The guy who spent his life researching how to live rationally chooses suicide at age 90, upon seeing “increasing metal lapses”, presumably in order to not ever live irrationally.
Ironic is the opposite of what you mean, don't you think? By your explanation, Kahneman acted according to his life's work.
> The guy who spent his life researching how to live rationally chooses suicide at age 90, upon seeing “increasing metal lapses”, presumably in order to not ever live irrationally.
That was possibly part of his motivation. But also the pain, suffering (goes broader than physical pain), confusion, and cost -- to him and his family.
We're opening up tremendous abuses of power by allowing the state to kill people for non-criminal behavior.
Sure the first iteration is presented as "voluntary", but the next edition will be for the greater good. And how about sinister / malevolent abuses of "voluntary" suicide -- similar to abuses over guardianship.
at least with guardianship the person can be set free, because they are still alive.
I'd like to quote from the HN guidelines:
> Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative.
With that said I urge you those who disapprove to ask whether you are being "rigidly negative" about this.
1. Is this disapproval perhaps coming from your religious context? If so, please pause and consider why that may not apply to the rest of us. And also whether you really think that your religious beliefs must be forced on the rest of us.
2. Is this disapproval coming from a sense of deep unease that this post causes? If so, know that this unease is shared by most of us. But try and muster the fortitude to go past that unease and consider the decision from a place of compassion.
Many/most of the nursing staff are Filipino and strongly Roman Catholic.
As she lay dying and unable to speak, one of the nurses undertook to convert her at this last minute to their religion. At night, alone, after all visitors had left, she would come into mum's room and press mum, a very committed atheist, to pray for her salvation.
It's hard to describe how vulnerable someone is who is stuck in their bed and dependant on the nursing team for everything, even sips of water.
I will say this was not representative of her care, but it opened my eyes to the lengths religious believers will go to to push their views on others.
I guess we are all Dying, Fast and Slow.
So you could say it was more system 1 thinking rather than system 2.
I would've expected the opposite given our survival instincts.
I don't think it's a link to an assisted suicide/dying with dignity center.
Society's relationship with intentional end of life decisions is fraught, to say the least.
It's less likely to be "a certain age" and more surrounding factors: if most of your friends have passed and you don't have much chance to do things that interest you because you could pass at any moment yourself there comes a point where life has limited worth.
Essentially, hope runs out, and when it's run out entirely you either wait for death, or ... don't wait.
> It's fascinating that even for very ill or injured people the will to survive is so strong
Sometimes. Chronic illnesses are a massive contributing factor to suicide rates for instance: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7...
For physical illnesses.
What is the point of living your last 10 years of life bed ridden? This is how I will go.
I want every second. Even if it’s painful.
I am still alive.
They'll tell you, whenever you want to do anything with your own body.
Switzerland: 8% of assisted deaths involve mental disorders like severe depression; cases show weak oversight, allowing non-terminal approvals despite coercion concerns.
Canada: 2022 Veterans Affairs cases: Caseworkers offered MAiD to 4+ veterans in poverty seeking benefits, indicating systemic coercion and cost-saving motives.
Oregon: Kate Cheney, 85, with early dementia (mental/non-terminal elements), approved 1999 amid daughter pressure suspicions; evaluations noted influence but oversight permitted despite weak safeguards.
You didn't mention Belgium so I'm pleased to hear that Belgium is doing well according to you (4000 cases of euthanasia per year of which 80 are for psychological suffering, 1 child per year).
Belgium: Tine Nys, 38, autism/depression (non-terminal), euthanized 2010; rushed procedure amid family presence, weak oversight, sisters allege undue pressure and unmet incurable criteria.
Belgium: Frank Van Den Bleeken, prisoner with untreated psychiatric disorder, requested 2014; non-terminal suffering from inadequate care, systemic pressure via prison failures, oversight gaps.
Belgium: Nathalie Huygens, 50s, trauma-induced mental illness, approved 2022; financial barriers to treatment raise coercion concerns, questions on incurability oversight.
> οὐ δώσω δὲ οὐδὲ φάρμακον οὐδενὶ αἰτηθεὶς θανάσιμον, οὐδὲ ὑφηγήσομαι συμβουλίην τοιήνδε
In English:
> Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course.
Now he could have been depressed after his wife died and was just lying to himself that this was his own, autonomous, decision. Depression can do that to you, it can make you think suicide is the most rational decision.
Perhaps we should instead not see a part of our natural lives as undignified?
You have to somewhat lacking in critical thinking if you look at assisted suicide and its implementation and still back it.
And I don’t want that for my kids, or even from the rest of society.
I probably won’t ever meet my grandchildren if there are any, because I am over fifty and single; I probably will never be a parent. So I will have to go a lot sooner if I am not to be a burden on society. But if you think you are going to be a grandparent, you can work on being an irreplaceable and useful one.
Very few people are independent after age 80, and a miniscule amount after 90.
The philosophical underpinning is giving up of materialness. The practicality of the 5 instances that I witnessed over the past year - typical terminal individuals choose this. They pass away surrounded by loved ones (they typically medicate for any pain, and the body starts shutting down when food and water stops). This is observed with somberness, but celebrated as very positive act.
When someone starts this process, it's a unique experience speaking with them, as there's usually nothing that comes up, and the moment does not really lend itself to small talk :)
During his final days, he became unresponsive, only sleeping. The doctors gave us the option of feeding him through a tube. We made the hard decision of not doing it. Gave him all the medicine to help his body heal, but no invasive procedures.
We stayed by his side for the next 5 days. Playing songs that he enjoyed. Audiobooks that he loved. And just taking care of him.
Finally, his breath became slower and slower until it stopped and he passed away. I had the opportunity of being beside him during his last breath.
The passing of loved ones is always difficult, but I am grateful for how he went. He lived a full life and was incredibly healthy until the end.
Without knowing, we decided on a sallekhana-like process for him. It was the right thing to do.
Thank you for showing me this.
I'm surprised that someone can be killed in this way. Is it the electrolyte imbalance? There's a lot of potassium in coconut water.
On the one hand according to the wiki this is more progressive removing food by degrees which would make the process a lot longer.
On the other hand being a mostly ascetic practice I'd assume it's done by people who have a lot less reserves (body fat and muscle) which would shorten the process significantly (the 207kg Angus Barbieri famously fasted continuously for 382 days[0] breaking his fast at 82kg, although he supplemented his liquids — water, tea, and coffee — with vitamins, electrolytes, and yeast extract, the latter for essential amino acids).
[0]: technically he was put on a recovery diet of salting then sugaring his water for 10 days, so ate no solid food for 392 days, breaking his fast with a boiled egg and a slice of buttered bread
> Kahneman used the services of Pegasos in the village of Roderis in Nunningen, Switzerland. In the death room with a view over green hills, wearing a suit and tie, he lay on the bed and turned on an infusion of sodium pentobarbital himself. A companion held his hand and told him they were holding it on behalf of his loved ones. Kahneman's last words were "I feel their love."
[1]: https://www.aargauerzeitung.ch/schweiz/suizidhilfe-weltstar-...
> Pegasos, a non-profit based in Basel, Switzerland, believes that it is the human right of every rational adult of sound mind, regardless of state of health, to choose the manner and timing of their death.
I found this bit "regardless of state" really interesting.
I wonder what their views would be for someone who wouldn't have a family and nothing much to do or explore after a certain age? Does it matter what nationality they are from? What if someone's reason is - they had savings and now they have run out of it and area already 55-60 or more and have no intention or plan to work anymore and don't want to go through the struggle of life? (Of course they would have had paid the euthanasia fees)
How does it all happen?
Great guy, very sociable, knew everyone in the little town he lived in. Kept in touch with a lot of students. Good neighbour, friendly guy who'd talk to everyone.
He got Alzheimers. He started forgetting stuff, and it frustrated him. He got caught driving dangerously, and cursed the doctor who took away his license.
He argued with me about the state of some chicken he wanted to cook. I told him "this is pink all over, you have to cook it more". He got angry. I understood he'd become like this to everyone.
He pissed off everyone on his street, and all police, medical and social workers sent to help him. The disease made him blow up every relationship he had with anyone that he didn't know well, like me and a couple of colleagues.
He got found in his house, having left the gas on, endangering the whole street. He ended up in a care home, not knowing who he was, or who I was.
If he'd been run over by a car, or died of a heart attack at the age of 80, people he knew would remember him as that nice old guy who had a dog and made a lot of art, and was friendly to everyone. Instead he was that 83 year old guy who pissed off everyone, nearly blew up the neighbourhood, and drove like a maniac.
You really don't want to end up with dementia and related illnesses, it totally sours everyone's view of you.
You will be missed! Sad to hear he passed, but glad he was able to go out on his own terms.
That said, there is a problem in at least some places where assisted suicide is available where it keeps getting recommended to disabled people who don't want to die. That needs to be solved. Seems like an easy solve. Just don't do it.
There is a cost reduction incentive, though, which is why it happens. Costs can be reduced for abled people by convincing them to exercise and eat more fiber, so the same pressure can do good instead of evil. At some point we have to decide to care about people.
Some of its wording is weird, like mentioning his wife dying in the same context of two other partners with no explanation. The original is a much better read.
In particular, the physician must "be satisfied that the patient’s suffering is unbearable, with no prospect of improvement", which from this article sounds far from the case here.
[1] https://www.government.nl/topics/euthanasia/is-euthanasia-al...
Should assisted dying be legalised?
Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine volume 9, Article number: 3 (2014)
Thomas D G Frost, Devan Sinha & Barnabas J Gilbert
https://peh-med.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1747-5341...
Abstract
When an individual facing intractable pain is given an estimate of a few months to live, does hastening death become a viable and legitimate alternative for willing patients? Has the time come for physicians to do away with the traditional notion of healthcare as maintaining or improving physical and mental health, and instead accept their own limitations by facilitating death when requested? The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge held the 2013 Varsity Medical Debate on the motion “This House Would Legalise Assisted Dying”. This article summarises the key arguments developed over the course of the debate. We will explore how assisted dying can affect both the patient and doctor; the nature of consent and limits of autonomy; the effects on society; the viability of a proposed model; and, perhaps most importantly, the potential need for the practice within our current medico-legal framework.
