Any statistics on US deaths like this? I couldn't seem to find anything particularly useful.
I just mean to say that China is an enormous country, and statistically these things are bound to happen. Does anyone else perceive this type of media coverage as part of a greater strategy of propagandizing or is the oversturation of news outlets just hungry for enything sensationalist to grab eyeballs? Both?
while you are right, these things just happen. I have just recently read about a 22 year old guy from Zynga and from a similiarly aged engineer that had the same thing happen to them. While chances to survive are extremly low, both guys are well now.
Sudden cardiac arrest is quite common amongst the population as a whole (http://www.sca-aware.org/about-sca). What's rather uncommon is it to happen at a young age, but it's not unknown. In the four years I was at college two students suffered fatal arrests, both thought to be healthy with no prior symptoms.
Interestingly, the only people (OK, two) who died on "death march" projects were offshore team members from India and China who came to the US specifically for the final 18-24h/day push to hit a launch date.
This is out of maybe 90 people working extreme hours on the two projects in question.
There's plenty of people (in every competitive industry from startups to consulting) who work until 11pm everyday without having heart attacks, presumably there were other factors at play here.
If you don't have congenital heart problems and you're under 40, the panic attacks and dissociative episodes and visual flashing will hit you before you have a cardiac event.
I didn't see it mentioned in the article, but it could be due to the type of work he was doing. Until I know what sort of work he was doing, I'm not going to judge or compare it to me working on software until 11pm every day.
Sudden cardiac arrest can, in theory, happen to anyone at anytime, its just that its an extremely rare occurrence.
Most of those cases can be traced back to a previously unknown heart disease though. In general, the probability of you dieing in an accident on your way to/from work is alot higher.
The fact that i read about 3 cases of sudden cardiac arrest in very young and seemingly healthy people on HN in a rather short period is a bit discomforting though.
When things like this happen, names, pictures, and home addresses of responsible managers should be posted on the Internet so that the good fight can start.
That is really not OK. People who publish such information and call for vigilante justice should be found and prosecuted to the maximum extent of the law.
Even if we knew with 100% certainty that the boss played a role in this guy’s death (which we don’t), then it would be up to the DA and the court, not the angry mob with pitchforks or the cowardly script kids on 4chan.
Vigilante justice is terrible but I don't see anything else doing the job; it may be a last resort but I think our globalist-corporatist society is At That Point. The people with connections and resources own the politicians (all over the world) who make the laws. Besides, even if one country does everything right, the parasites in charge of the world can just move their money around.
I've been saying since the late '90s that health insurance executives should be publicly exposed when they murder people, and I still feel that way. If the courts were actually cracking down on those fuckers, then I'd say that vigilante justice is unwarranted; but how many health-insurance murderers are in prison? The fuckers kill 45,000 per year (a 9/11 every 24 days) and I don't know of one who has gone to prison.
Why do we tear the shit out of two Middle Eastern nations (one of which had nothing to do with it) over 3,000 dead but allow health insurers to kill half a million over that same decade and not even give them personal civil liability?
All societies tend toward Feudalism given enough time. The rent seekers control everything, and the masses surrender their liberty in exchange for security. History has demonstrated this countless times, which is why the Bill of Rights enshrined the right of the public to form militias to protect their own rights (the original 2nd Amendment).
Unfortunately, over two centuries the rent seekers have won again, so a reboot is required. How to initiate and sustain a successful reboot is the tricky part.
I sense from your writings that you are increasingly frustrated with the current state of affairs. I just want to emphasize that you aren't the only one, and if you were to formalize your dissent into an actionable movement, many would support you. The time may have come for the Technocrat to take his place on the world stage...
We are irrational sheep. As long as the "average" person has their "average" basic life needs met, some entertainment and some hope of a better life, this shit will continue.
A true "correction" would be bloody and very destructive, since no one in power is going to give up power willingly. They are more likely to go to the extreme and "cull" the masses to reduce what they see as the "problem".
That is a very narrow solution space you are considering. I can think of a dozen non-violent proposals which would involve nothing more than fiscal policy changes. For example: flat tax and basic income for all, such that there is no special treatment of corporations over individual entities. No tax breaks, no loopholes.
This would work best if implemented with direct democracy and a program of lean government held liable to be fully transparent on all spending.
Of course the currently vested interests would fight this to the grave, but there is a point at which the people will no longer suffer the reign of Feudal lords (I predict that to be about 40% unemployment, or 70% youth unemployment).
