5 ms·

The offending tweet was arguing against all forms of suicide, assisted or otherwise. I'm trying to understand your point charitably, but it escapes me how argui

The offending tweet was arguing against all forms of suicide, assisted or otherwise. I'm trying to understand your point charitably, but it escapes me how arguing against suicide could be interpreted as arguing for suicide. I understand that there's a consequentialist argument ("it is going to happen anyway"), but that seems to accept something as inevitable which is not.

franciscop 6y ago
Going against legal abortion yields more illegal abortions. Going against legal alcohol yields more illegal alcohol. Going against legal X yields more illegal X. Same concept, going against legal suicide (euthanasia) yields more suicides. Sure overall the number of suicides might go down, maybe even very noticeable, but the quality of care would suffer tremendously. I'm not arguing on suicide vs suicide, but on the quality of it. I believe it's better if N people decide to end their lifes consciously, surrounded by loved ones in a medical facility painlessly than if M people commit suicide alone and ashamed at home.
- f154hfds 6y ago
  There are so many things wrong with this reasoning, it's kind of hard to know where to start: 1. Take 'Going against legal X yields more illegal X': This is a meaningless statement. For example, going against legal murder yields more illegal murder. It is a non-statement, tautological. 2. Take a revised and more debatable statement: 'Going against legal X yields more X' (much rarer, but possible, for example cocaine proliferation brought about by prohibiting less damaging drugs). This deserves careful consideration. Do our laws assume from the outset the required enforcement to enable their utility? In some ways yes, in other ways no (for example, our laws shouldn't need to take into account politically motivated lack of enforcement). 3. Even if we say that a particular law leads to _more_ of the exact averse outcome and the legislature should have known the challenges of enforcement - illegal drugs being a good example of this, or illegal immigration, it _still_ doesn't follow in all cases that the answer is to decriminalize. A debate must be had, for sure - and some change is required, but that change may be subtle, enabling better enforcement for example. However, your above logic as it stands is essentially an argument for anarchism, though I'm not sure you intended it that way.
  - pas 6y ago
    Probably the strongest form of the "going against legal X leads to illegal X" is that "if society doesn't address the causes that make people want X and just makes it a criminal offence, we'll still see a lot of X, plus we'll have a lot of folks in prison". For example with murder we have many cases of vigilantism, the cause was a broken police/justice system. Every kind of substance crime? War on Substances! And it's a total failure. "Tough on X" ("enforcement") sounds good, but our whole history is about how tough never really works. (Law and order, machismo, denying and ignoring real causes, and putting on a big show about the effect, those are the magic ingredients to totalitarianism.)
  - franciscop 6y ago
    Yes, it is in a vacuum. But in the discussed case, if you penalize posting only about the ilegal version, then an assymetry is created where going against X (and thus inciting illegal X) gets filtered through a censor lens where you only see "inciting illegal X". Anyway I'm not saying I agree, just that this could be the reasoning behind saying that the tweet promoted harmful suicides.
- slowmovintarget 6y ago
  Going against legal guns yields more illegal guns. That argument is rationalization, and not material, regardless of which subject you substitute for X.
aaron695 6y ago
I think because euthanasia is someone else kills you, not assists with suicide, OP used euthanasia, the Irish Bishop's specific tweet used 'assisted suicide' and the story headline used 'euthanasia' I have no idea if the church considers euthanasia, suicide or murder or both. A lot of people would not consider euthanasia suicide since someone else is agreeing you can die and doing it for you. If you can't legally get euthanasia you might have to suicide early before incapacitation.

franciscop 6y ago

Going against legal abortion yields more illegal abortions. Going against legal alcohol yields more illegal alcohol. Going against legal X yields more illegal X. Same concept, going against legal suicide (euthanasia) yields more suicides. Sure overall the number of suicides might go down, maybe even very noticeable, but the quality of care would suffer tremendously. I'm not arguing on suicide vs suicide, but on the quality of it. I believe it's better if N people decide to end their lifes consciously, surrounded by loved ones in a medical facility painlessly than if M people commit suicide alone and ashamed at home.

f154hfds 6y ago
There are so many things wrong with this reasoning, it's kind of hard to know where to start: 1. Take 'Going against legal X yields more illegal X': This is a meaningless statement. For example, going against legal murder yields more illegal murder. It is a non-statement, tautological. 2. Take a revised and more debatable statement: 'Going against legal X yields more X' (much rarer, but possible, for example cocaine proliferation brought about by prohibiting less damaging drugs). This deserves careful consideration. Do our laws assume from the outset the required enforcement to enable their utility? In some ways yes, in other ways no (for example, our laws shouldn't need to take into account politically motivated lack of enforcement). 3. Even if we say that a particular law leads to _more_ of the exact averse outcome and the legislature should have known the challenges of enforcement - illegal drugs being a good example of this, or illegal immigration, it _still_ doesn't follow in all cases that the answer is to decriminalize. A debate must be had, for sure - and some change is required, but that change may be subtle, enabling better enforcement for example. However, your above logic as it stands is essentially an argument for anarchism, though I'm not sure you intended it that way.
- pas 6y ago
  Probably the strongest form of the "going against legal X leads to illegal X" is that "if society doesn't address the causes that make people want X and just makes it a criminal offence, we'll still see a lot of X, plus we'll have a lot of folks in prison". For example with murder we have many cases of vigilantism, the cause was a broken police/justice system. Every kind of substance crime? War on Substances! And it's a total failure. "Tough on X" ("enforcement") sounds good, but our whole history is about how tough never really works. (Law and order, machismo, denying and ignoring real causes, and putting on a big show about the effect, those are the magic ingredients to totalitarianism.)
- franciscop 6y ago
  Yes, it is in a vacuum. But in the discussed case, if you penalize posting only about the ilegal version, then an assymetry is created where going against X (and thus inciting illegal X) gets filtered through a censor lens where you only see "inciting illegal X". Anyway I'm not saying I agree, just that this could be the reasoning behind saying that the tweet promoted harmful suicides.
slowmovintarget 6y ago
Going against legal guns yields more illegal guns. That argument is rationalization, and not material, regardless of which subject you substitute for X.

aaron695 6y ago

I think because euthanasia is someone else kills you, not assists with suicide, OP used euthanasia, the Irish Bishop's specific tweet used 'assisted suicide' and the story headline used 'euthanasia' I have no idea if the church considers euthanasia, suicide or murder or both. A lot of people would not consider euthanasia suicide since someone else is agreeing you can die and doing it for you. If you can't legally get euthanasia you might have to suicide early before incapacitation.