7 ms·

It is insane that we make people huddle into dark alleys and underground societies, simply to have agency over their own lives. I know and understand the main

by whack 11y ago

It is insane that we make people huddle into dark alleys and underground societies, simply to have agency over their own lives. I know and understand the main arguments against assisted suicide. The idea that it would pressure people into taking their own lives, in order to please others. With respect, such arguments are nonsensical. People feel external pressures every day to do things that they may not want to do. Pursue careers they may not enjoy. Get married when they may not want to. Have kids even if they don't want to. Should the government step in every time and ban the activity entirely, simply to ensure that no one ever gives in to peer pressure? Of course not. We recognize that freedom, liberty and individual agency, trumps any concerns about peer pressure. We recognize that our life decisions should be in our own hands, and not in the hands of big brother. It's time we allowed people full control to end their lives on their own terms, and not on the terms forced upon them.

JackFr 11y ago
And yet we have suicide prevention hotlines. Go figure.
- detaro 11y ago
  Asking for help is a form of personal agency, especially (or maybe even only) if there actually is someone available to ask.
- XorNot 11y ago
  There's a big difference between emotional teenagers doing something impulsive, people with mental illness (treatable) doing something out of desperation and people with terminal illnesses or dementia choosing to avoid unpreventable suffering or losing everything they are. The biggest problem is most of the conditions which wipe people out take your rational agency as their first action.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- vacri 11y ago
  We have gambling addiction hotlines too, but don't blanket-ban gambling.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  Many people think that abortion is a bad choice, but one that women should be allowed to make. Saying you shouldn't do something is not the same as saying you shouldn't be allowed to do it.
  - JackFr 11y ago
    The point is that people have always had, and will always have the ability to take their own lives. The prohibition under consideration here is that of taking someone else's life. Stated differently, assisted suicide is simply killing another person who has expressed a desire to die. I think it's reasonable to say someone shouldn't kill another person. The crux of the issue is the desire to die. Traditionally, the desire to die has been considered always to be a disordered desire, that is, a desire which though authentically felt, is best not acted upon. The cultural change that the assisted suicide movement is trying to make is that sometimes the desire to die is not disordered, that in fact for a class of people life literally is not worth living.
- superuser2 11y ago
  The very act of calling a suicide prevention hotline is solid evidence that the caller does not truly want to die. The point isn't that people should die, it's that they should choose. Compelling someone else's continued consciousness is absurd and, depending on the subjective experiencing of being inside that person's head, can be among the cruelest forms of torture. Just as it would be to fail to help someone who wants to stay alive.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    > The very act of calling a suicide prevention hotline is solid evidence that the caller does not truly want to die. This sentence is proof that you do not understand suicide and have not read modern information about suicide. Since your misinformation is dangerous I urge you to do some reading before talking about something that you clearly know little about. Suicidality is complex, but "calling a hotline is solid evidence someone doesn't want to truly die" falls into several of the myths people spread about suicide: http://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help-you/myths-about-suicide http://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help-you/myths-about-su... Myth: People who talk about suicide aren’t serious and won’t go through with it. Myth: People who threaten suicide are just attention seeking and shouldn’t be taken seriously. Myth: People who are suicidal want to die. Myth: If a person is serious about killing themselves then there is nothing you can do.
    - superuser2 11y ago
      Taking steps to avoid death is trivially a signal that in some way a person wishes to avoid death; whether that side of their internal conflict will prevail is another matter and, of course, not at all certain. But it is 100% within the bounds of respecting their agency (and, I'd argue, a duty) to help someone who is fighting to stay alive do so. The argument is that suicide hotlines don't imply a paternalistic "all citizens must keep breathing at all costs" ideology because they require the voluntary step of asking for help, and someone who asks for help can be meaningfully said to want it. >Myth: People who are suicidal want to die. I agree that this is not true in general, but to say that it is never true is more of a philosophical position (the topic of this thread) than the measurable science fact you're making it out to be. > something that you clearly know little about. I can find many responses to this, but none of them civil.
paulddraper 11y ago
"our life decisions should be in our own hands" On the scale of things, that's probably one of the least intrusive ways that big brother helps. I mean, we outlaw people working for too little money, and a hundred other things before we get to something as self-detrimental as death itself. I appreciate the libertarianism; I just wanted to point out that this is very, very far from the most egregious big-brother-helping policy.
- meric 11y ago
  Central banks are discussing outlawing cash, so that when the time comes and they want to impose negative rates, they won't be limited by a lower bound - they can be as financially repressive as they like. Outlawing suicide is the same - if the state is overly oppressive, people would rather suicide than to live under the oppression, and when they suicide they are no longer productive. Removing the possibility of suicide removes the lower bound of how oppressive the state can be. See force feeding in Guantanamo bay for example. By stopping deaths from hunger strikes, the state can treat it's prisoners as badly as it wants.
