deliberately ignore for their own safety)- is to 'suicide' them???? Or is it that depression is becoming so pervasive that even successful people are opting out of life? Does Singapore just make someone that tense?

I'm guessing you wouldn't have heard of Li, Todd, or Radtke if they hadn't committed suicide. In other words, a person's suicide may increase their newsworthiness.

With Bayes' Theorem:

    P(suicide | news) = P(news | suicide) P(suicide) / P(news)

The statement "Suicides are more newsworthy than average events" can be mathematically stated as P(news | suicide) > P(news). Then the news media "amplifies" suicides by some factor k > 1, where k = P(news | suicide) / P(news).

I don't doubt that there are a handful of suicide stories out there that are actually successfully covered murders, but I think those represent a tiny fraction of the total. I really don't think there's an assassination epidemic.

> Or is it that depression is becoming so pervasive that even successful people are opting out of life?

In addition to what csense said, it's not clear to me why these "successful people" would be much less likely to commit suicide than less prominent figures. High profile often just means higher pressure.

It's not as if the folks you named were resting on past laurels, living a life of leisure. (Not to suggest that retirement is free from problems, e.g. ennui.) These were working individuals, which means dealing with the stresses of jobs and ambitions.

Sad story.

Reading the headline, I thought (like probably many others) that it would be about Mark Karpeles, who is also 28. Hopefully it doesn't end that way for him.

Could really do with a [Not mtgox] in there to avoid linkbait

http://gyazo.com/d115eca8539c3b310f5cdb367014c73a.png

I've always wondered what kind of stuff goes through the minds of people who "like" such articles.

Just assume that "like" means they're expressing interest, sort of like a public bookmark.

The "like" model is a bit of an awkward fit for sad stories, granted.

I seldom see rubbish so vile as in that comment section. What kind of news site is newsswatch.us?

It's one of those Conservative conspiracy theory websites, if I remember correctly.

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