I don't think putting the blame squarely on the managers is a wise thing to do. Bad managers are symptoms to larger problems of society. A better goal in this case is getting people informed about the truths and the back stories of our nice electronics and where they came from, who made them, in what conditions, etc.
I'd be inclined to give direct managers a pass, in most cases. Chances are, the guy's direct boss is working in the same horrible conditions as he had.
I still think that this man must be avenged, possibly many degrees up the chain. Where in the hierarchy that happens, I don't have the information that would be needed to call that shot.
A better goal in this case is getting people informed about the truths and the back stories of our nice electronic sand where they came from, who made them, in what conditions, etc.
I agree. And I'd like to see alternatives. I'm glad that China is industrializing. That's a really good thing. However, I'd prefer the option to pay $200 more for a device made in humane conditions.
I still think that this man must be avenged, possibly many degrees up the chain.
Why must he be avenged? I mean, that is pretty rather strong language there. Why shouldn't his superiors just be subject to an investigation and held accountable for specific wrongs and oversights?
Michael, there's an order and law to be respected, and I think indeed you'll only find success in the fights of injustices if you walk in an avenue already established (know that this world will by and large resist most all progressive and novel ideas, you either have to disguise your ideas in sweetly packaged trojan horse forms, or have yourself backed by immense power to see any substantial change effected).
However, I'd prefer the option to pay $200 more for a device made in humane conditions.
Me too. We've gotta find some way to let the world know this.
May I have your e-mail address please? I'd like to speak to you about some things.
Is there? The people in charge of this society have made themselves above all laws and order.
If murder were truly illegal for everyone, explain health insurance. Why do rich people get to hide behind their companies when they let people die for profit? Highly inconsistent, that is.
I think indeed you'll only find success in the fights of injustices if you walk in an avenue already established
Well, I have mixed feelings about that. Nonviolent overthrow of an oppressor is always better than the violent kind, but violence is better than doing nothing and letting an evil elite reign.
If there's a nonviolent way to get rid of the current global elite, I'd love to hear it. Technology is supposed to deliver on that; we don't "overthrow" them, we just outperform them. In practice, though, they seem to have redefined the rules to suit them (see: VC-istan) and keep us "in our place".
Unfortunately, I sense that the majority of HN readers are still in the idealistic phase of their political views. As in, they believe in the ideals of a nation and not its realities. It can be very difficult, even traumatizing, for a person to transition from one to the other. Here is Aaron Swartz's experience: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/epiphany
You can only tackle a problem once you acknowledge it exists. Unfortunately, I have yet to see that critical mass on HN regarding the issues you are passionate about. Until that happens, you will just be seen as a pessimistic contrarian by such folk.
I recommend that anyone who fiercely disagrees, or is confused by, Michael's viewpoints on this issue to read Chomsky's Understanding Power.
I think the key to solving the root of the problem here is understanding that there is such a thing as: "Cooperative compliance disorder", which is the other end of the spectrum of "Oppositional defiant disorder".
So the question becomes: How did this person get to believe that when the desires of other men are of higher priority than your own physical health.
Like cell in your own hand, it did not object when the mind decide to send the hand through the fire, he gave his life so that the whole might complete its objective. Cooperative Compliance disorder.
We really don't need to pathologize everything. In a sufficiently perverse environment, choosing to sacrifice your own well being for the good of someone else can be a rational decision - it can be the only rational decision.
When gatekeepers control access to wealth, stability, and a good life - and the alternative to working for the gatekeepers is poverty and disease - you basically will do anything the gatekeepers want, because the alternative is nearly as good as death itself.
Without knowing more about this incident, it strikes me as a symptom of a broken system, not a broken man.
This is precisely why our slow boil in the pot of American Fascism is so troubling. The frog is all but cooked, and it is none the wiser, even one minute to midnight...
Advocates of liberty and privacy are constantly savaged by the media, meanwhile the erosion of personal rights continue unhindered. I sincerely hope we begin to act before it is too late.
You have no idea what Fascism is and are doing more harm than good to your side of this debate. People like you can get the whole group painted as historically illiterate idiots with nothing to contribute.
A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. I blame the confusion around the word fascism on polarizing concepts from movies like "Freedom to Fascism" by Aaron Russo.
The forces in this world to mis-inform the general population on these very important subjects is so strong, that I would say most people fail to truly understand what is reality and what is fantasy.
The word fascism just has no clear concept behind it. It's a hodgepodge of historical movements and political ideas. It's impossible for it to not cause confusion.
Very interesting, did you bother to read your link?