  - daodedickinson 11y ago
    Consider that suicide removes the limit on how awful a society can be by allowing it to kill off anyone who doesn't fit in instead of helping to find a way to improve their situation. Our communities should focus on healing mental suffering so that the despairing are allowed to see that the lens of depression is not the only way to see their situation. In one Netherlands case in 2014, a 35 year old woman was killed by a Dutch doctor for her depression symptoms. The first two doctors she approached referred her to treatment options, but she kept shopping around until she found a doctor who evaluated her for only two weeks, then killed her two days later. As someone who had terrible depression for years, and has been depression free for years, I know how cruelly murderous this is. It is no better than when cries for help on the internet are met with bullying and end in suicide. Actually, it is worse because the doctors are administering the coup de grace. cite for this woman's story: http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-netherlands-euthanasia-law-is.html http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-netherlands-... Another example of a medical system not supplying a human person with the community and loving support he needed: "In one highly publicized example last year, the clinic helped a 63-year-old man with severe psychiatric problems to end his life. After a very active career working for government, the patient in question could not face his upcoming retirement. In an interview with the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad the clinic’s psychiatrist, Gerty Casteelen said the man 'managed to convince me that it was impossible for him to go on. He was all alone in the world. He’d never had a partner. He did have family but he was not in touch with them. It was almost like he’d never developed as a person. He felt like he didn’t have the right to live. His self-hatred was all consuming.'" http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/03/the-dutch-debate-doctor-assisted-suicide-for-depression.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/03/the-dutch-d...
DanBC 11y ago
I'm in favour of assisted dying. (Please don't call it assisted suicide - we want to prevent suicide. It's useful to keep the word suicide for something we want to stop). > With respect, such arguments are nonsensical. Elder abuse is rampant. It's easy to imagine that the victim of such abuse may be more willing to die. But assisted death may help this - there would (should) be considerable professional involvement to make sure there's no coersion or abuse. When we look at places that have assisted dying we find some cases of people who probably died for the wrong reasons. Those cases are always waved around - but people against assisted dying need to come up with some numbers.
- startling 11y ago
  From the article: “I don’t mind a bit being labelled a suicide.”
  - DanBC 11y ago
    That person doesn't mind being labled a suicide, but people campaigning for assisted dying have to spend time and money talking about the difference between suicide (generally something we want to avoid) and assisted dying (something we want to provide). By continuing to use the word suicide for people who chose assisted death you make it harder for people to get assisted death legalised.
    - gknoy 11y ago
      How is "suicide" different from "assisted dying"? I don't understand how they are different, and why one is good and one is not.
      - DanBC 11y ago
        Suicide is when you kill your self. Assissted dying is when you ask a doctor to kill you, or to help you kill yourself. It's useful to seperate out people who want to control their death when they have an incurable illness from people who want to die when they have a treatable mental illness. It's especially useful if you want assisted death to become legal. It makes it a bit clearer that you're not trying to make it easier for people with mental illness to die.
random_upvoter 11y ago
Where I live people can, and do, get euthanasia for psychological suffering. Now, research has shown that a rather large percentage of the elderly are suffering from depression. Part of the reason is, of course, that getting old can be very painful. But another part of the reason is that in today's society many old people are almost criminally neglected. The only right solution to this problem is that society begins to take better care of old people. But now we begin to offer an alternative "solution" which consist of helping these people to kill themselves. And look, now there's extra budget to take care of the old people that remain. Did you see what just happened? Assisted suicide has, sneakily, become a means to control the cost of elderly care and to avoid addressing the real problem -- while thinking ourselves very enlightened and progressive as a bonus.
- Omniusaspirer 11y ago
  Aging is the real problem, and suicide by suffering elderly is unlikely to make young researchers turn their backs on the search for the fountain of youth.
- GunboatDiplomat 11y ago
  Society is not obligated to take care of the elderly. They had 60+ years to prepare for being old, and if they didn't, the burden doesn't fall on me.
- klibertp 11y ago
  > The only right solution to this problem is that society begins to take better care of old people. What about another issue of incurable, terminally ill patients who descend into a years-long hell of losing themselves to the pain, to the illness; who day by day see their brains becoming less and less capable? Are you sure we're even qualified to really "take care" of such people? It's not about elderly; it's about suffering. If you can't cure or ease someone's pain, step aside. You're in no position to tell such person what to do because you failed them already. If a suffering person decides it's enough, you have no right to tell them - to make them! - to suffer anymore. Assisted suicide is a way out of hell you can't picture fully without going there yourself. It's easy to say that "we need to take better care of someone", but this makes those who don't want to be taken care of left with nothing. And to repeat, there are people that we don't know how to help and the only thing we can offer them is to prolong their suffering.

