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The topic has been bothering me quite a bit, lately. We've all seen pictures of the freaks with thousands of piercings and tattoos which largely bar them from gainful employment for life (unless savvy enough to capitalize on their modifications). Alcoholism, etc, are vices as old as civilization with the potential to irreversibly destroy a life. Fiscal irresponsibility, transmittable diseases, etc. Really there's no shortage of deliberate actions which will permanently and irreversibly destroy a persons future to the point where it has little meaning, and yet if someone is unwise enough to voice their intentions to end it this is usually met with forcible confinement. Is it not a double standard? That we allow people to sink further and further into ruination and not lift a finger out of the claim that "it's their life", but if they should desire to escape at any point, suddenly they are undeserving of their own free will? Why should a healthy and fully sane individual who simply sees no purpose to further participation in the rat race be rammed through a variety of medical establishments in the aim of "curing" them? If person A is going to blow their life savings in Vegas, losing everything and condemning them to vagrancy, should they not be stopped and institutionalized just as much as someone who is simply tired of living? Is it out of selfishness? A need to enforce a herd mentality that life is "precious" lest too many realize that life is, ultimately, utterly bereft of any purpose? Is this prohibition merely rooted in religious doctrines aimed at curbing unnecessary attrition, from a time when a single human really was an incredibly valuable resource to society? 
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Jan 30, 2015 06:04
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Because suicide is almost never made by a rational mind, but a sick one. It's one thing for a person with a terminal diagnosis to choose to end their lives with dignity, it's another for a healthy 20 year old with treatable depression to kill themselves.
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Jan 30, 2015 06:11
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gO7uemm6Yo
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Jan 30, 2015 06:11
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Rime posted:The topic has been bothering me quite a bit, lately. We've all seen pictures of the freaks with thousands of piercings and tattoos which largely bar them from gainful employment for life (unless savvy enough to capitalize on their modifications). Alcoholism, etc, are vices as old as civilization with the potential to irreversibly destroy a life. Fiscal irresponsibility, transmittable diseases, etc. Really there's no shortage of deliberate actions which will permanently and irreversibly destroy a persons future to the point where it has little meaning, and yet if someone is unwise enough to voice their intentions to end it this is usually met with forcible confinement. Healthy people do not want to commit suicide barring something like being imprisoned in a GULAG. Raskolnikov38 fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Jan 30, 2015 |
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Jan 30, 2015 06:12
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It's because people tend to have hope, and death is actually, well and truly, irrevocable where other things are not. Thus, having hope means preventing people from killing themselves, but not necessarily forbidding them from doing anything that harms them. It's also worth noting that euthanasia has support among a great many people, suggesting that suicide is okay if there really are no other options. The issue that most people who attempt suicide are unwell mentally is also probably a factor too.
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Jan 30, 2015 06:13
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Yeah we can't yet tell the difference between someone who wants to kill themselves for rational reasons and someone who wants to kill themselves for irrational reasons, so it's better to err on the side of caution. I support voluntary euthanasia under strict medical control, if criteria are met and after psychological evaluation. Rime posted:Is it not a double standard? That we allow people to sink further and further into ruination and not lift a finger out of the claim that "it's their life", but if they should desire to escape at any point, suddenly they are undeserving of their own free will? Sinking into ruination is one thing and isn't necessarily a ruin itself. It's hard to redeem yourself from death. Even someone with ridiculous body mods can take them out and recover, or carve themselves a niche. Rime posted:Is it out of selfishness? A need to enforce a herd mentality that life is "precious" lest too many realize that life is, ultimately, utterly bereft of any purpose? Is this prohibition merely rooted in religious doctrines aimed at curbing unnecessary attrition, from a time when a single human really was an incredibly valuable resource to society? Maybe eventually society will reach that level of nihilism, but there's also an argument that you by nature of a non-lovely existence have social obligaitons that must be considered. Obnoxious orphans are and should be exempt from this policy. boner confessor fucked around with this message at 06:17 on Jan 30, 2015 |
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Jan 30, 2015 06:13
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I don't know why you're talking like addiction is something people just sit on their hands about when, much like suicide, there are multiple organizations whose purpose is to combat it. People intervene in other people's horrible addictions all the time. They aren't always successful, but still!
