How a Single Oxycontin Pill Nearly Ruined One Man's Life

Re:How a Single Oxycontin Pill Nearly Ruined One Man's Life by derefr on Monday August 06, 2012 @03:02PM (#4346658)

I think the reason this has received such attention from HN isn't the sympathy it could garner (there isn't much), but rather the empathy. Only a small minority of HN can truly identify with those who are in intractable pain; they can understand their plight, but they don't feel it themselves. But when thinking about someone with a great job who was "on their way to the top" making one bad (and harmless!) decision, and then losing everything they had worked for because of it, and having to start from scratch with a nearly-indelible black mark on their record--well, I can imagine the mirror neurons of a lot of HNers are firing at that pain.

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Re:How a Single Oxycontin Pill Nearly Ruined One Man's Life by tptacek on Monday August 06, 2012 @03:10PM (#4346701)

I feel like more insight is being generated by those comments that point out how correlated this guy's personal judgement and financial advisory performance is likely to be.

Also: he got the conviction expunged. The people with "nearly indelible black marks" don't have that option.

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Re:How a Single Oxycontin Pill Nearly Ruined One Man's Life by summerdown2 on Tuesday August 07, 2012 @02:17AM (#4348958)

I don't understand why you feel his work ability is at all correlated with this. It seems to me I hear the same narrative frequently with American politicians: "Clinton's sexual misconduct means he's bound to be a bad president," etc.

This goes to the concept of "character," which I honestly don't understand. Why do we insist that people be flawless in all aspects of their lives? I find history to be full of examples of people who excel at one trait but are terrible at another.

Doesn't he get a private life, uncorrelated with work? I mean, I'd understand it if the article pointed out he was a heavy drug user who needed to steal for a habit, but the only thing this guy seems to have done wrong was handle stupid laws in a poor way. Does that stop him dealing with stocks? I don't think the two correlate, and I think people ought to have to make more significant mistakes before its time to discard them.

I guess what I feel here is this could be anyone, and I'm uncomfortable with such a punishment for a small error.

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