by whack 11y ago

JackFr 11y ago

And yet we have suicide prevention hotlines. Go figure.

detaro 11y ago
Asking for help is a form of personal agency, especially (or maybe even only) if there actually is someone available to ask.
XorNot 11y ago
There's a big difference between emotional teenagers doing something impulsive, people with mental illness (treatable) doing something out of desperation and people with terminal illnesses or dementia choosing to avoid unpreventable suffering or losing everything they are. The biggest problem is most of the conditions which wipe people out take your rational agency as their first action.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
vacri 11y ago
We have gambling addiction hotlines too, but don't blanket-ban gambling.
PhasmaFelis 11y ago
Many people think that abortion is a bad choice, but one that women should be allowed to make. Saying you shouldn't do something is not the same as saying you shouldn't be allowed to do it.
- JackFr 11y ago
  The point is that people have always had, and will always have the ability to take their own lives. The prohibition under consideration here is that of taking someone else's life. Stated differently, assisted suicide is simply killing another person who has expressed a desire to die. I think it's reasonable to say someone shouldn't kill another person. The crux of the issue is the desire to die. Traditionally, the desire to die has been considered always to be a disordered desire, that is, a desire which though authentically felt, is best not acted upon. The cultural change that the assisted suicide movement is trying to make is that sometimes the desire to die is not disordered, that in fact for a class of people life literally is not worth living.
superuser2 11y ago
The very act of calling a suicide prevention hotline is solid evidence that the caller does not truly want to die. The point isn't that people should die, it's that they should choose. Compelling someone else's continued consciousness is absurd and, depending on the subjective experiencing of being inside that person's head, can be among the cruelest forms of torture. Just as it would be to fail to help someone who wants to stay alive.
- DanBC 11y ago
  > The very act of calling a suicide prevention hotline is solid evidence that the caller does not truly want to die. This sentence is proof that you do not understand suicide and have not read modern information about suicide. Since your misinformation is dangerous I urge you to do some reading before talking about something that you clearly know little about. Suicidality is complex, but "calling a hotline is solid evidence someone doesn't want to truly die" falls into several of the myths people spread about suicide: http://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help-you/myths-about-suicide http://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help-you/myths-about-su... Myth: People who talk about suicide aren’t serious and won’t go through with it. Myth: People who threaten suicide are just attention seeking and shouldn’t be taken seriously. Myth: People who are suicidal want to die. Myth: If a person is serious about killing themselves then there is nothing you can do.
  - superuser2 11y ago
    Taking steps to avoid death is trivially a signal that in some way a person wishes to avoid death; whether that side of their internal conflict will prevail is another matter and, of course, not at all certain. But it is 100% within the bounds of respecting their agency (and, I'd argue, a duty) to help someone who is fighting to stay alive do so. The argument is that suicide hotlines don't imply a paternalistic "all citizens must keep breathing at all costs" ideology because they require the voluntary step of asking for help, and someone who asks for help can be meaningfully said to want it. >Myth: People who are suicidal want to die. I agree that this is not true in general, but to say that it is never true is more of a philosophical position (the topic of this thread) than the measurable science fact you're making it out to be. > something that you clearly know little about. I can find many responses to this, but none of them civil.

paulddraper 11y ago

"our life decisions should be in our own hands" On the scale of things, that's probably one of the least intrusive ways that big brother helps. I mean, we outlaw people working for too little money, and a hundred other things before we get to something as self-detrimental as death itself. I appreciate the libertarianism; I just wanted to point out that this is very, very far from the most egregious big-brother-helping policy.