> It is difficult to reconcile that citizens may have the right to do almost anything to and with their own bodies– from participating in extreme sports to having elective plastic surgery– yet a terminal patient cannot choose to avoid experiencing additional months of discomfort or loss of dignity in their final months of life.
If you’ve already made it to 90 with no major issues, you’re expected to make it to 95 and you could make easily live to 100. My wife’s grandad is 90 and he still lives alone, drives, plays golf nearly everyday, and regularly sees his 12 grandchildren and many great grandchildren. He even made the 9 hour trip to come see us last year.
I’m very wary of making it legal for doctors to euthanize an otherwise healthy person who just wants to avoid an eventual decline.
It’s relatively common for families to push people into nursing homes, but in this case there’s an even stronger direct financial incentive. I don’t trust the system to adequately prevent this.
Robin Williams had to hang himself.
There should be easy medical options in the US.
The instinct for self preservation is strong. Knowing what will come requires foresight and clarity. You may lose the capacity for informed decision making before the point where it's clear that there's not much to live for.
Many of us lack the insight that Kahneman perhaps had that in order to take control of the end you may need to leave some good days on the table.
I do not know if this was ever widely practiced, but I think the ancient Indian ritual of going to the forest and starving to death in your last days is basically fine. It gives a dignified, sacred end to a life, while the modern medical sciences constant battle against the inevitable ends up distorting and deforming the last days of your life and forces you to leave without dignity clinging to the last vestiges of your humanity that’s left.
You can get into a state of living death where the brain is mush and who you were is completely destroyed. That's hell for the family.
I saw my grandmother forget her daughter (my mother) it was heartbreaking. Seeing my mom realize her mom forgot everything about their life together was just painful.
It was just a sad existence to observe as well. Grandma lived for quiet a while with dementia and spent years trying to return to her childhood home. We'd constantly have to trick her into accepting help from us "strangers". Re-convincing her to come inside that these "strangers" wouldn't mind having her for a bit. Watching her read over the same page of a book for hours on end.
That's not an existence I want for myself or my family.
Mentally she is still pretty clear and she often says it would be best if she doesn't wake up in the morning.
I think it would be better for everybody if we had a way to have a ceremony where we all say goodbye and then end it.
Sorry mate.
Don't have an exact word to describe how I feel after reading above. Find it beautiful that such an accomplished person wanted to learn something even towards the end of his life.
He said that alone made life worth living, for him and them, but once any deteriorating conditions rendered him permanently unable to participate in this weekly activity then he felt it was time to go.
Maybe having a pre-set condition like this is less arbitrary, and also allows everyone involved to understand as the time comes closer.
Of course, even if you lack legal permission, suicide doesn't strictly _require_ legal or medical assistance. An autonomous exit is always an option, though generally less painless than assisted.
In the cryonics community, it's a common complaint that they have to wait until the patient is legally dead in order to cryopreserve, which can make it difficult to cryopreserve under ideal circumstances.
I like the idea of allowing individuals to opt for cryopreservation over end-of-life care. End-of life care costs so much money, it could even be neutral from a financial perspective.
Since cryopreservation lacks the finality of other forms of death, it could also address some of the ethical dilemmas around assisted dying. After all, a lot of end-of-life care seems to be motivated by a futile attempt to somehow delay the inevitable. From my perspective, cryopreservation seems slightly less futile.
If medical technology continues to advance, maybe in the year 2500 there will be people walking around who were born in the 1900s and can give talks about their experiences. Wouldn't that be cool? It would help a lot if just a single country to made it possible to get cryopreserved before you're legally dead.
I'm often reminded about a case in my own country: a young person had decided it was time to end her life after struggling for many years, without a sign of improvement. She was denied the right to euthanasia. After multiple failed suicide attempts, she went for the nuclear option and jumped in front of a train.
Everyone deserves to die in a dignified and humane way, not in multiple pieces or with a mind deteriorated beyond recognition. Forcing prolonged suffering is unnecessarily cruel. I wish more countries were as progressive with euthenasia as Switzerland.
Euthanasia has some strict rules in Belgium, especially for cases involving psychological suffering. In 2014, the age restriction was dropped (except for psychological suffering). Since then, 6 minors have received euthanasia.
Seems like we should close this thread to honor these wishes
Assisted suicide sounds like a fine option until you think of its impact on your loved ones. Imagining putting my wife and kids through my deciding to die, and the process of them bringing me to the place where it happens - or imagining one of them doing the same thing - just fills me with horror
That said, I think the same, and there are some non-obvious second-order effects around it being the menu, especially regarding life extension incentives and if people started to feel guilt-tripped by it.
The first thing that comes to mind is a reduction in commitment to the elderly. As soon as health care costs ramp up, people will start to make more decisions based on the economic aspect of the people's support instead of thinking in life extension mechanisms as a natural first choice.
Second, it is related to the public health services. From my experience in some parts of EU/America, if you have a disease until your 50s, you will get treatment. However, after that, there are probably some parts of the public/private health system that throttle down the treatments.
The 2-week interval between a return if you are 30s/40s, will become 6 weeks if you are over 60s.
The next one, the "inheritance social contract," will be changed. As long as folks know that assisted suicide will be placed on the menu, I do not doubt that folks terrified with the possibility of loved ones "not doing enough to keep them alive" will dilute everyone who lifts the gas.
And as a second-order, I can see the securitization and life insurance industry will demand insane premiums to cover elderly persons, given that potentially people can lift and coast the treatment for their loved ones, and this can break part of their actuarial models, which, yes, expect people to exhaust resources to keep their elderly alive and not to choose together to pull the plug in a single-digit number of years before.
And maybe a third-order effect (in Germany there are some cases) where people with resources (single-digit million real estate + assets) exercise liquidity on it and live the best of their lives after 70 or in some cases, legally marry 30+ nurses to take care of them in the last 3 years and offer a chunk of inheritance, post-death pension, or insurance premium.
You even literally show that he isn't solely remembered for those last 3 years of his life. We owe people like that care and understanding, not murder framed as mercy.
It's always so painful to see old people around who are clearly living alone, forced to do everything themselves, having to ask strangers for help because they're afraid of being a burden, and their actual children can't find time for them. Only to now see people actually supporting murder because old people become a burden for a couple of years near the end of their life.
> You really don't want to end up with dementia and related illnesses, it totally sours everyone's view of you.
I don't think I've read a wilder defense of euthanasia in my entire life.
This is a "great guy" who committed his life to teaching kids, being a good neighbour, and his reward is one of his former pupils arguing he ought to be killed because he's grown unwell, he's unable to maintain his optics, and the community he gave his life to has therefore 'soured' on him. How very inconvenient for you, that this man is unwell.
What message is this supposed to send to anyone? "Don't get invested in trying to be nice to the neighbours, they're all ghouls who'll have you shipped to the glue factory as soon as you stop seeming useful." And once everyone internalises this level of social atomism, where do you expect these 'great guys' to keep coming from?
This seems like such an absurd conclusion to this, as though the opinions of other people of you are what matter when you functionally lose your personhood and then die.
Maybe a better focus would be that there often isn't a good way for a community to manage a person who suddenly becomes irrational because of an illness.
There may be others reading in the thread who also can relate to the personality of the teacher and may care about their affect on others when they are "not themselves".
I'm grateful for this story - it's powerful to see examples of autonomy at end of life - and contrasts starkly with the experiences many of us have with aging parents. End of life, at least in the US, can be deeply flawed and misery for all.
> Maybe a better focus would be that there often isn't a good way for a community to manage a person who suddenly becomes irrational because of an illness.
Yes, this is the focus. Science has stalled when it comes to neurological disorders. But the response is love and understanding. I do not understand how someone would "sour" on a person because they have an illness. A very absurd conclusion indeed.
you don't want dementia because it damages and hurts you and everything and everyone around you
(my grandpa physically attacked grandma multiple times in his last year)
They do matter.
Being concerned with how your behavior affects your family or your community, and the opinion they have of you, above your own self-interest, is how good parents, good friends, good citizens, and so on, are made.
Whether we should care about that or not is a philosophical conversation, I suppose. I would take the side of if we care about what people think about us when we are alive, surely we should care what they think of us when we are dead. Otherwise, we only value their opinion of us as a function of what they will do for/to us, which seems not great.
I really don't want my family's last memories of me to be that. Yeah my wife remembers when her grandma was of sound mind, and has some good memories with her back then, but they stopped due to the disease.
Everyone should be entitled to their own opinions on how they want to be remembered. I would rather be allowed to pass in sane mind.
But even at aface value, more rational long-term approach would be to treat it, surely
As Barbara Tversky, who is an emerita professor of psychology at Stanford University, wrote in an online essay shortly after [Kahneman's] death, their last days in Paris had been magical...
One afternoon, according to her online essay, she asked what [Kahneman] would like to do. "I want to learn something," he said.
Kahneman knew the psychological importance of happy endings. In repeated experiments, he had demonstrated what he called the peak-end rule: Whether we remember an experience as pleasurable or painful doesn't depend on how long it felt good or bad, but rather on the peak and ending intensity of those emotions. "It was a matter of some consternation to Danny's friends and family that he seemed."
Maybe in a different city, or with different friends.
If he did “learn something new”, could he have incrementally improved upon it, using his brilliant mind? Could he have made one more wise observation?
It seems he likely left something on the table.
It sucks. It's so easy to forget who they were before the disease. This is them now and it's hard as hell.
Simple things that take 1-step for us take 50+ steps for her. She doesn't readily communicate that she's hungry or thirsty or needs to use the bathroom, we have to constantly ask. She's always exhausted and walking around in circles but reacts aggressively to most suggestions to go to bed or take a nap (no matter how we word it). She can't focus for more than a few seconds, so she has no hobbies to occupy her time, and even the TV loses her interest after a minute at most. Her speech is one unbroken babble, and she gets annoyed if someone starts a conversation near her but doesn't let her interject.
Not sure how much more my dad and I have left in us. The disease stripped everything from her and it's stripping everything from us. In-home care is the likely course but she hates all strangers and is always paranoid about anyone other than us being in the house. There's no good solution.
Tell your parents you love them.
If you ended back in camp you’d be welcomed. If you didn’t, that was your end. I found that remarkably comforting and peaceful.