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Jan 30, 2015 06:24
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Popular Thug Drink posted:Maybe eventually society will reach that level of nihilism, but there's also an argument that you by nature of a non-lovely existence have social obligaitons that must be considered. Obnoxious orphans are and should be exempt from this policy. Ahh, but that's one of the things which troubles me. What is the objective measure of a "lovely existence", other than trite comparisons in living standards? As individuals, how can we look at someone and tell them that they have no reason to give up, when from their perspective they have little reason to continue living? How is anyone more qualified to make that judgement call than the person making the decision in the first place? Thus is removing their free will in this matter not tacitly stating that they are unfit individuals, regardless of whether they are indeed mentally sound?
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Jan 30, 2015 06:46
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I think it's fair game for society to try to stop people from committing suicide. People who are rationally committed to suicide tend to do it without anybody noticing. If someone is going around talking about suicide, it probably means they haven't made up their minds, or have some kind of mental condition.
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Jan 30, 2015 06:48
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Rime posted:Ahh, but that's one of the things which troubles me. What is the objective measure of a "lovely existence", other than trite comparisons in living standards? As individuals, how can we look at someone and tell them that they have no reason to give up, when from their perspective they have little reason to continue living? How is anyone more qualified to make that judgement call than the person making the decision in the first place? Thus is removing their free will in this matter not tacitly stating that they are unfit individuals, regardless of whether they are indeed mentally sound? Is this one of those things where "free will" is code for "i'm the smartest person in the room, how dare you judge my actions negatively you don't know me" If you're really suicidal you don't go around seeking sanction anyway so it's moot
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Jan 30, 2015 06:48
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Rime posted:Ahh, but that's one of the things which troubles me. What is the objective measure of a "lovely existence", other than trite comparisons in living standards? As individuals, how can we look at someone and tell them that they have no reason to give up, when from their perspective they have little reason to continue living? How is anyone more qualified to make that judgement call than the person making the decision in the first place? Thus is removing their free will in this matter not tacitly stating that they are unfit individuals, regardless of whether they are indeed mentally sound? Because the Other is a notion that is simultaneously false and true- we cannot really live as another person, but we are able to understand one another well enough to communicate subjective experiences. Through this bridge, we can say that they have no reason to give up because we are enough "them" to know it. We are also not removing their freedom of action by saying this.
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Jan 30, 2015 06:54
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Rime posted:Ahh, but that's one of the things which troubles me. What is the objective measure of a "lovely existence", other than trite comparisons in living standards? As individuals, how can we look at someone and tell them that they have no reason to give up, when from their perspective they have little reason to continue living? How is anyone more qualified to make that judgement call than the person making the decision in the first place? Thus is removing their free will in this matter not tacitly stating that they are unfit individuals, regardless of whether they are indeed mentally sound? Humans on the individual scale are not very rational actors. An immense amount of weight is given to current emotional states, with people estimating that they will feel the same way for orders of magnitude longer time than they actually end up feeling that way. Humanity in the aggregate is a slightly more rational actor and realizes that we should keep people from offing themselves when they think they'll never be happy again as very often they're wrong. None of the things you named in the OP are really as irreversibly life ending as you're treating them and people live more or less happy lives after experiencing them on a frequent basis. I'm not so sure why you're hung up over free will, society places a vast amounts of limits on the actions people can take in all facets of life.
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Jan 30, 2015 06:55
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:I'm not so sure why you're hung up over free will, It's the easiest angle by which you can argue that your desire to kill yourself is in fact rational and noble
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Jan 30, 2015 07:01
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Is this thread the net nerd version of the crying out for help fake suicide?
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Jan 30, 2015 07:35
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Whoa whoa, I was just drinking tea and thinking about lovely philosophical quandaries. Let's not be hasty.
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Jan 30, 2015 08:04
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If you actually go through with killing yourself, how free are you really, or are you governed by your emotions and biological fight or flight responses? Typically people don't have a Socratean dialogue with themselves and plan it out in detail before committing suicide, they act on impulse, especially males. That's why having a gun in the house increases chance of suicide significantly, for instance. America Inc. fucked around with this message at 08:28 on Jan 30, 2015 |
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Jan 30, 2015 08:26
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Rime posted:Whoa whoa, I was just drinking tea and thinking about lovely philosophical quandaries. Let's not be hasty. Yeah whatever. I've heard all this poo poo before.
