Researcher Sam Roweis took his own life last night. Here's one of his lectures.

http://videolectures.net/mlss05au_roweis_pgm/

by raganwald • 17 years ago

82 55 17 years ago

RIP Sam. You will be missed.

osipov• 17 years ago

Sam was a prominent contributor to the field of machine learning and given his young age he held so much promise. He will be missed.

http://nyulocal.com/on-campus/2010/01/13/nyu-computer-scienc...

jafl5272• 17 years ago

I remember him from grad school.

danger• 17 years ago

A few memories of Sam from a Toronto machine learning student: http://blog.smellthedata.com/2010/01/sam.html

raganwald• 17 years ago

Thank you for sharing this.

dwine• 17 years ago

And from a fellow researcher: http://hunch.net/?p=1172

theorique• 17 years ago

He was head of science club at my high school and also preceded me into the same college program.

I really admired his talent and drive. This is terrible and sad news.

orionlogic2• 17 years ago

with these kind of sad news, a phrase always come in to mind; "Permanent solution to a temporary problem"

TeHCrAzY• 17 years ago

It's unlikely to have been a temporary problem. Depression is pervasive, all encompasing, and, seemingly, far outside your expreiences to have made such an uninformed comment.

uuilly• 17 years ago

If it's far outside his experiences then by definition his comment will be uninformed. Might be nicer to inform him. No need to be condescending.

orionlogic2• 17 years ago

I was not thinking about this particular situation but suicide as a general. At the end of the day either i am informed or not, i would conculude with the same thought

CapitalistCartr• 17 years ago

It's sure not outside my experiences, and I agree with him. It's a permanent solution to a temporary problem. I struggled with depression for most of my life, and I'm still glad I now manage it and have a successful life.

ig12• 17 years ago

A large number of people who make failed suicide attempts don't try again, it's why making changes such as making it harder to kills yourself with a household gas supply has a significant impact on suicide rate. Depression isn't a temporary problem, but the final suicidal impulse often is.

JabavuAdams6• 17 years ago

Go easy. For many people depression comes in cycles. While the threat is always there, I think the parent poster has a good point.

Yes, when someone is in the throes of depression, it's all-encompassing. However, when they're feeling okay, they might well have a hard time even remembering how or why they got so close to the brink. That's what I understand by the parent poster's use of "temporary problem".

One can't un-suicide, but one can potentially endure until a brighter day, although if one is truly suicidal, it doesn't seem that way.

I.e. The depression isn't temporary. It's the crisis point where suicide seems like the only good alternative that is temporary.

jrockway• 17 years ago

How do you know that being dead isn't better than being alive?

elblanco• 17 years ago

araneae4• 17 years ago

http://nyulocal.com/on-campus/2010/01/13/nyu-computer-scienc...

"His wife recently gave birth prematurely to a set of twins."

Usually I'm sympathetic to this kind of thing, but that's a pretty horrible thing to do to his wife.

csbrooks• 17 years ago

I don't think it's fair to speculate; we don't have enough information.

jimboyoungblood2• 17 years ago

I don't think it would be fair or accurate to attribute it to post partum depression. The challenges Sam and his wife faced were/are extraordinary.

From the comment by "fr_of_sams" (http://www.nydailynews.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=84311):

Their children were twin girls. Born over one year ago. Severely premature: 24 weeks gestation. Severely disabled. Require 24-hour nursing care for their entire lives. Cannot eat, and will be on feeding tubes for the rest of their lives. Constant medical treatment and medical crises. Maybe someday they will walk. Maybe not. They will never really talk. The financial pressures on this couple were severe: they had already used up all insurance benefit limits, and burnt through their own personal savings with their retirement savings following rapidly...

araneae4• 17 years ago

Sometimes the ancient Roman practice of exposure seems almost humane.

akadien• 17 years ago

Now his wife is left to care for two high-need children, grieve for her husband, and figure out a way to pay for it all one day (maybe). Looks like he made the challenges facing his wife even more extraordinary now.

pskomoroch• 17 years ago

Full comment (in case link no longer works):

"Their children were twin girls. Born over one year ago. Severely premature: 24 weeks gestation. Severely disabled. Require 24-hour nursing care for their entire lives. Cannot eat, and will be on feeding tubes for the rest of their lives. Constant medical treatment and medical crises. Maybe someday they will walk. Maybe not. They will never really talk. The financial pressures on this couple were severe: they had already used up all insurance benefit limits, and burnt through their own personal savings with their retirement savings following rapidly. We should put the blame for Sam's death where it belongs. We have the technology to keep little girls like that alive. We have a society that pretty much insists upon doing so. But we put the financial and organizational and emotional burden entirely on the parents. We allow insurance companies to cap benefits, and we have no social system for rescuing people from these straights until they are literally homeless and bereft"

JabavuAdams6• 17 years ago

Holy shit, that's awful!

My wife and I are new parents, and the one, one thing that kept us sane some nights was the hope that one day we'd be able to talk to our daughter and see her grow up healthy and happy.

A friend of mine described parenting as: "the highs are higher and the lows are lower". Sometimes a lot lower.

JabavuAdams6• 17 years ago

It's the nature of depression that he might have even thought he was doing his family a favour.

Suicide is often a reaction to a set of constraints that are perceived to be unsolvable. I.e. I can't fail, but I'm gonna. I can't let my loved ones down. I can't stand to face my friends after doing X. The pain is unbearable, so I'll just save everyone the trouble...

Imagine a warrior who commits suicide rather than admitting defeat, because he can't face the shame (quite possibly imagined) of failing in his duties.

aaronblohowiak4• 17 years ago

In all of your examples, you are depicting suicide as a short-sighted or cowardly act.

An alternative explanation is that suicide is often committed in the pursuit of pain relief. It may be seeking relief from a terrible situation, a chronic illness, cultural damnation, or any other source of suffering.

If your example of a warrior committing suicide was meant to refer to seppuku then the warrior would not kill themselves "because he can't face the shame". I suggest you learn more about the ritual here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku

I don't think that it is right for one person to judge the level of suffering another is willing to endure.

ice_man• 17 years ago

I took his Information Theory course at U of T. He was a brilliant guy. I remember him young and full of life. This is shocking and very sad.

sweis• 17 years ago

This is sad. He was a co-worker of mine.

Here's more info: http://nyulocal.com/on-campus/2010/01/13/nyu-computer-scienc...

kurtosis• 17 years ago

Nothing much I can add. I didn't know him personally, but I was a huge fan of Sam Roweis and I learned a lot from reading his papers. It's very sad to think that there won't be any more.

JabavuAdams6• 17 years ago

Sad. I was at U of T before his time. What is it about (Toronto) AI researchers?

Researcher Sam Roweis took his own life last night. Here's one of his lectures.

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