You don’t. You try to take care of yourself before you’re gone. If you miss that opportunity, you and your loved ones suffer. Same as it is for everyone now.
As we're currently seeing happen: whatever is left unsaid in the body of the law can and will be abused by evil people to concentrate more power (even if the spirit of the law advocates for something kind).
So, we have to normalize some sort of stress tests for laws... because you sure don't want to be dragged against your will because you're poor.
Isn't the point of eugenics to influence population genetic trends? Not a very effective strategy to kill people when they already have probably 2 generations of descendents.
You don't consider years of mental trauma on the individual and years burden and stress on loved ones to be suffering?
I completely agree that the disease is horrible, but your conclusion is bizarre. When you are in that condition, how anyone views you is the least of your worries.
That's just as much failure of everybody as it is of him. This was dementia speaking and society needs to learn that.
You wouldn't tell somebody with a broken leg to get it together and it's just their personality that they can't walk. Nor should you treat dementia like that. Yes, people seem to shift personalities and anger others. But those others need to understand that it's a medical condition, an untreatable and fatal one, so should have even more sympathy than with somebody who broke a leg (cause that will likely just be temporary). Not alienate the person and speak ill of them.
No animal other than man would consider perpetuating that state of decline. An elephant would simply wander away to die, freeing their community from their struggle to simply keep breathing.
I agree with Kahneman, at least that we all should seriously consider the cost of allowing that level of degeneration to consume us -- and more, the pain it inevitably will inflict on our loved ones -- and plan for it while we're still compos mentis.
It's certainly a failure point within us and something to be aware of to make effort towards understanding our own impact as you suggest. Sadly a problem with no full solution over long enough time periods.
Folks I know who have passed on also wanted to be remembered when they were strong, not when they were ill.
I've really thought about this a lot after seeing a number of family members and friend's family members go through dementia, and it seems like it can go two ways: like this, which is how it went with my grandmother (whose hoarding behavior increased aggressively, and she started slapping people), or how it went with my grandfather on the other side (he became quieter and quieter, watched tv every day while understanding less and less of it, and when you caught his eye would repeat how much he loved you and how much seeing you "made an old man feel good.")
It has something to do with how you feel about the nature of people in general, and whether you feel they are all suspicious and possibly conspiring against you, or that you think they are basically good and want the best for you. When you have all of your mind, you can beat the demons or the angels back with your reasoning enough to have the personality that you want. My grandmother was very loving, and my grandfather was very shrewd and practical. But when that higher function can't regulate you, what shows is if you were someone who taught yourself how to see the good in people, or someone who taught yourself how to see the bad in people.
I suspect I'll end up like my grandfather, as much as I think of myself as like my grandmother. Deep down, I've always been crippled by the feeling that everyone is a wonderful person. My aggression and judgemental nature on a lot of things can really, embarrassingly, be interpreted as me looking for excuses for everyone's behavior.
I find the people who remember him as this guy somewhat contemptible though, so I guess my theory would be he wasn't remembered badly by anyone whose opinion mattered.
But on the other hand I guess that's the way the world works.
Yes, the sixty-fifth worst thing about degenerative brain disease. Good observation.
I don't think this is fair. I know several people who died with Alzheimer's and although their final years were very difficult for them nobody has a bad opinion of them. It's certainly a strain on the family but intimating that if you have dementia you better kill yourself or your legacy will be ruined is not ok.
We, the loved ones, made the decisions to keep them going and I wonder how fair that was to them. We tend to not want to let people go, choosing to sacrifice quality of life for the sufferer and those around them for, what, a few fleeting moments of possible clarity? The opportunity to say goodbye to someone who may or may not even understand what is happening?
The events I went through with my family hurt us in ways that will not likely ever heal, despite effort on at least a few of our part, and it did leave me wondering if I would put my son or wife through that should something similar ever happen to me. I decided against it, seeing as I am at the age where these are very real possibilities. In the US, we have DNRs ("do not resuscitate") and living wills that offer prior directives, but something like assisted suicide is not allowed here unless some very extreme circumstances are met, because insurance companies and hospitals make more money from suffering people than dead ones. I'm a strong advocate of the right to die, but it is a decision that needs to be made some extensive consideration and documentation before one actually needs it.
Parent comment doesn’t say this, does it?
But my personal anecdata puts that man in a minority. None of my older relatives with Alzheimer’s have become aggressive or troublesome. Worry, anxiety and confusion seem to be much more common states of mind, which admittedly also doesn’t seem like such a fun way to spend your days.
I disagree it’s up to you to conclude it would have been better if he had been killed 3 years earlier (which you imply).
In general you don’t have the right to such a statement.
Now, if you were discussing _your own_ condition this would be a totally valid consideration IMHO. But you (almost) _never_ have the right to conclude from someone elses part when it’s their time to go.
Assisted suicide is a humane option but ”I hope he had died with some dignity years ago instead of pissing everyone off” tarnishes the entire concept and is exactly the type of argument which stops assisted suecide becoming a more widely accepted option.
Many countries hesitate to execute criminals despite very clear criteria that could be used to justify it. (Many countries banned entirely.)
Why would we have a lower bar for someone who hasn’t committed any crimes?
I’ve never been close to anyone who had dementia. My grandparents on both sides died with their mental facilities in tact and my parents who are 83 and 81 are independent and just as of 6 months ago passed a cognitive test. I can imagine if they started acting out of character and being mean to me or forgot who I was that I would be hurt, overwhelmed etc. But not pissed.
*no data though, just observing my village
I am pro assisted suicide. Not sure about Switzerland but some countries allows it for young people with mental health problems. That I can't accept that.
That's the part that doesn't matter at all. Your life isn't contingent on others having a specific view of you - the rest of the world can, for lack of better words, go fuck themselves.
What matters is if you want to live a life where you can't drive a car, you might poison yourself with your cooking, you lose your mental facilities, etc. That is the relevant choice here.
Think about what is happening from his point of view. The condition has fundamentally changed his perception of reality. You are trying to tell him that this perfectly cooked chicken is pink all-over when it clearly isn't. Everyone else has gone mad and he doesn't know why.
The real issue is our broken systems for handling dementia and underfunded homes, overworked staff, no real community nets. Fixing that honors the full life someone led, instead of saying their value drops when they need help. Assisted suicide opens doors to abuse, like pressuring people who feel like burdens.
We owe better to people like your teacher.
https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy
Because dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases take decades to manifest they've been especially hard to diagnose early and prevent or treat early, while cognition is still intact. Alas, I think that hasn't changed much in recent years, despite many scientists and businesses working toward that end.
Partly that's because few academic researchers can pursue a theory long enough in time to fully assess its potential, especially in combo therapies. Nor can the big pharma corporations who not only suffer from the same difficulty in long-term funding, but prefer the ROI of continuing treatments for disease to that of quick cures (or lifestyle advice). These are nowhere near as profitable a pill the patient must take for decades.
All I can say is that I didn't, and thank you for implying that it was so well written that it could only have been authored by a machine that has all of humanity's cultural output to hand.
If you apply at scale the same logic with more sensibility you will also be able to rationalize a genocide because someone felt bad about something.
What defines demonic inspiration?
And here I don't say "demonic" metaphysically but philosophically.
At some point everything indirectly leads to euthanasia and society is not built for that at all. Everything you do might or might not lead to someone's euthanasia, which means you are liable for their death.
Let's say we can predict school shooters before they shoot and give them an euthanasia to save lives. If bullying or encouragement causes someone to start shooting up a school, then the latent shooter will die before they do their shooting, but it also means that the instigator is a murderer themselves, because in the absence of instigation, no crime would be committed and no euthanasia would be necessary.
Since it is probably not possible to assign liability of a euthanasia to a single individual, because multiple people contributed to the outcome, the liability will be shared. Ten people being involved means each has committed 10% of a murder, meaning that they should receive 10% of a life sentence. Are you ready to serve a cumulative year in prison spread throughout your life to account for indirectly causing euthanasia?
Note that this problem isn't necessarily unique to euthanasia. The problem applies to any cure all solution. (Think of series like "Common Side Effects")
If you punch someone's face in, but cure it with a blue mushroom, was it really a crime, since their face is intact? And yet, more punching happens as a result of the existence of the panacea, which is why there needs to be a punishment for making someone dependent on the panacea.
A later analysis[55] made a bolder claim that, despite Kahneman's previous contributions to the field of decision making, most of the book's ideas are based on 'scientific literature with shaky foundations'. A general lack of replication in the empirical studies cited in the book was given as a justification.
I just could not digest it. I understood the words but I couldn't make whatever message he was trying to convey... it felt too "dense" for me. Maybe im just stupid, but I could not get past I think the first two chapters.
It’s best use is to be announced your favorite book among undistinguished company. Some people need such books. Such as those from Smith and Keynes.
Where? This is a thing which always pops up in these debates because it is a deep-rooted fear, but are there countries where this is a thing?
I don't think things are as bad, but I also think that old age in poverty is a valid reason for euthanasia if there is no alternative. If the society is cruel to the poor, holding poor elderly as hostage to improve situation is cruelty on top of the cruelty.
https://thewalrus.ca/assisted-dying/
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/article/doesnt-line-up-mps-c...
>Her last hope was a $4,000-a-month drug that her doctor prescribed for her, but the insurance company refused to pay.
>What the Oregon Health Plan did agree to cover, however, were drugs for a physician-assisted death. Those drugs would cost about $50.
Randy Stroup [2]:
> Lane Individual Practice Association (LIPA), which administers the Oregon Health Plan in Lane County, responded to Stroup's request with a letter saying the state would not cover Stroup's pricey treatment, but would pay for the cost of physician-assisted suicide.
Stephanie Packer [3] (although in this case she inquired herself):
> Then her doctors suggested that switching to another chemotherapy drug might buy her time. Her medical insurance company refused to pay. She says she asked if the company covered the cost of drugs to put her to death. She was told the answer is yes — with a co-payment of $1.20.
T. Brian Callister, MD, FACP, FHM [4]:
>When I spoke with the insurance medical directors of the patients' insurance companies by telephone on separate occasions, both of the insurance medical directors told me that they would approve coverage for either hospice care or assisted suicide but would not approve the life saving treatment option.