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Jan 30, 2015 09:01
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I think a more interesting philosophical question is what would be the most awesome way to kill yourself. I would vote for being fired out of a cannon and hitting your personal villain of choice at 300 mph. In the face. With your fist. Which is triggered to explode. VVV That's how Mao died right America Inc. fucked around with this message at 09:33 on Jan 30, 2015 |
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Jan 30, 2015 09:10
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LookingGodIntheEye posted:I think a more interesting philosophical question is what would be the most awesome way to kill yourself. http://www.foxnews.com/story/2009/02/26/man-28-dies-after-guzzling-viagra-during-12-hour-romp/
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Jan 30, 2015 09:17
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I think it is similar to how many more people are concerned with the well-being of fetuses than children. Preventing a suicide is a relatively easily defined issue as is preventing an abortion. You lock a suicidal person up or you close abortion clinics. You don't really need to address underlying issues or broader aspects of why a person wants to do it, it is just bad and must be stopped. Dust off hands, job well done. The person may still be miserable but they're alive and that's all that matters. Caring for a kid or stopping a person ruining their lives? Well that's a much trickier question and probably requires "hard earned" money being taxed and spent on people who might be quite hard to like. It also runs into questions of what is a good life or what exactly does a child need to be considered well cared for? Which leads to questions about self image, a lot of people really don't like to think their successful and happy life came from being lucky enough to have decently well off parents and being somewhat lucky in their life choices and context, they want to believe their successes are on them. Start suggesting intervention that will level the playing field and people get uncomfortable and start seeing achievements they're proud of as happenstance. When "I worked hard" is in danger of becoming "my hard work paid off because of my context" suddenly labeling the vulnerable as people who used their free will to make bad choices becomes a lot more attractive and comforting. Of course as has been said, there are plenty of people out there who do try and help people out of bad situations like addiction or poverty but they're a smaller group than those who want to stop people committing suicide. Hence why suicidal people are put in protective custody while drug addicts will only be arrested for possession.
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Jan 30, 2015 11:32
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zoux posted:Because suicide is almost never made by a rational mind, but a sick one. It's one thing for a person with a terminal diagnosis to choose to end their lives with dignity, it's another for a healthy 20 year old with treatable depression to kill themselves. Congrats on a completely unreflective response. The scenarios the op picked all have results that are permanent and are not the products of, probably by your standard, rational minds. Getting poo poo tons of ugly tattoos, alcohol abuse and carelessness with money are, if depression is treatable and an irrational response to living in a garbage world, equally irrational and, presumably equally treatable. The double standard is the point that the op is pointing out, and it's a totally salient one.
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Jan 30, 2015 14:29
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Rime posted:The topic has been bothering me quite a bit, lately. We've all seen pictures of the freaks with thousands of piercings and tattoos which largely bar them from gainful employment for life (unless savvy enough to capitalize on their modifications). Alcoholism, etc, are vices as old as civilization with the potential to irreversibly destroy a life. Fiscal irresponsibility, transmittable diseases, etc. Really there's no shortage of deliberate actions which will permanently and irreversibly destroy a persons future to the point where it has little meaning, and yet if someone is unwise enough to voice their intentions to end it this is usually met with forcible confinement. The core argument here is that because we attempt to block suicide, we must attempt to block anything "life-ruining" in order to not be hypocrites. But that doesn't follow at all and it's a really poorly thought out idea (and not least because you have a ton of obviously wrong factual premises here). The simplest explanation is that just because we intervene in some instances does not mean we must intervene in all instances: any intervention requires balancing the costs of intervening against the potential benefit. To prevent "fiscal irresponsibility" requires extreme and constant governmental intrusion into someone's life. To yank a bottle of pills away from someone suicidal does not. Everything you describe as "life ruining" are actions that can be taken in moderation without ruining your life: millions of people gamble somewhat, drink somewhat, make some stupid purchases. Millions of people do not commit a little suicide. To the extent that we can discourage people from taking severely bad decisions we generally attempt to, but the level of coercion that we are willing to apply depends on how effective that coercion will be and the side effects of trying to use that coercion. Mental illnesses don't make a person a bad person or reflect poorly on them: they are no different from being born with a defective heart valve, an allergy to peanuts, or the like. But they are illnesses, and suicide is the way they cause death. Trying to block suicide is no different from trying to revive people from dying who have a heart attack, trying to remove cancer, etc. Most people who have attempted suicide and gotten treatment are very, very glad they did not succeed in killing themselves. Among your many, many factual errors here: 1) It is illegal to knowingly transmit transmittable diseases. 2) Life-ruining and life-ending are not at all the same thing. Virtually all people who have had their "life ruined" prefer to still be alive. A future "with no meaning" is nothing like no future. 3) There is no way to determine if a "healthy and fully sane" person who wants to commit suicide is actually healthy and fully sane without ramming them through a variety of medical establishments and it is an infintesimally tiny group of people who are healthy, sane, and yet still wish to kill themselves. Given how infintesimally small that proportion is, suicidal attempts can be considered a virtually conclusive symptom of mental illness until proven otherwise. 4) Many times the law is involved in trying to prevent gambling/alcohol/drug addicts from relapsing Frankly I think you should see a doctor and discuss these feelings, because this seems like a pretty obvious case of suicidal idealation. And this is something that is treatable: people do get better. Rime posted:Whoa whoa, I was just drinking tea and thinking about lovely philosophical quandaries. Let's not be hasty. The red flag is that you're describing healthy and sane people simply being tired of living, which is not a thing that actually occurs but is a rationalization that occurs in depressed people. evilweasel fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Jan 30, 2015 |
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Jan 30, 2015 14:56
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And we even take this cost-benefit analysis to preventing suicide itself. If medical professionals find out you want to kill yourself, because you told people beforehand or because you had a failed attempt, at that point they intervene. But no one supports putting cameras in everyone's bathroom so a quick response team can rappel in if they see you start downing a whole bottle of pills.