“Fascism is a form of political and social behavior that arises when the middle class, finding its hopes frustrated by economic instability coupled with political polarization and deadlock, abandons traditional ideologies and turns, with the approbation of police and military forces, to a poorly-defined but emotionally appealing soteriology of national unity, immediate and direct resolution of problems, and intolerance for dissent.”
I will leave the drawing of parallels to the current paradigm as an exercise to the reader.
If Oppositional Defiant Disorder gets a spot in the mental illness book to be medicated, than Excessive Cooperation to your own detriment should also be medicated.
I believe women suffer from this mental illness a lot more than men. The fact that one end of the spectrum gets to be a mental illness and the other end of the spectrum is just someone choosing to be a doormat illustrates a big problem. Either they are both mental illnesses, or they are both just ways of going about things.
Humans who always cooperate or always defy to the detriment of their own life means that the module in their brain which decides when to comply, and when to resist, is a malfunction to be corrected by available means.
This is not my opinion on the point you and Potatolicious are debating, but rather my opinion on the way you replied.
You present an idea (that it might benefit people for society to consider excessive cooperation a treatable mental illness). You posit the parent article as evidence for this idea.
Potatolicious replies, expressing his doubts. He presents an idea (that the system the man was working in caused his death, not an innate psychological condition). If valid, his idea eliminates the evidence for your idea, making it less credible and no longer relevant to the article.
What I see as a rational response to this is to either point out a flaw in Potatolicious's idea (if one exists) or to introduce information that would make it so that Potatolicious's idea doesn't invalidate yours.
Instead, you restate your initial point (albeit in greater detail), and introduce a kind of argument from continuum ("if people who are excessively oppositional are medicated, why shouldn't the other end be as well?"), which, although not invalid, doesn't do anything to refute Potatolicious's point about the relevance of your argument to the parent article. Furthermore, you introduce a new opinion, which is not related to your previous points or supported by evidence, and only serves to polarize people.
I'm trying to explain this in the hope that we as a community can move toward more directed and effective debates. I hope that helped.
I'm playing a cat and mouse with ideas a few layers deeper than your logic structures are outlining. (perhaps getting lost in the weeds and losing the main point as a result).
Potatolicious is right, that the system is partially responsible for his death. And if most of the responsibility ends up on the evil system, then it could be said his excessive compliance should be praised and admired. That compliance isn't an illness at all. He was just eaten by a larger critter than he, and used as fuel for ulterior motives.
But his claim does not invalidate mine because suppose this evil corporation is 100% guilty, and they used all the Jedi mind tricks to brainwash him into working himself to death for their own gain. He complied when he should have defied. They were offering him money, the lack of which may be as bad as death to the victim, but ultimately the source of the error was when an instruction which results in destruction was followed by the unit.
If the unit had said: "I would rather be unemployed than deal with this terrible situation", he may be alive now. He's removed from the gene pool anyway, so evolution agrees with me, whatever that subunit did, it is to be destroyed.
I'm suggesting we destroy the faulty subunits in his mind during school, by labeling "Cooperative compliance disorder" as a real thing that can remove you from the gene pool.
Does one need to be a hacker to sign up for this site?
As a thought experiment, do you think it would be that difficult to get, say, 15 or 20 people who love professional bike racing to sign up, and coordinate voting up an article about Bradley Wiggins' difficulties at the Giro d'Italia, which some of us hackers find to be very interesting reading?
I am a bit surprised this happened. While working until 11PM every day is mentally frustrating, I am curious as to the physical toll it actually takes on your body. Said differently, is there a difference between being awake until 11PM every night and being at the office? I've watched analysts and associates in investment banking keep up this schedule for years at a time...
Now, if you told me he was getting in at 9 and leaving at 5 every day for 6 weeks, this would make sense and I can see how this would be problematic for Ogilvy. With what we have in this article, I think he suffered from a heart condition.
I live in Uruguay, and the kind of medical checks most of the population has are so superficial, most people who have a heart condition won't know about it until it hits (I haven't had a good checkout in years either !! I should, after reading this).
I know of a case here, the guy was one of 3 managers at a toxic company, the other 2 guys quit, and he took on their burdens. He died of a heart attack, at age 34. He thought he wasn't able to quit because of his children, but the result was obviously worse for them.
The article says 600,000 people a year die from "Work Exhaustion" (their quotes not mine). That reminds me of the conditions that lead to the rise of labor unions, although in looking at various sources it seems that China already has unions of one form or another? Clearly not doing their job if that is the case.
Chinese unions are pretty close to what were called company unions back in the day. Organized and controlled by the people sitting at the opposite side of the table. In the case of China, government officials who benefit personally when industrial interests in their domain are really profitable.
