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Tuesday Roundup 22-01-2008

A strange assortment to get you through the week…

Enjoy!

Editor
  1. Tragic deaths of two AI potentials
    I read the Wired article the other day. Brilliant piece of journalism, I was impressed. It’s quite disturbing to read of McKinstry’s downward spiral, and how people treated him. Arrogant and egotistical, yes, but he didn’t deserve the ridicule and abuse. People graduate high school, but they never really grow up.

    As for the suicide, conspiracy theorists would suggest one or both weren’t suicides at all, but murders made to look like suicides. It’s definitely not a coincidence that Singh took his own life in exactly the same manner as McKinstry. Unlike McKinstry however, Singh didn’t publicise his intentions on the internet. But can we be sure it was McKinstry claiming to be dying in a cafe, taking a cocktail of lethal drugs? There’s definitely more to the story. Why did Singh commit suicide in exactly the same manner as McKinstry? Why did he kill himself when life was going well for him and he didn’t have a history of mental illness that McKinstry struggled with? I know from personal experience that people will attempt to take their own lives when they appear happy and content and things are going well, but we’ll probably never know the reasons Singh made his decision.

    MIT’s suicide rate is extraordinarily high, but when you consider that many students struggle with depression (the drop out rate of first year students at Latrobe University for example is almost 80%) it’s not surprising. Many brilliant minds have Bipolar or Aspergers, and when you mix that with the pressures of high-level studies, it’s bound to cause suicides and breakdowns.

    I found the Wired article to be one of the best I’ve read in a long time, the author should be congratulated for an unbiased and balanced look at two individuals who departed our world in the same way. The author never judges, he just tells their story. Very sad.

    On a sidenote, Loren Coleman describes William Gibson’s books as “cyberpunk”. Which is correct, but Gibson himself coined the term “cyberpunk” in Neuromancer. 😉

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