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Jan 30, 2015 15:01
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I think it's something like 99% of suicide attempts don't end up trying again within a year?
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Jan 30, 2015 15:09
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"In a mad world, only the mad are sane" -Akira Kurosawa I've always had the impression that remarkably intelligent people are more likely to commit suicide. This society we have constructed for ourselves is outlandish, overbearing and totally off-the-wall crazy. I lost several good friends during the late teenage years who were some of the smartest people I knew at the time. Comatoast fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Jan 30, 2015 |
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Jan 30, 2015 15:11
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Comatoast posted:I've always had the impression that remarkably intelligent people are more likely to commit suicide. This society we have constructed for ourselves is outlandish, overbearing and totally off-the-wall crazy. I lost several good friends during the late teenage years who I were some of the smartest people I knew at the time. I am not aware of any statistics to this effect,. However if there were, the more logical assumption is that high intelligence and mental illnesses are comorbid -- that the genes/environmental factors/etc that cause high intelligence (however defined) also tend to cause depression. I would not come to the conclusion that the more intelligent you are the more likely you are to realize suicide is the rational choice.
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Jan 30, 2015 15:16
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I don't see how getting a bunch of piercings or tattoos is even on the scale of "life-ruining." They may weird you out but I see those people working all the time, they're not pariahs. Well, at least not in Seattle. e: It sounds more like the OP just thinks that drunks, people with tattoos and poor people might as well be dead.
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Jan 30, 2015 15:17
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If sanity is a measure of seeing the world objectively and intelligence is, at least partially, a measure of clarity of taking in and processing information, then sanity and intelligence are correlates.
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Jan 30, 2015 15:28
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Sizone posted:If sanity is a measure of seeing the world objectively and intelligence is, at least partially, a measure of clarity of taking in and processing information, then sanity and intelligence are correlates. These definitions, and this reasoning, are idiotic.
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Jan 30, 2015 15:29
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Sizone posted:If sanity is a measure of seeing the world objectively and intelligence is, at least partially, a measure of clarity of taking in and processing information, then sanity and intelligence are correlates. Depends whether you take a social or scientific view of sanity. There are quite a few things that have historically been considered insane because they were socially unaccpetable, while having little scientific basis for the classification.
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Jan 30, 2015 15:30
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evilweasel posted:These definitions, and this reasoning, are idiotic. Let's see yours then because this 3) There is no way to determine if a "healthy and fully sane" person who wants to commit suicide is actually healthy and fully sane without ramming them through a variety of medical establishments and it is an infintesimally tiny group of people who are healthy, sane, and yet still wish to kill themselves. Given how infintesimally small that proportion is, suicidal attempts can be considered a virtually conclusive symptom of mental illness until proven otherwise. sounds like utter horseshit to me.
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Jan 30, 2015 15:38
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Sizone posted:Let's see yours then because this What I posted is in accordance with actual medical knowledge. What you posted was an attempt to define "sane" in a way that nobody ever uses. "Sane" is, essentially, a shorthand term for use in common speech that doesn't have any actual medical precision and does not exist on a spectrum of insane<--->sane in a way that can be correlated to anything. It's a shorthand way of saying "has mental illnesses" vs "does not have mental illnesses" and a vague feeling of what the severity of it those illnesses are. It is not a medical term (it is roughly akin to "healthy" or "not healthy" and it cannot be defined in a way that lets you correlate it to intelligence. If you're discussing trying to correlate something to intelligence you would need to correlate an actual diagnosis (i.e. depression, bipolar, schizophrenia, etc). Your definition of intelligence is obviously flawed as well, in that intelligence is a measure of the output without a clearly defined understanding of what causes intelligence. We have various measures of intelligence but they're all based on the results of the brain on various tests. As to what "sounds like utter horseshit to you", well, I don't really know which part of what I posted is hard to grasp or which part you don't actually understand, but it's not like suicide and suicide attempts haven't been studied extensively so it's not all that relevant what you think on the matter, more what actual evidence shows.