Nonsense. If you do more work than you take in calories, you will eventually die of that work. If you work through injury, the injury will get worse and may well kill you.
Your body is doing work through basal metabolism even while sitting idle. Starving to death and being overworked to death are basically the same thing.
59 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 101 ms ] threadI just mean to say that China is an enormous country, and statistically these things are bound to happen. Does anyone else perceive this type of media coverage as part of a greater strategy of propagandizing or is the oversturation of news outlets just hungry for enything sensationalist to grab eyeballs? Both?
I read about it on HN and Reddit.
This is out of maybe 90 people working extreme hours on the two projects in question.
Most of those cases can be traced back to a previously unknown heart disease though. In general, the probability of you dieing in an accident on your way to/from work is alot higher.
The fact that i read about 3 cases of sudden cardiac arrest in very young and seemingly healthy people on HN in a rather short period is a bit discomforting though.
Even if we knew with 100% certainty that the boss played a role in this guy’s death (which we don’t), then it would be up to the DA and the court, not the angry mob with pitchforks or the cowardly script kids on 4chan.
I've been saying since the late '90s that health insurance executives should be publicly exposed when they murder people, and I still feel that way. If the courts were actually cracking down on those fuckers, then I'd say that vigilante justice is unwarranted; but how many health-insurance murderers are in prison? The fuckers kill 45,000 per year (a 9/11 every 24 days) and I don't know of one who has gone to prison.
Why do we tear the shit out of two Middle Eastern nations (one of which had nothing to do with it) over 3,000 dead but allow health insurers to kill half a million over that same decade and not even give them personal civil liability?
Unfortunately, over two centuries the rent seekers have won again, so a reboot is required. How to initiate and sustain a successful reboot is the tricky part.
I sense from your writings that you are increasingly frustrated with the current state of affairs. I just want to emphasize that you aren't the only one, and if you were to formalize your dissent into an actionable movement, many would support you. The time may have come for the Technocrat to take his place on the world stage...
A true "correction" would be bloody and very destructive, since no one in power is going to give up power willingly. They are more likely to go to the extreme and "cull" the masses to reduce what they see as the "problem".
This would work best if implemented with direct democracy and a program of lean government held liable to be fully transparent on all spending.
A blogger who goes slightly more in depth with a proposal of this idea can be found here: http://www.naturalfinance.net/2013/04/improving-economy-by-e...
Of course the currently vested interests would fight this to the grave, but there is a point at which the people will no longer suffer the reign of Feudal lords (I predict that to be about 40% unemployment, or 70% youth unemployment).
I still think that this man must be avenged, possibly many degrees up the chain. Where in the hierarchy that happens, I don't have the information that would be needed to call that shot.
A better goal in this case is getting people informed about the truths and the back stories of our nice electronic sand where they came from, who made them, in what conditions, etc.
I agree. And I'd like to see alternatives. I'm glad that China is industrializing. That's a really good thing. However, I'd prefer the option to pay $200 more for a device made in humane conditions.
Why must he be avenged? I mean, that is pretty rather strong language there. Why shouldn't his superiors just be subject to an investigation and held accountable for specific wrongs and oversights?
Michael, there's an order and law to be respected, and I think indeed you'll only find success in the fights of injustices if you walk in an avenue already established (know that this world will by and large resist most all progressive and novel ideas, you either have to disguise your ideas in sweetly packaged trojan horse forms, or have yourself backed by immense power to see any substantial change effected).
However, I'd prefer the option to pay $200 more for a device made in humane conditions.
Me too. We've gotta find some way to let the world know this.
May I have your e-mail address please? I'd like to speak to you about some things.
Is there? The people in charge of this society have made themselves above all laws and order.
If murder were truly illegal for everyone, explain health insurance. Why do rich people get to hide behind their companies when they let people die for profit? Highly inconsistent, that is.
I think indeed you'll only find success in the fights of injustices if you walk in an avenue already established
Well, I have mixed feelings about that. Nonviolent overthrow of an oppressor is always better than the violent kind, but violence is better than doing nothing and letting an evil elite reign.
If there's a nonviolent way to get rid of the current global elite, I'd love to hear it. Technology is supposed to deliver on that; we don't "overthrow" them, we just outperform them. In practice, though, they seem to have redefined the rules to suit them (see: VC-istan) and keep us "in our place".
You can only tackle a problem once you acknowledge it exists. Unfortunately, I have yet to see that critical mass on HN regarding the issues you are passionate about. Until that happens, you will just be seen as a pessimistic contrarian by such folk.
