John Barnett before death "if anything happens, it's not suicide", claims friend

Re:John Barnett before death "if anything happens, it's not ... by sedatk on Friday March 15, 2024 @03:29AM (#39712944)

No. If you’re concerned that you might get murdered, and want to make it clear that you have no intention of killing yourself, telling your one friend about it in a conversation in the midst of moving a sofa with no records to prove it whatsoever is the worst possible way of doing it.

Tweet it, send it in a message, leave a note in your home. But, “hey push that side, and let’s lift this in 3..2…. oh by the way I have no intention of killing myself… 1… go! There you go”. No. That doesn’t check out. Even if that conversation actually took place, it’s not helpful at all because it’s so easy to dismiss as hearsay. That’s actually a curse you put on your friend if it really happened.

EDIT: Apparently, the aforementioned help in the article was being a pallbearer at the friend’s father’s funeral. That turns out to be a less and less proper conversation for the occasion.

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Re:John Barnett before death "if anything happens, it's not ... by switch007 on Friday March 15, 2024 @03:55AM (#39713102)

While evaluation of someone's behaviour to work out the truth is a valid endeavour, I find people have a tendency – and I notice it often in our community – to expect perfect rationality in humans at all times. I guess as it makes it easier to criticise them.

People who are stressed, sick, anxious, depressed etc often operate more on emotion and in aa reactive way rather than with foresight, clarity and rationality.

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Re:John Barnett before death "if anything happens, it's not ... by sedatk on Friday March 15, 2024 @05:11AM (#39713557)

I mean, yes, but when we take irrationality into account, we can't discount the irrationality of saying "if it's suicide, it's not me" to a friend, and then committing suicide right after.

My point isn't about what he supposedly did made sense or not, but what he did was completely useless if true, and even debating it is useless now because of the way it was done. That's why I mentioned how he cursed his friend with that.

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Re:John Barnett before death "if anything happens, it's not ... by Jomus on Friday March 15, 2024 @03:35AM (#39712973)

realest comments get no love

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Re:John Barnett before death "if anything happens, it's not ... by xeornet on Friday March 15, 2024 @04:30AM (#39713329)

So you’ve never made a comment about something in passing that turned out to be true? Completely reasonable for this to be said in conversation with a friend but not taken seriously enough to write it down.

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Re:John Barnett before death "if anything happens, it's not ... by sedatk on Friday March 15, 2024 @05:12AM (#39713561)

I'm not arguing that at all. See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39713557

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