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Jan 30, 2015 16:28
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SedanChair posted:I don't see how getting a bunch of piercings or tattoos is even on the scale of "life-ruining." They may weird you out but I see those people working all the time, they're not pariahs. Well, at least not in Seattle. Yeah, it seems like the solution to people crippled by social stigma for largely harmless behaviors is to work to reduce the stigma (which is already happening in many cases), not to hand them a bottle of pills and tell them godspeed. Also, the OP's definition of a life with meaning seems to be a McMansion in the suburbs, 3 SUVs, and a trophy wife (or husband.)
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Jan 30, 2015 18:03
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Seek outside opinions on a deep moral quandry, reduced to ignorant goons taking wildly speculative (and inaccurate) potshots at my character. Should have posted in GBS instead. 
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Jan 30, 2015 18:17
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Effectronica posted:Because the Other is a notion that is simultaneously false and true- we cannot really live as another person, but we are able to understand one another well enough to communicate subjective experiences. Through this bridge, we can say that they have no reason to give up because we are enough "them" to know it. We are also not removing their freedom of action by saying this. But they will always be more them than we are them, so why do the suicidal not know, as we apparently do, that they have reason to live? Because they're mentally ill? Circular.
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Jan 30, 2015 18:19
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Rime posted:Seek outside opinions on a deep moral quandry, reduced to ignorant goons taking wildly speculative (and inaccurate) potshots at my character. You've gotten a lot of coherent arguments on the subject, though none of them agree with your position.
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Jan 30, 2015 18:20
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Rime posted:Seek outside opinions on a deep moral quandry, reduced to ignorant goons taking wildly speculative (and inaccurate) potshots at my character. I'm sorry that you're defensive and upset that people didn't agree with your desire to logic your way into a noble suicide. There are hugboxier places you could have posted this and it's your responsibility to chose a venue appropriate for the kind of responses you desire. E: Who is actually taking potshots at your character? This is a really passive aggressive way to dismiss arguments you don't like.
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Jan 30, 2015 18:21
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Smudgie Buggler posted:But they will always be more them than we are them, so why do the suicidal not know, as we apparently do, that they have reason to live? Because they're mistaken, whether mentally unwell or not, in the vast majority of cases. Rime posted:Seek outside opinions on a deep moral quandry, reduced to ignorant goons taking wildly speculative (and inaccurate) potshots at my character. This hasn't happened, so to make it happen, I'm just gonna say that your tipping habits are probably subpar.
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Jan 30, 2015 19:08
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If you would like, OP, I could agree with the idea that everyone should have the right to off themselves at their own discretion, without needing to provide much of a reason. However, I would not be able to dispute the notion that most people who would do it are probably mentally unwell.
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Jan 30, 2015 19:12
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This really stands out to me as trying to romanticize (not the best word but I can't think of an alternative) suicide by framing it as a logical and perhaps even laudable choice. At the very least the OP frames suicide in a much more favorable light than the other examples of "life-ruining" actions despite the fact that tattoos and piercings are only life-ruining because of social stigma that has started to disappear, addiction is a treatable illness, and bankruptcy does not necessarily mean one will be homeless (although this happens depressingly often), meaning that none of them are truly as permanent to suicide and are thus false equivalences. And it's not like plenty of other people haven't romanticized suicide as well, pop culture does it all the time and has forever, although this is the first time I've seen the argument that it is necessarily and inevitable conclusion if one just thinks of life objectively and logically. Which is also an incorrect conclusion because there really is no more objective reason to kill oneself than there is to stay alive. If people can convince society that they have a good reason for killing themselves, like people with debilitating terminal illness, then honestly I don't believe they should be stopped. But "because I feel pretty 'meh' about this whole life thing" is not a sufficiently good reason like the OP asserts. Also there is no such thing as free will so there's no reason to be worried about violating it. And even if there were we violate people's free will all the time, so who cares about one more?
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Jan 30, 2015 19:41
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