> Neither the patients nor I had requested approval for assisted suicide, yet it was readily offered.
[1] https://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=5517492&page=1
[2] https://www.foxnews.com/story/oregon-offers-terminal-patient...
[3] https://nypost.com/2016/10/24/terminally-ill-mom-denied-trea...
[4] https://www.cga.ct.gov/2018/phdata/tmy/2018HB-05417-R000320-...
I had a friend that decided to stop treatment (dialysis), when he realized that he'd never get off it (he couldn't get a transplant). He was in his late 60s.
It was both a sad, and joyous experience. He took about a month to pass (renal failure). He was Catholic, and wouldn't do assisted suicide.
During that month, a bunch of us would go over to his house, almost on a daily basis, and we'd just hang out. It was actually a great experience.
https://www.nyswritersinstitute.org/post/hunter-s-thompson-s...
I thought Jain the perspective shared in this comment is valuable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45548178
Well, not just the comment, but also the wikipedia article linked to in the comment.
Obviously, Jainism isn't Catholicism, but this part of the wikipedia article got me thinking:
>It is not considered a suicide by Jain scholars because it is not an act of passion, nor does it employ poisons or weapons.
Catholics are probably never going to think suicide is ok, but I wonder if they could come around to a definition of suicide that is more narrow and which excludes death-with-dignity. If they did make that adjustment, I would personally agree with their stance.
There is plenty of precedent for this legislation through definitional scoping in history in general, though I'm not an expert on Catholicism. The book "Legal systems very different from ours" talks about it, and gives examples. It's really the only option for any sort of change when you're dealing with decrees from a supernatural entity or an unchangeable part of a constitution.
That’s my biggest concern about assisted suicide for an otherwise healthy person who just wants to avoid the inevitable decline (as in this case). There is a direct financial incentive for families to push people into this.
The only way I can see to remove that would be to require that your estate can’t go to anyone who potentially has influence over you in the case of assisted suicide for with no terminal illness.
What financial incentives are there in killing someone?
Imagine you're poor, your family is poor, and your friends are poor too. You spend 2 years in and out of inpatient care, and then die. Your family is now saddled with a debt they will never be able to pay. Your medical bills could make them homeless. Now imagine choosing between that, and MAID. MAID is obviously a cheaper "out."
Now remember the demographics of poor people in this country. If poor people end up being more likely to choose MAID, that necessarily means MAID would be used disproportionately on ethnic minorities and disabled people. So you end up with eugenics again, just because of the sorry state of our medical system and class demographics.
Not all assisted suicide is eugenics, to be clear. There's a discussion of Jain practices elsewhere in this comment tree.
But man did I lose sleep at the thought that we could have people volunteering to kill themselves solely because they're poor. You could argue that it's wrong not to give someone the choice to die sooner, given that dying later could cause so much strife for their family. But I hold that the right solution isn't making people die sooner, it's building a medical system where people never have to grapple with this choice in the first place.
And did you just go to eating more fibre from euthanasia in the same few sentences? :D
In Germany, it was illegal for doctors to recommend or advertise abortion, and that worked pretty well. You could do the same for assisted suicide.
I don’t do it, but I’m not sure how that solves the problem of other people doing it.
1. Administer the medication yourself
2. Be of "sane" mind at the time you do it.
3. Have a doctor certify that at the time you choose to do it, you are in unbearable pain/suffering, and there is no realistic relief from it.
This rules out dementia (especially item 2). So people here who are in early stages of Alzheimers go to Switzerland as well.
^ Yes, it's "illegal" but it's effectively nulled if the means to it are made legal.
Every assisted suicide is then investigated by the police to ensure no profit motives exist.
Sorry, but your comment smells rather about peddling fakery, especially as you have provided heaps of reliable references.
Counter-anecdote, my partners Granddad is 93. Age 90, we said the same as you. Now he's an old, rude, obnoxious liability - he's still great, and I don't hold it against him, he's earned the right. But I've never known anyone naturally age and die without losing their ability to be civil in some way towards the end.
From the article:
> Kahneman knew that many would see his decision as premature. But that was exactly what he intended, he wrote: If you wait until a life is "obviously no longer worth living", it is already too late.
I personally wish my partners final memories of her Granddad were him at 90, and not at 93. I've known for a good 5 - 10 years I will take the same route as Kahneman. I feel the desire to stay alive long enough to be a liability for yourself and those around you is a decision motivated by ego and fear, rather than compassion or logic.
Everyone becomes a liability at some point. By that logic we should just go full Logan’s run and kill people as soon as they stop being productive.
There nothing wrong with saying that you aren’t going to take extreme measures to preserve your life past a certain age.
But I don’t want this attitude of “you should kill yourself so you don’t burden your family” to become the norm either.
What if your partner’s grandad heard you calling him a rude obnoxious liability and felt pressured into killing himself?
>I've never known anyone naturally age and die without losing their ability to be civil in some way towards the end.
But many people die suddenly with no serious mental decline at all. That can happen at 95 or 100 the same as it happens earlier.
If you rule out everyone who didn’t die of some nebulous cause as the result of a slow decline you are selecting for people who mentally decline.
She couldn't look after herself was was forced into care by the courts. Since going into a home she's physically never been fitter, but mentally she's not the person she was 10 years ago -- it's not that she's changed personality, it's as if her memory of the last 80 years was wiped.
Many people die suddenly with no decline at all.
There is no financial incentive. No-one is making any money from assisted suicide in Switzerland.
This is obviously an outright falsehood. Nonprofit doesn't mean that no one gets paid.
> It’s relatively common for families to push people into nursing homes,
So you are rejected by your family and punished even more by taking away a dignified exit strategy?
You can argue that more countries should grant that right. But if you’re going to do so, you need to have an answer for the incentives it creates.
And mentioning the cost of end-of-life care is risible when your alternative is paying paying indefinite rent to a company for freezer space to keep a corpse frozen.
I don't believe that. I do believe it is a hair less futile than delaying the inevitable and then burying yourself 6 feet underground.
>it doesn't work and is widely considered to be pseudoscience.
The cryonicist claim is something like: "If we save your brain in a way that preserves its information content, it may be possible for future technology to reconstruct that information content, and effectively revive you." No cryonicist is claiming that cryonics "works" with existing technology.
Consider the state of medicine in the year 1925 vs the state of medicine in the year 2025. Now extrapolate that advancement trend forwards until 2525. Is extrapolating trends forward a form of pseudoscience? If so, what do you say about global warming?
>And mentioning the cost of end-of-life care is risible when your alternative is paying paying indefinite rent to a company for freezer space to keep a corpse frozen.
Keeping a closed canister filled with liquid nitrogen is not especially costly.
Alcor charges $80K out of pocket for neuropreservation: https://www.alcor.org/membership/pricing-and-dues/
The Lancet says a typical American accumulates $155K in healthcare costs during the last 3 years of their life: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanam/article/PIIS2667-19...
Long-term care costs are rising fast: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/24/business/retirement-long-...
(BTW, I appreciate that you made a falsifiable claim here, since that helps readers evaluate the credibility of your other claims. A sort of within-comment Gell-Mann effect.)
Assessing how well cryonics might in the future at different scales is a prediction. So, yes, cryonics is speculative; it is making a bet that future technologies will somehow bring a brain back to life, in some form. Digital: a brain scan followed by whole-brain emulation. Biological: physical repair at the molecular level. If/when some kind of revival works, the question of consciousness remains.
The current edition of Wikipedia's entry on cryonics writes: "It is generally viewed as a pseudoscience" which is attributed to Jens Karlsson saying "Cryonics ... is generally viewed as a fringe pseudoscience." [3]
I don't care for this characterization. When I think of pseudoscience (such as a homeopathy and astrology) makes claims that are unfalsifiable, often by design. On the other hand, cryonics is falsifiable. Scientists are trying to figure out scales where it can work: it has far to go, and it may not get there.
I personally can't speak to the degree of lies, hucksterism, or fraud swirling around cryonics. I won't defend any such practices.
Will future history show cryonics to be impossible, not dependent on the currently-available technology, but as a provable claim based on the laws of the universe? Maybe. Maybe cryonics is a long-shot worth trying. I'm not an expert, but I lean towards the latter: allocating a small fraction of resources towards exploring it seems wise.
[1]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-revive-...
[2]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/46-000-year-old-w...
[3]: https://www.chicagotribune.com/2002/09/29/mainstream-science...
> If you wait until a life is "obviously no longer worth living", it is already too late —- Kahneman
Live your life in a way that it is worth living until you no longer can, I suppose. To exist is hard, do your best.
He kept to himself, so I didn't know him well. I did know that he was an independent and thoughtful man who hated that his tremor got so bad he couldn't feed himself. I remember talking with his family about if those self-balancing Google spoons might help.
There are two kinds of people for whom suicide sounds appealing: those in poor health who don't want to experience it getting poorer, and those for whom the difficulty of being alive outweighs the joy of it. If you're in the former camp, that pain is coming for them anyway. If you're in the latter camp and still make the decision, maybe you don't have those close bonds that make you want to persevere.
I “retired my wife” at 46 in 2020, eight years into our marriage so she could enjoy her passion projects and I have turned down more lucrative jobs that would have required me to work harder and be in an office so I could work remotely from anywhere - but realistically in US time zones.
Everyone who knows me, knows that I would die with no regrets. As far as my wife who loves me and my grown (step)kids who I know also love me, I don’t owe physical suffering to anyone. Assisted suicide because of Alzheimer’s is more tricky than something like cancer though. What can you do? Sign something in advance where once you can’t pass a cognitive test three months in a row - kill you?
You've changed the meaning behind the original comment in a subtle but important way. The original commenter wasn't concerned about their effects on other people, they were concerned about how the disease would ruin their public image. Maybe they didn't mean that but it's what they wrote.
This distinction matters because those people whose top priority is their public perception (i.e. social status) are never "good people". It's normal to care about your social status to some degree but it shouldn't be the first thing you consider.
No cure for getting old and no cure for dementia on the useful horizon. Having made it to 90 intact, he had knocked living out of the park already. I completely understand his thinking here and support it. He likely could have gone a little longer, but he also might have had a stroke or some other nonfatal cataclysmic event that took away his options.