I recommend that anyone who fiercely disagrees, or is confused by, Michael's viewpoints on this issue to read Chomsky's Understanding Power.
http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?cid=110...
So the question becomes: How did this person get to believe that when the desires of other men are of higher priority than your own physical health.
Like cell in your own hand, it did not object when the mind decide to send the hand through the fire, he gave his life so that the whole might complete its objective. Cooperative Compliance disorder.
When gatekeepers control access to wealth, stability, and a good life - and the alternative to working for the gatekeepers is poverty and disease - you basically will do anything the gatekeepers want, because the alternative is nearly as good as death itself.
Without knowing more about this incident, it strikes me as a symptom of a broken system, not a broken man.
Advocates of liberty and privacy are constantly savaged by the media, meanwhile the erosion of personal rights continue unhindered. I sincerely hope we begin to act before it is too late.
http://www.anesi.com/Fascism-TheUltimateDefinition.htm
The forces in this world to mis-inform the general population on these very important subjects is so strong, that I would say most people fail to truly understand what is reality and what is fantasy.
“Fascism is a form of political and social behavior that arises when the middle class, finding its hopes frustrated by economic instability coupled with political polarization and deadlock, abandons traditional ideologies and turns, with the approbation of police and military forces, to a poorly-defined but emotionally appealing soteriology of national unity, immediate and direct resolution of problems, and intolerance for dissent.”
I will leave the drawing of parallels to the current paradigm as an exercise to the reader.
I believe women suffer from this mental illness a lot more than men. The fact that one end of the spectrum gets to be a mental illness and the other end of the spectrum is just someone choosing to be a doormat illustrates a big problem. Either they are both mental illnesses, or they are both just ways of going about things.
Humans who always cooperate or always defy to the detriment of their own life means that the module in their brain which decides when to comply, and when to resist, is a malfunction to be corrected by available means.
You present an idea (that it might benefit people for society to consider excessive cooperation a treatable mental illness). You posit the parent article as evidence for this idea.
Potatolicious replies, expressing his doubts. He presents an idea (that the system the man was working in caused his death, not an innate psychological condition). If valid, his idea eliminates the evidence for your idea, making it less credible and no longer relevant to the article.
What I see as a rational response to this is to either point out a flaw in Potatolicious's idea (if one exists) or to introduce information that would make it so that Potatolicious's idea doesn't invalidate yours.
Instead, you restate your initial point (albeit in greater detail), and introduce a kind of argument from continuum ("if people who are excessively oppositional are medicated, why shouldn't the other end be as well?"), which, although not invalid, doesn't do anything to refute Potatolicious's point about the relevance of your argument to the parent article. Furthermore, you introduce a new opinion, which is not related to your previous points or supported by evidence, and only serves to polarize people.
I'm trying to explain this in the hope that we as a community can move toward more directed and effective debates. I hope that helped.
Potatolicious is right, that the system is partially responsible for his death. And if most of the responsibility ends up on the evil system, then it could be said his excessive compliance should be praised and admired. That compliance isn't an illness at all. He was just eaten by a larger critter than he, and used as fuel for ulterior motives.
But his claim does not invalidate mine because suppose this evil corporation is 100% guilty, and they used all the Jedi mind tricks to brainwash him into working himself to death for their own gain. He complied when he should have defied. They were offering him money, the lack of which may be as bad as death to the victim, but ultimately the source of the error was when an instruction which results in destruction was followed by the unit.
If the unit had said: "I would rather be unemployed than deal with this terrible situation", he may be alive now. He's removed from the gene pool anyway, so evolution agrees with me, whatever that subunit did, it is to be destroyed.
I'm suggesting we destroy the faulty subunits in his mind during school, by labeling "Cooperative compliance disorder" as a real thing that can remove you from the gene pool.
As a thought experiment, do you think it would be that difficult to get, say, 15 or 20 people who love professional bike racing to sign up, and coordinate voting up an article about Bradley Wiggins' difficulties at the Giro d'Italia, which some of us hackers find to be very interesting reading?
Now, if you told me he was getting in at 9 and leaving at 5 every day for 6 weeks, this would make sense and I can see how this would be problematic for Ogilvy. With what we have in this article, I think he suffered from a heart condition.
I know of a case here, the guy was one of 3 managers at a toxic company, the other 2 guys quit, and he took on their burdens. He died of a heart attack, at age 34. He thought he wasn't able to quit because of his children, but the result was obviously worse for them.
-David Ogilvy (from Confessions of an Advertising Man, 1963)
No, you'll die of starvation. If you're not taking in sufficient nutrients, you'll die even if you do no work at all.