meric 11y ago
Central banks are discussing outlawing cash, so that when the time comes and they want to impose negative rates, they won't be limited by a lower bound - they can be as financially repressive as they like. Outlawing suicide is the same - if the state is overly oppressive, people would rather suicide than to live under the oppression, and when they suicide they are no longer productive. Removing the possibility of suicide removes the lower bound of how oppressive the state can be. See force feeding in Guantanamo bay for example. By stopping deaths from hunger strikes, the state can treat it's prisoners as badly as it wants.
- daodedickinson 11y ago
  Consider that suicide removes the limit on how awful a society can be by allowing it to kill off anyone who doesn't fit in instead of helping to find a way to improve their situation. Our communities should focus on healing mental suffering so that the despairing are allowed to see that the lens of depression is not the only way to see their situation. In one Netherlands case in 2014, a 35 year old woman was killed by a Dutch doctor for her depression symptoms. The first two doctors she approached referred her to treatment options, but she kept shopping around until she found a doctor who evaluated her for only two weeks, then killed her two days later. As someone who had terrible depression for years, and has been depression free for years, I know how cruelly murderous this is. It is no better than when cries for help on the internet are met with bullying and end in suicide. Actually, it is worse because the doctors are administering the coup de grace. cite for this woman's story: http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-netherlands-euthanasia-law-is.html http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-netherlands-... Another example of a medical system not supplying a human person with the community and loving support he needed: "In one highly publicized example last year, the clinic helped a 63-year-old man with severe psychiatric problems to end his life. After a very active career working for government, the patient in question could not face his upcoming retirement. In an interview with the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad the clinic’s psychiatrist, Gerty Casteelen said the man 'managed to convince me that it was impossible for him to go on. He was all alone in the world. He’d never had a partner. He did have family but he was not in touch with them. It was almost like he’d never developed as a person. He felt like he didn’t have the right to live. His self-hatred was all consuming.'" http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/03/the-dutch-debate-doctor-assisted-suicide-for-depression.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/03/the-dutch-d...

DanBC 11y ago

I'm in favour of assisted dying. (Please don't call it assisted suicide - we want to prevent suicide. It's useful to keep the word suicide for something we want to stop). > With respect, such arguments are nonsensical. Elder abuse is rampant. It's easy to imagine that the victim of such abuse may be more willing to die. But assisted death may help this - there would (should) be considerable professional involvement to make sure there's no coersion or abuse. When we look at places that have assisted dying we find some cases of people who probably died for the wrong reasons. Those cases are always waved around - but people against assisted dying need to come up with some numbers.

startling 11y ago
From the article: “I don’t mind a bit being labelled a suicide.”
- DanBC 11y ago
  That person doesn't mind being labled a suicide, but people campaigning for assisted dying have to spend time and money talking about the difference between suicide (generally something we want to avoid) and assisted dying (something we want to provide). By continuing to use the word suicide for people who chose assisted death you make it harder for people to get assisted death legalised.
  - gknoy 11y ago
    How is "suicide" different from "assisted dying"? I don't understand how they are different, and why one is good and one is not.
    - DanBC 11y ago
      Suicide is when you kill your self. Assissted dying is when you ask a doctor to kill you, or to help you kill yourself. It's useful to seperate out people who want to control their death when they have an incurable illness from people who want to die when they have a treatable mental illness. It's especially useful if you want assisted death to become legal. It makes it a bit clearer that you're not trying to make it easier for people with mental illness to die.

random_upvoter 11y ago

Where I live people can, and do, get euthanasia for psychological suffering. Now, research has shown that a rather large percentage of the elderly are suffering from depression. Part of the reason is, of course, that getting old can be very painful. But another part of the reason is that in today's society many old people are almost criminally neglected. The only right solution to this problem is that society begins to take better care of old people. But now we begin to offer an alternative "solution" which consist of helping these people to kill themselves. And look, now there's extra budget to take care of the old people that remain. Did you see what just happened? Assisted suicide has, sneakily, become a means to control the cost of elderly care and to avoid addressing the real problem -- while thinking ourselves very enlightened and progressive as a bonus.

Omniusaspirer 11y ago
Aging is the real problem, and suicide by suffering elderly is unlikely to make young researchers turn their backs on the search for the fountain of youth.
GunboatDiplomat 11y ago
Society is not obligated to take care of the elderly. They had 60+ years to prepare for being old, and if they didn't, the burden doesn't fall on me.
klibertp 11y ago
> The only right solution to this problem is that society begins to take better care of old people. What about another issue of incurable, terminally ill patients who descend into a years-long hell of losing themselves to the pain, to the illness; who day by day see their brains becoming less and less capable? Are you sure we're even qualified to really "take care" of such people? It's not about elderly; it's about suffering. If you can't cure or ease someone's pain, step aside. You're in no position to tell such person what to do because you failed them already. If a suffering person decides it's enough, you have no right to tell them - to make them! - to suffer anymore. Assisted suicide is a way out of hell you can't picture fully without going there yourself. It's easy to say that "we need to take better care of someone", but this makes those who don't want to be taken care of left with nothing. And to repeat, there are people that we don't know how to help and the only thing we can offer them is to prolong their suffering.