You should read the piece by Jason Zweig, if you haven't. The decision was deeply personal and was most certainly not an endorsement of euthanasia.
... Kahneman's final email said: "Not surprisingly, some of those who love me would have preferred for me to wait until it is obvious that my life is not worth extending. But I made my decision precisely because I wanted to avoid that state, so it had to appear premature. I am grateful to the few with whom I shared early, who all reluctantly came round to support me."
Kahneman's friend Annie Duke, a decision theorist and former professional poker player, published a book in 2022 titled "Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away." In it, she wrote, "Quitting on time will usually feel like quitting too early."
She is frustrated by his decision. "There's a big difference between it feeling early and it actually being too early," she says. "You're not terminal, you're fine. Why aren't you taking the outside view? Why aren't you listening to people who will give you good objective advice? Why are you doing this?"
Paul Slovic, a psychologist at the University of Oregon who befriended Kahneman more than 50 years ago, says, "Danny was the type of person who would think long and hard about things, so I figured he must have thought about it very slowly and deliberatively. Of course, those of us who spend our lives studying decisions, we think a lot about the reasons for those decisions. But often the reasons aren't reasons. They're feelings."By targeting their support networks, the "baddies" effectively end up making the new generations risk for impoverishment greater (can't let the kids at grandma's, have to pay for daycare, lose access to nutritious inexpensive meals, etc).
> A part of eugenic politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal chamber. A great many people would have to be put out of existence simply because it wastes other people's time to look after them.
Shaw and other Fabian Society members were supporters of the group now called Dignity in Dying [0], which used to be called The Voluntary Euthanasia Legalisation Society and was founded by a doctor.
Nazi Germany committed involuntary euthanasia of disabled people in a program called Aktion T4 [1]. It's probably not an accident that Dr Kevorkian, an American, started publishing his euthanasia papers in Germany. Before that he was trying to harvest blood and organs from inmates, which is another area where the incentives seem very bad.
I can't comment on how often modern assisted suicide programs recommend it to disabled people who don't want suicide. But it's clear that Kevorkian was not careful about who he recommended assisted suicide to. So given the strong desire of some people to euthanize the disabled against their will, the lack of carefulness is concerning and suggests that it likely happens with some regularity except in exceptionally run programs.
Just to be clear: the insurance companies are the problem here; and more broadly this whole for-profit model of healthcare.
However, the price difference is probably a strong incentive.
Like a more subtle form of Shakespeare's "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?".
> But opponents argue it's being used as a cheaper alternative to providing adequate social or medical support.
I personally think that all attempts should be made to provide homeless and sick people with treatments, and they shouldn't be pushed in that direction if they do not want it.
If we do not have the capacity to do so, then my view is that we are failing as a society to provide adequate care for all in their time of need.
If a country is able to build dozens of city-sized data centers, then it is clearly choosing not to treat and house a certain part of their population.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...
It seems like DIY methods could be risky to your family if you're already impacted by the disease, and your own competency is called into question.
At the moment, I have standing orders in place that no heroic measures or treatments should be enacted in the event that I am in a terminal or vegitative state. I've communicated clearly to family members that would be responsible for my decision making that things are not to be prolonged or dragged out for the sake of emotional contrivance.
Without knowing how we will die, it's really quite impossible to plan around it, of course. My comment, more or less, expresses my desire to have more control over my exit in the event that I am put in a position to become a massive burden on those I love; this is something I consider a reasonable and rational request, where the folks that make our laws do not. None of that changes without discussing and sharing our viewpoints on the matter, though, which I suppose was all that I was doing.
Good luck to you.
The poseur part is that it doesn't matter if you know what is in the book or not. That is actually the interesting part of the book to me but also why it is largely an exercise in futility.
I would assume someone who says it is their favorite book just has not read that many non-fiction books.
Eg maybe a 16 year old who wants to end their otherwise healthy life might, 20 years later, be glad they didn't.
That seems less likely with someone who is almost certainly going to die (and probably painfully to boot) "soon".
Equally, they might spend decades of their life in misery wishing that they had been able to.
Apparently you can (almost) do it unintentionally if you play tennis in the heat—though 88oz (2.6L) seems like a lot!
Here’s a case report:
Hakimian, J., Goldbarg, S. H., Park, C. H., & Kerwin, T. C. (2014). Death by Coconut. Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology, 7(1), 180–181. https://doi.org/10.1161/circep.113.000941
If only they had someone deeply familiar with the field who had been there.
Regarding your estimates, are you just making up a lot of assumptions or do you have any data backing up your relative numbers? In your other comment you seem to assume that anyone not agreeing with OP's suggestion doesn't have personal experience with close relative having a dementia. I'm very sorry for your loss. At least some others (me included) also have had this unfortunate experience, but don't agree. High bar is actually very hard to quantify. All old people are in gradual decline and are relatively close to their deaths. One alternative to your suggestion would be that a state would provide quality professional care for people with dementia. That way the things OP described wouldn't happen and the family of the patient wouldn't have to bear the financial burden of the disease. We are more advanced and richer that we have ever been in human history, but it seems like we are unable, as a community, to provide very ill people with quality care they need.
That absence is also quite compatible with Jainism, the core moral precept of which is simply do no violence.
Again:
Yes, it's "illegal" but it's effectively nulled if the means to it are made legal.
I don't know what you mean by "an extraordinary amount." It's about $10,000, which covers multiple consultations, medical assessments, interactions with the government, the nonprofit's operational costs, and so on.
Save your loved ones some grief, create a living will with a trusted lawyer, update it about once a year. It's worth it. There are so many insane snafus one can get into with estranged family members, the state/gov't, medical institutions, etc that make the situation even more difficult and stressful to deal with. Don't expect anyone coming out of the woodwork to act according to honor. They are vultures and know no such kindness.
I get it’s easy with other diseases such as cancer, though.
You can't express in advance that you want to have assisted suicide.
Your former self might express wishes, but what if your later self doesn't feel like this anymore? In a way, we can all get the same feeling when doing another round of "lose weight this year" new year's resolutions just to realize a couple weeks later that the former self wasn't that trustworthy to begin with (or was it the other way around, the future self can't be trusted?)
Point is: you can wish for whatever you want, but dementia is probably a tough case and it shifts your priorities, making everything before obsolete and I'm not sure that people beginning to suffer from dementia ever find the right point in time to end life early.
Arguably the best qualified person to decide what to do with Future You is Present You.
Plenty of people here who reacted negatively to OP's suggestion seem to not have had to deal with a loved one who dealt with Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia. It's not hard like taking care of a toddler is hard. It's hard like, "this is not the same person I know for my whole life, they don't recognize me, they say and do mean things to me and their grand-kids and neighbors all the time, and require 24x7 supervision to not hurt themselves or break everything in the room."
Oh, and remember that in the US, all nursing homes for this kind of thing are for-profit companies backed by venture capital, meaning they are expensive as hell. Take your current middle-class apartment, shrink the size to just a bedroom (that you now have to share with someone else), and then quadruple the rent. Just a few years of that can decimate the life savings of the average retiree and/or their children's.
I speak with some authority here because all of this happened to my father. He was "alive" in the last few years of his life, but not what anyone would call "living." I absolutely do not want that to happen to me. If it were legal in the US, I would absolutely opt for an assisted suicide plan for myself.
There are ways to handle it that avoid all the "whatabouts" that you and others have already brought up. One rough draft of an example: 1) Have a lawyer write up a kind of will expressing my wishes. 2) Get three unbiased negative diagnoses to show I am of sound mind prior to signing the will. 3) Go in for regular testing (every year, maybe two). After each negative diagnosis, add another (witnessed and/or notarized) signature to the will. The will is not valid if testing or a signature is missed. 3) If there is ever a positive diagnosis, it must be confirmed by two other clinics. 4) If three years pass with doctors and clinical tests confirming increasing dementia symptoms along the way, the assisted suicide clause is invoked and I get to pass peacefully surrounded by loved ones instead of being a stressful burden on them for years or decades to come.
Yes, there are details and unintended consequences that neither me nor anyone else can see ahead of time. Like everything else, they are dealt with as they come up. No, you won't convince me that your favorite corner case means the entire idea is invalid.
This is exactly it. It's like dealing with a curmudgeonly toddler with extreme agency and no self-awareness. The rest of your comment is so spot on or at least matches my experience. I'm sorry you had to go through it but you genuinely seem to have become stronger from it and I'm grateful you could share your experience with us.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088539240...
There are many who will raise their hands with anecdotal counters to this, but I think much of that is borne from misunderstandings about end of life generally, which is a charged and difficult topic lots of people would rather not learn more about.
I highly recommend the book Being Mortal by Atul Gawande for anyone who wants to explore the topic further—or really for anyone who has loved ones at all!
Your assertion
> If you’ve already made it to 90 with no major issues, you’re expected to make it to 95 and you could make easily live to 100
Doesn't really hold up, either in my anecdote (life) or in data
In the UK 70% of men aged 90 today will die before being 95. Most will die before turning 94. Women have about 40% chance of making it to 95.
The expected life span is 4 years not 5 at 90.
What happens to 90 year olds in America that need a few weeks in ITU and a couple of months on a warn from a stroke when they can't pay?
If I am ever diagnosed with one of those, I absolutely want the chance to end my life before I reach a stage I become a burden to my loved ones and can't give a trustable consent. I'd rather go too soon than too late.
If you think you’ll be a burden on your loved ones can we really say they’re your loved ones? This is a serious question. If you’re thinking that you’ll be a burden do you think that these people really love you?
At least I would want to let them use experimental drugs, or do anything to further the cause of curing Alzheimer’s.
But again, this is all far from the original article about an old man who decided to die because well, we don’t really know, he just didn’t see the point of living anymore.
And, just to make everything as heartwrenching as possible, in this series of short reels their mind is swiping through, they occasionally become the person you had loved, for some minutes. And you know that these moments will never get more common, only rarer, but you can't help but think that they're "still in there".
It is my firm belief that any sense of "me" would be long dead by this time. Keeping my body and scraps of my consciousness alive only to torment my loved ones, caregivers, and neighbors would be a cruelty that would serve no purpose. I hope that I don't ever have to make this choice, but I also hope that, if I am ever diagnosed, I will have the chance to make this choice and avoid such suffering.
