What Happened to Lee (2020)
wired.comSo sad. This reminds me of the story of Eric Sun who had an incurable brain cancer and fulfilled one final act.
Video (may make you cry) https://youtube.com/watch?v=OA8FJiz2ies
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/01/a-tech-pioneer...
OP delivered tears.
Discussed at the time (of the article):
What Happened to Lee - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22878136 - April 2020 (278 comments)
Bloody hell this is like my worst nightmare. The inability of the self to diagnose the self is particularly cruel.
My grandmother recently passed away. She'd had dementia for quite a few years, and in a cruel "death by a thousand cuts" it's a disease that robs you of... you.
But it also robs your family of you, it replaces you with a physically present but empty shell in the shape of a human, who is not particularly pleasant to be around because, to quote The Zombies, "she's not there". One of my (irrational) fears is to be remembered by my family as I will be in my later, doddering years, rather than as the spritely, attentive, loving, and supportive father I've worked hard to be presently. Maintaining my health and intellectual curiosity is partially in pursuit of extending my stay outside of doddering old-age-hood as long as possible.
This story sounds similar, but all the more tragic because Lee Holloway was in early-mid life.
A shuddering reminder of the cold apathy of the universe, and to be thankful for, well, pretty much any good thing you've experienced ever.
Dark as it is, I keep wondering how to set up a "dead-man switch," as it were, to make sure I don't make it to a state like that.
Yep. Thanks for sharing, I appreciated reading that. When I do go I hope it’s quick.
I didn't know who he was when I clicked it. This a very nice write up, it was very interesting
I cried for weeks and even months anytime I thought about this after I read it back in 2020. Such a sad story, so upsetting. To this day, it continues to inspire me with gratitude for my good health (in relative terms) and wonderful family.
Memento homo cogito mori 1/5000 doesn't seem rare by my measure.
If you count all neurodegenerative conditions noted & unnoted it happens frequently enough to take it to own heart.
There was also the case of murderer made by brain-cancer not own will.
Billions $$ wasted on wet transhumanist dreams of fully replaceable elite, zero on reverting human living conditions & health back to his natural optimal species proper state (Ancient Ethiopians bragged to Egyptian farmers about commonly reaching 120 years)
We pretend civilization & it's inventions doesn't kill. While it's lethality lately started increasing exponentially.
What's made to replace natural human conditions is by default suboptimal or negative, unleashing unpredictable adaptations, often written into DNA cursing next generations.
There certainly are evolutionary adaptations, built into our bodies (as insulin resistance for winter or inflammation) applicated seasonally or in temporary disruptions, which chronically prolonged become damaging and deadly disguised as another disease.
Rad was once trendy. Then gernazi chemotherapy. Now it's DNA alteration.
Nature will adapt well as animals in Chernobyl but humans taken out of natural conditions won't.
At the same time for me sadly, it is a proof that there is no after life. When lights go out, our consciousness fades away...