I think it’s a pretty fuckin dumb question.
Gatekeeping “love” behind service of ceaseless emotional toil with a smile is ridiculous.
Acknowledging that the things you love are a huge pain in the ass sometimes and keeping on loving them is perfectly healthy.
These are not mutually exclusive.
It is extremely exhausting to try and be ‘understanding’ of someone that does everything to sabotage themselves.
Maybe people are able to answer that question by themselves and don't need the judgement of other people answering differently.
For myself: I hope for assisted suicide before Alzheimer’s. I value me for me. Not-me I don’t value, and Alzheimer’s does not improve not-me over me. But people who cannot separate me from not-me (with whom not-me loses status for me)… I don’t care about them! (Philosophical mood.)
IMHO it is important to see which context people are coming from. Different culture, social acceptance, historic treatment options, etc. influence the response.
Also, dementia is not the only disease with a strong degenerative impact on character and behaviour e.g there is schizophrenia et al. What is common with many of these conditions that there is a strong individual component of progression and morbidity.
It is great that you have the option to make a choice for yourself. Others might decide to make other choices.
I don’t want to go that way either. If I start losing my mind to Alzheimer’s or dementia I don’t want to slowly turn unrecognizable to those who love me, fuck that shit. Give me something suitable and I’ll do it my damn self if needs be.
I know there are medical directives that can be put in place but they don't cover everything and they can't compel anyone to end my hypothetical misery, the most they can do is withdraw care.
Most 95 year olds also don’t have dementia.
My point isn’t that getting old doesn’t suck. It’s that you have a good chance of having several years of good quality of life at 90.
>What happens to 90 year olds in America that need a few weeks in ITU and a couple of months on a warn from a stroke when they can't pay?
America has socialized healthcare for people over 65, so the government pays for it.
Sure, it is nice to be remembered well, if you deserve it, but I do not live for the opinions of others. This is slave mentality and pathetic. I care about being good, and if I am hated for that, then so be it. Sad, but better to be hated for being a good person than loved for being a mediocrity or a knave.
And to off yourself out of concern with how people remember you is a condemnation of our society, our lack of charity, our lack of magnanimity, and our selfish prioritization of convenience. Full throttle consumerism.
Or there are others trying to do good things and being hated for taking a courage to challenge things.
Jesus, Socrates, anyone who stands up against an immoral hierarchy. Rethink your thought
Care to name even a single objective good, and explain how exactly it is objectively good?
If you observe any animal or living thing, you will generally see it behaving in ways that seek to actualize it as the kind of thing it is. The nature of a thing bounds the potentials it has, and so circumscribes the limits of what can be actualized; this is a basic feature of all things, living or not, that they are "causally composed", as it were. In any case, this activity is not necessarily conscious. No squirrel is thinking "Gee, I need to collect nuts to grow and nourish my body and avoid predators so that I can produce offspring and actualize X, Y, and Z." In such cases, the squirrel is moved by various inclinations and appetites whose proper satisfaction actualizes certain ends of "squirrelness". A good squirrel (not in the moral sense, but in the sense of it exemplifying squirrel nature) is one that is able to actualize these potentials and does so to realize its squirrel nature. A bad specimen is one that cannot or does not. So, if you get a squirrel addicted to meth, and all it does is do things that get it more hits of meth while neglecting or impeding the realization of its squirrel nature, then you have a failure or deviance opposed to the good of the squirrel. The same could be said of a squirrel that is lethargic or one that lacks limbs.
Human beings are no different in this general sense, save that human beings are able to a) comprehend their circumstances, at least somewhat, and b) choose between apprehended alternatives. This means human beings are moral agents. So, here, a human being bears a certain responsibility for his choices and actions. If he chooses to act against his nature, especially as a rational, moral, and social agent, then he is acting against his nature and thus against his good. And if he is acting in such a way while understanding that he is doing so, then he now also has moral culpability for his defective actions.
In short, to be the kind of thing you are by nature is what is good. The act in accord with your nature is what makes good actions. Death is not good per se, and to act to destroy yourself is opposed to your being human and thus to your good. To intentionally do so is morally evil. (This must distinguished from self-sacrifice for another, which can be in accord with human nature under certain circumstances, but it is not the case here with Kahneman.)
The subject receives the object in the mode of the subject, yes, but this does not mean that knowledge of the objective is impossible.
You might enjoy “the unique and its property” by Max Stirner. An excellent philosophical book and especially relevant given that Alzheimer’s takes away the self…
The end point being that with the parents I have there was nearly a guaranteed outcome of only objectively bad things happening for me, for them, for people around me. During that state I saw my plan as honorable and wrote it down in what I was to leave to explain my actions.
I think clinging to life is partially rooted in an egoist/solipsistic metaphysics that you yourself are all that matters (to yourself at least, of course). Relax, we're just a small part of the cosmos. Ancient and immortal :)
But we should put guardrails around if the reason for assisted suicide is not pressure from relatives, depression, etc.
But it being a hard topic does not imply the easy solution of banning it.
The relevant word during our fascist rise is schadenfreude. People not only want to see them drop dead for having the audacity to be dirty and unhoused - they want to see them suffer, hard, the entire time.
You gotta find a way to stop making the inflicting of pain on others pleasurable.
The important point is this: are you causing emotional, psychological, physical distress in the real world to those you care about when you have this disease? Yes or no. That's what I care about. Whether they are able to remember me well despite that, or poorly because of that should be completely secondary.
Sure, we can think about how the burdens of caring for our family can be lessened as they age, or how we may help reduce that burden for our family, but family does have the duty to care for its members, and to place such considerations above the intrinsic value of human life is very sad indeed.
I watched both of my parents deteriorate in the end. The morphine blotted out my father's ability to form long term memory, if it wasn't in front of him things were like they had been before so much morphine was needed. There can be no value in such "life".
As far as I'm concerned not allowing people to end the suffering is a form of sadism.
I suspect this thread will go like many have in the past: there are two camps. The first has never seen a bad death and has a lot of opposition to people choosing to end their life. The second has seen a bad death and a lot of people would choose suicide before reaching that point. If it is a contempt for human life that means people have contempt for their own life and that doesn't make much sense. I can look at myself: I have been dealt a presumably genetic killer, I saw what it did to my mother and I will not allow that to happen to me. Do I have contempt for my own life because I expect the end to be suicide?
This is equally true of conditions like paranoid schizophrenia or psychopathy. Sometimes a person is just born with wiring that makes you dangerous to others. Does this mean that everyone around them must have the magnanimity and charity to them attacking people at random?
That's ridiculous. People can be unproductive, but not a liability.
> But I don’t want this attitude of “you should kill yourself so you don’t burden your family” to become the norm either.
I can see that, but you haven't explained why. Personally, I don't want to burden myself, my family and those I care about, that's important to me. There must be something more important to you that justifies burdening loved ones with a hard painful death of a loved one. Help me understand: what's that thing for you, if not ego/fear?
> What if your partner’s grandad heard you calling him a rude obnoxious liability and felt pressured into killing himself?
The alternative is he's unnaturally kept alive in a perpetual state of suffering for him and the people around him. If he hadn't suffered mental decline, I know he'd never consciously choose that, another reason why I'd like to make sure I'm gone before serious decline kicks in.
> But many people die suddenly with no serious mental decline at all. That can happen at 95 or 100 the same as it happens earlier.
That doesn't change anything. I agree with Kahnemans point that becoming a burden is too late. If I accept that, without being able to predict the future, it then becomes a game of risk. Kahnamen decided the risk of him becoming a burden was greater than the risk of him continuing to live what he would consider a productive (edit: "valuable" is probably a better word here) life.
That would depend on your definition of liability I suppose. Many people would consider a parent who was no longer capable of productive output (work, helping out around the house, watching the kids) a liability. I suppose you may be using the term to mean "you'd rather not have them around anymore because their company is no longer offsetting the cost to you".
>There must be something more important to you that justifies burdening loved ones with a hard painful death of a loved one. Help me understand: what's that thing for you, if not ego/fear?
This isn't about me. As of right now I don't plan on taking any heroic measures to preserve my life past a certain point. The issue is I don't care why someone wants to stick around. I want them to feel free to do continue to do so.
>The alternative is he's unnaturally kept alive in a perpetual state of suffering for him and the people around him.
Depends on what you mean by being unnaturally kept alive. He could have opted out of medical treatment at any time. Once his capacity to make his own decisions was gone, his family could opt out of that treatment for him.
>That doesn't change anything. I agree with Kahnemans point that becoming a burden is too late. If I accept that, without being able to predict the future, it then becomes a game of risk. Kahnamen decided the risk of him becoming a burden was greater than the risk of him continuing to live what he would consider a productive (edit: "valuable" is probably a better word here) life.
Personally I think trying to predict the future and what the people around me would or wouldn't want is futile. And choosing when to die to prevent this is impossible. Some people will go downhill at 55, some at 110. If you really consider the burden of a few years of decline to be so awful on your family that you place a very high value on avoiding it, you'd need probably need to kill yourself much earlier than 90, probably 75 to really reduce the chance to a small enough level that you don't really need to worry about it very much.
The problems I see are that several.
1. People will feel pressured into suicide because they feel they are might be a burden to their family that their family doesn't want. Even if they aren't. You can't know what your family actually thinks. If they say "no dad I don't want you to kill yourself", are they being honest or not?
2. People will feel pressured into suicide because their family has made it clear that they are a burden on them. These people might want to keep living for whatever reason. Fear/ego whatever. I don't care why they want to. I don't want them to feel obligated to commit suicide.
3. The financial incentives for families to pressure otherwise healthy people into suicide.
I still generally think people should be allowed to choose how their life ends.
I also think that, as a society, we should be trying to fix the problems you list so they become of least concern to the person dying (though I'm not optimistic we will).
I mean it in the sense of burdening others. Sure we all have to burden others to some extent, but I mean specifically the unique burdens that come with age, like requiring others to do basic things to keep you alive because you've lost the ability to do so.
> Once his capacity to make his own decisions was gone, his family could opt out of that treatment for him.
There is also no medical treatment for old age: there's no medications you can opt out of to end it all if you're just naturally aging and suffering, but we have to see this suffering more now because medicine has stopped other illness killing people before old age. Also, one problem we didn't anticipate is in the UK, legal and medical power of attorney can only be used when a person has lost the ability to make decisions: if they're able to make terrible decisions that are obviously not in their interest, and leading them to be repeatedly hospitalised, those terrible decisions are still respected over the family/power of attorney.
> The issue is I don't care why someone wants to stick around. I want them to feel free to do continue to do so.
I think we agree here. I want people to be free to end their life how they want, including staying around if they want to.
For the 3 problems you mentioned, you see them as problems because you have the perfectly natural underlying fear/ego/entitlement to stay alive, regardless of who else has to suffer for you.
I don't feel I have that, for better or for worse, so none of those 3 points really are problems for me:
1. This is literally what I'm advocating for! If my family think I'm a liability, and I'm causing more harm than good, then I've told them they need to tell me so we can put things in motion. The only reason for the family to be dishonest is through fear of upsetting/offending my feeling of entitlement to life. The way I see it is Kahneman's approach enabled his family to be honest with him!
2. What about the contrary? I want me and my family to have the best life with minimal unnecessary suffering. Yet you're here, trying to pressure me into making them suffer by being a big ol' age burden. I don't want to feel obligated and forced to stay alive and make my family suffer because some people are scared of their inevitable mortality. My approach maximises the choice to allow for minimising inevitable suffering, whereas yours reduces choices for the _chance_ that maybe you'll be the old person who isn't a burden (but you will be a burden, because nature).
3. This is already a problem: the legality or acceptableness of suicide/death isn't going to stop horrible family members finding creative ways to extract inheritance early.
I'm not advocating for people to be able to top themselves on a whim, there needs to be controls and processes in place, like any big/potentially harmful decision, and these controls are in place. FWIW, a bunch of the points you've raised were discussed and concluded as part of the parliamentary discussion into changing these laws in the UK ("Assisted dying bill"). The bill in the UK was specifically for terminally ill adults, but practically, old age is a terminal illness and most of the same arguments apply.
If you want to involve society by petitioning the courts to have a doctor kill you, society gets a say because you’ve involved society.
There’s no country with assisted suicide laws where society doesn’t get a say because killing someone by default is murder, and exceptions must be highly regulated.
You started and perpetuated a completely unnecessary flamewar here, and of all the offtopic things to do that about, someone's use of the word "next" is particularly superfluous.
An isolated comment of that sort is forgivable, but perpetuating the flamewar and crossing into personal attack, as you did below, is not. We ban accounts that do that, so please don't do that.
Probably nobody at all got confused by that word choice.
“The next book he wrote, Noise, ….” Would have been better or “After that book he wrote Noise….”.
I absolutely was confused for a second or two and thought “wait, are we talking about a different person? He isn’t going to have a ‘next’ book unless he had one queued up?”.
Did I need the explanation above? Not really, I’d come to the right conclusion on my own but I can imagine someone who isn’t a native speaker (reader?) might stumble on that more and I enjoyed the confirmation.
This is overconfidence; e.g. it "it is clear to me, so it must have been clear to everyone else."
Indeed, there is a person in this overall thread [1] saying the use of "next" was ambiguous:
> I literally thought some unpublished book.
It was made clear to everyone because of the word choice in context. If someone didn't get it then they didn't put two and two together.
I looked up the word in a few different dictionaries and the top entry aligns more with "subsequent" in every one.
You are wrong on this.
Not sure why I bothered responding to a troll.
Between doctors, nurses and lawyers you can burn through a million bucks in five years easily. And most families don’t have a million bucks cash to spare.
On the other hand, if they die after six months, instead of after 5 years? The family doesn’t lose the farm.
That would indicate there is a financial incentive in keeping them alive, no?
The "incentive" from the family's perspective, if they're that cold-blooded, doesn't make sense because they could just... not take care of that person.
The ordinary outlet for them is the military. Sometimes they become serial killers.
A euthanasia industry would attract these people similarly to how police and security work attracts authoritarians and how clergy jobs attract pedophiles.
That's not to say that most people in the industry would enjoy killing people, but it would be a problem. And death is final; it's impossible to fix mistakes. This is the same reason many people are opposed to the death penalty.
It's much easier to point out others' alleged irrational thinking, but the main purpose of books like this is to help you better understand your own thinking.
So beside pedantic it’s unnecessary.
Death penalty is the government deciding to take your life based on what they believe you did. I agree, mistakes there are bad. Assisted suicide consists of the person dying giving their consent to take their life. Quite different.
Not only is whether someone gives consent sometimes unclear, it's also unclear if the consent was informed consent and whether it was uncoerced.
Informed consent is obliquely mentioned in my other comment. For example, a patient may falsely believe their illness is terminal.
I realize I replied to a question about financial incentives to talk about non-financial incentives. But coerced consent would often fall under the financial incentive heading. E.g. "consent to be euthanized or I'll contest the will."
Forced "suicide" also has a long history, including in the ancient world. Arguably things like kamikaze might fall into that category. And it's a favorite method of execution in financial and espionage type cases because the method of coercion won't show up in the forensics.
For these sorts of reasons, I think the risk of mistakes is high.
2. You likely get much more money if they die now without spending it on cost of living, and healthcare.
People do all kinds of awful things in order to get control of an elderly family member’s money—up to and including outright murder. Pressuring a suggestible family member into assisted suicide is a comparatively easy and low risk method.
Quite the opposite - I agree with that, and that's why I think goodness is not an objectively evaluable property. At the risk of making you feel I'm twisting your words, you pretty much said it yourself: what the human good is, is at the very least subject to human nature. Therefore, your evaluation of goodness cannot be objective. You're at best speaking from the subjective perspective of a human being.
But if you now say this doesn't get to the heart of your overall reasoning, I agree.
Consider then if goodness is even more subjective than just being a human value - for example, imagine that individuals might have (if even just slightly but) differing natures and so differing values. This would mean that your evaluation of what's good and what the human nature is like is not going to be durable across people. Worse still, you may even consider scenarios where the nature of a person changes over time, or they may value different things given a specific context. This would mean that your evaluation of what's good and what's bad is no longer durable not just across people, but across contexts, situations, and even time itself.
Notably of course, this is logically indistinguishable from other people simply making a measurement error of the same supposedly objective property. So this all hinges on whether you (can) believe that instead of there being an ontic, fundamental property of goodness, one that you're properly accessing and others disagreeing aren't, your access is the same as anyone else's. And that regardless of whether such a property objectively exists, it may either not hold an observer invariant value, or you may never be able to tell to have learned that value.
I wish to remain so lucid when the time comes, that I can go sit under a tree and let myself go like that old dog. Perhaps I should leave a note.
That’s kind of what I want when I die too - I don’t think I want to be around other people when it happens. I want to have my final moments to face death on my own, without feeling like I have to perform for other people.
… that said, give me another 60 years to chew on it and maybe I’ll feel different.
A lot of motivation to be risk averse with my physical body in this life comes from a desire to make it to old age. Furthermore, I instantly understood why having children was good when I realized that they are your insurance that you’ll (usually) have someone to help comfort you on your deathbed who is themselves still lucid.
However, social acceptance may lead to more egregious abuses: the issue gained a higher profile in early 2010, when an 80-year-old man escaped after discovering his intended fate and heard his family members discussing how they were going to "share" his lands, and took refuge in a relative's home.
People obsess over this risk. It—and religious opposition—are the reason it’s only an option for those who can travel to and hospice in Switzerland.
> social acceptance may lead to more egregious abuses
Do we have any evidence societies that have tolerated suicide had higher rates of murder? Switzerland doesn’t strike me as a hotbed of senior murder, for example.
What you call "comforting" is leaving a helpless prison in the wilderness to succumb to thirst, hunger or predators
Their life probably won't improve anymore, and in the latter case they're going to die in a few years anyway, so might as well just lighten the load on society?
By your logic we should kill everyone at their peak.
That's not unique to old age. People get injuries, and diseases that require other to people to help them to stay alive. Even something as simple as breaking both your arms requires someone else to keep you alive.
>The only reason for the family to be dishonest is through fear of upsetting/offending my feeling of entitlement to life
Your family could be dishonest because they they are normal human beings who don't want to upset you. Despite what you've told them about not being a burden, there's no way that you can be sure when they say they want you to keep sticking around.
>Yet you're here, trying to pressure me into making them suffer by being a big ol' age burden.
I think the risk of other people being pressured into killing themselves is worse than the burden your family might suffer because they have to take care of an old person.
>that maybe you'll be the old person who isn't a burden
I don't care if you're not a burden. Not being a burden isn't a good enough reason in my opinion for society to allow a doctor to kill you.
If you want to kill yourself, that's your choice. If you want to convince society to create an additional affirmative defense for murder, you haven't convinced me that maybe avoiding being a burden on your family is a good enough justification.
>This is already a problem
It is a problem, but this creates a very quick, low-risk, straightforward, hard to detect path to getting the entire thing.
>practically, old age is a terminal illness and most of the same arguments apply.
Life is a terminal condition. The only difference between an otherwise healthy 40 year old killing themselves to avoid a potential slow decline and an 80 year old doing it is the number of years they are expected to live.
Either you set some limit. Less than 5 years remaining life expectancy? Or you just let anyone kill themselves for any reason they like. The first case will be arbitrary no matter what limit you set.
> I looked up the word in a few different dictionaries and the top entry aligns more with "subsequent" in every one.
Even if you had looked at every dictionary, would you claim such a process resolves ambiguity in general? I hope not.
As you know, there are other entries other than the first in a dictionary. Multiple entries means there are multiple usages: there can be ambiguity. Sometimes usage diminishes or eliminates ambiguity, but not always.
> I looked up the word in a few different dictionaries...
You only took a small sample. How can you offer this as definitive evidence? You can't.
In case you didn't check it or overlooked it, here is the first entry from the Apple Dictionary:
> 1 (of a time or season) coming immediately after the time of writing or speaking: we'll go next year | next week's parade.
Anyhow, my argument does not rely on pointing to a dictionary and saying "I'm right" and "you are wrong". I am saying:
1. Reasonable people see ambiguity (in this specific case and in general)
2. No one person is the arbiter of what is ambiguous for others.
3. Claiming there is a definitive process to resolve ambiguity for everyone is naive.
That sounds right. I only can make probabilistic guesses as to what is happening in someone else's brain. By posing a question to someone else, there is some chance that person may ask it of themselves. If not today, then perhaps in future.
To obtain medical aid in dying in Quebec, people must meet all the following requirements:
have a Quebec health insurance card,
be 18 years old or older,
have the mental capacity to make their own decisions about their medical care,
be in one of these situations:
and be in a state where their abilities are severely and permanently getting worse, with no chance of improvement,
have a serious physical impairment that greatly affects their abilities for an extended period,
be in constant and unbearable physical or psychological pain,
be informed about any available means to relieve suffering,
have decided that those means are intolerable.
Once a doctor or SNP assesses the request, they must ask a second doctor or SNP to confirm in writing that the patient is eligible to receive medical aid in dying.
The doctor or SNP must also ensure that several measures to protect the patient have been respected. They must ensure that:
The patient made their request freely and with all the information necessary to make an informed decision.
The patient repeated their request at different moments.
The patient has had an opportunity to discuss the request with their loved ones.
The patient has the opportunity to change their mind right up to the very last moment.
If the patient has trouble communicating, the doctor or SNP must also ensure that the patient was given a reliable means of communication and understands the information they had received.
They would have likely used assisted suicide if it had been an option back then.
> By your logic we should kill everyone at their peak.
No, they suggested that the old and ailing whose quality of life has deteriorated to the point where there is no hope or no more joy in living, ought to be given the choice.
Let me end by quoting my favourite lines from the HN guidelines:
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
Consider the following scenarios:
There is a red button that orders your euthanasia. Pressing it instantly teleports you to a euthanasia facility and leads to your death unless you say no within 30 seconds. The button reads your fingerprint and can only be pressed by you. (Assume science fiction level technology to make this true)
1. The button is located 5000 km away from you in an unknown location.
2. The location is known.
3. You can order the delivery of the button to you for $50
4. The button is in your basement
5. The button is next to your bed
6. The button is on your keyboard and mouse
7. The button is on your keychain
Now consider there is a blue button with the same rules as above, which makes you feel compelled to press the first button for a day and it can be pressed by anyone.
You'd want the red button as far away from you as possible and the blue button secured in a location that is as inaccessible to others as possible.
In today's society there are too many people obsessed with pressing blue buttons. Also, pressing blue buttons is not a crime, because red buttons happen to be pretty far away from most people.
But now there are people obsessed with pressing red buttons. They want to ship the red button to your house on your behalf, while thinking they are doing you a favor.
This would be okay if the blue button pressing people were a minority and there was a punishment for pressing blue buttons, but it turns out both positions are popular and when averaged together, the buttons will be placed next to each other, thereby turning the blue button into a second red button.
While what you say is extreme there is a point in the decline past which there is no point of living. If you have something worth living for - cling to life and to 107 if you like. But if the only thing that waits you is to slowly decay and fade and lose yourself - what is the point?
I watched a documentary where they interviewed a bunch of people who attempted suicide and talked to them about the entire experience and mental state. Out of the maybe ten that they interviewed, only one said that he wished it had worked. That doesn't mean it's only 10% though... they didn't get to interview the ones that succeeded.
Especially if the person has already admitted to trying to commit suicide (which they presumably did considering the context from parent comment).
I think it's okay for us to try and avoid the irreversible mistake, but yes, it's very arguable that living years you didn't want to live is also an "irreversible mistake".
What's downvote-worthy about this comment?
It's in response to mine, and even though I don't really agree with it, I don't see what's so objectionable that it needs some sort of admonition?
Paranoid schizophrenia have lower compliance rates and fairly large collateral damage. Psychopathy is a trait not a disease, but again, issue is that they do not cooperate and dont want to "cure". Psychopaths are fine as they are from their point of view.
It is just their victims who mind.
Insurers and the government have the opposite incentive, but it's something to be concerned about.
>there are already guardrails around these processes
I don't think there are guardrails that can prevent what I'm talking about. Only the most egregious abuses would even be detectable.
As long as you don't literally tell your mom to kill herself I don't think you could make it illegal. As it stands in the US I don't think you could make it illegal for someone to tell someone they "wish they were dead" in this situation.
You are an excellent poster child for this tendency in this thread.
(Although there are cases I would be ok with it without--to me, what's important is the mind. To me personhood extends from first consciousness to last consciousness. Once you are sure the last consciousness has passed I attach no value to the body that remains.)
Okay, sure, but how much of the population is this awful and does it actually matter since they can't consent to someone else's suicide anyway?
I don't think this is as much of a widespread issue as its made out to be, to be honest.
What's definite, however, is that he made ~75% of her estate vanish into thin air before throwing her into a low-end nursing home where he wouldn't pay $6/day to have her bathed so she died in her own filth. Nevermind she had a 6-figure pension and longterm care for life. He wanted her gone because dementia had made her unmanageable to him yet he wouldn't let her go to live with any of her other children because he feared he would lose control of the estate through his PoA.
And because he had that PoA, no one could dispute his choices in time to save her. The courts and Adult Protective Services were useless bordering on complicit. The day we finally got a positive court verdict was absolutely 100% coincidentally no connection whatsoever you see 2 days before she suddenly passed.
Lesson learned: when you grow old, don't give anyone on the inheritance train any sort of PoA or they'll instantly become a PoS.
It’s already common for caregivers to begin to resent the people they care for and for old people to worry that they are a liability.
I don’t trust the system to be able to protect vulnerable people who have been coerced. And I don’t want old people in general to feel like suicide is their obligation.
A simple test of how people feel: Consider the twin towers. We saw quite a few people choosing jumping over fire. We do not question people making such a choice. It is the same choice, just on a much more compressed time scale.
(And we have the bonkers case out of WWII: the guy survived apparently uninjured. Someone who made the choice and was still around to ask them why. We don't know exactly what happened, no analysis was made at the time but attempting to reconstruct the situation said he probably hit the outer part of a pine tree and then rolled down a snowbank. He had on heavy clothing and had blacked out during the fall--not exactly surprising as he jumped from 18,000'.)
followed by
> There is a red button [...] buttons [...] button [...] button [...] button [...] button [...] button [...] button [...] button [...] button [...] button [...] buttons [...] buttons [...] button [...] button [...] button [...] button [...] button [...] button [...] button [...] button [...] second red button
Not sure the problem is on their end!
- product development: why make someone "do one extra click" when you can make the extra click unnecessary?
- writing: respect your audience's time.
- humility: take one minute of your time to save other's time.
- databases: optimize for reading not writing
The ones who don’t care about the book don‘t click anyway.
The ones who are interested click no matter if it’s an upcoming or already existing book.
1. The argument above is sound, but it overstretches my metaphor and sidesteps my point which is: "if there is negligible cost in helping a customer, do it." Stated another way: "if reducing ambiguity helps a customer and has negligible cost, do it." (If a one word change reduces some ambiguity for some people, that's an easy win. Copy-editors do this frequently.)
2. Another angle: broadly speaking, I'm asking the question "What is better?" not just "What is necessary?". The first motivates improvement, no matter where you are. While the latter can sometimes be pragmatic, too often aiming only for 'necessity' justifies the status quo.
You should have kids because you want to create new life, and support them as they become the best humans that they can be - not because you’re scared of dying alone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Never_to_Have_Been
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benatar%27s_asymmetry_argument
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Mov...
> a decrease in the human population would prevent a significant amount of human-caused suffering
Ridiculous. Without coming into existence there is nothing anyway - by that logic, coming into existence is always a pleasure too, it’s always a joy, it’s always a triumph and a fulfillment. Existence is always existence, nothing is always nothing. It’s a useless tautology.
If you’d rather be nothing then give up on living. I’m perfectly happy existing.
I'm the same but I'm trying to accept that while we are born among family, dying is a solitary journey.
(There is a saying along these lines, but search engines are utterly useless at surfacing it)
There's a world of difference between something being objectively a certain way, and between feeling really strongly some way about something and thinking that everyone else reasonable would feel the same way too. There are things that are encoded into (most of) our very instincts, things we (for the most part) find absolutely common sense, but this doesn't make them objective. I wish language was able to succinctly express these different levels of "being on the same page", but alas I don't believe it does at the moment, and abusing the word "objective" I can't say I love as an alternative.
If at any point we’d have stopped doing that, we wouldn’t be here to be arguing about it.
The devil’s advocate would probably also ask how it would be objectively good to protect baby Hilter, knowing that protecting his innocent infant life would lead directly to the deaths of millions.
Objective good does not exist, context is king.
Yes.
Did I say that it was easy? Did I say that the spiritual way through all this was just pretending like everything is OK? No, it’s a very difficult process.
Avoiding suffering is impossible. Choosing to die to avoid suffering does not guarantee non-suffering. Only understanding suffering and where it originates can get rid of suffering, and you don’t do that by avoiding it.
For many other neuro-psychiatric diseases, we know that moments of psychosis are reversible, at least to some extent, with drugs and therapy and the kindness of others. The same is manifestly not true, tragically, for dementia: everything lost is gone forever.
It’s because we associate so much with our experience as memories that makes us think that that is what we are. Are people with Alzheimer’s the same person? No, they’re different people. This is why we’re not allowed to just go around killing people with Alzheimer’s and dementia.
The thing that makes us alive is the constant change and activity in the body. If you say, someone does not change, that someone is the same throughout their whole life. That amounts to calling something dead, still, unchanging, lifeless.
These people with dementia, they still have a personality don’t they? I know my friend’s mother does. And my friends, father who died a few months back with Alzheimer’s. Yes, he was angry and had outbursts that were 100% uncharacteristically not like his old behavior. But behavior does not dictate who you are is signals that we still have a consciousness. And that is who we are. We are not our memories. We are not our current form of expression. We are our consciousness. Because our consciousness loses the function of accessing memories does not make us any more us.
You are not your memory. You are consciousness. You are the thing that reads memories.
But again, this drifted so far from the point of the article. This man killed himself not for his current suffering, but for his perceived future suffering. He was afraid of change he was afraid of what that change meant. He wanted people to see the same dead person That people saw him in life. A constant unchanging perception.
A person with late state Alzheimer's, are they conscious? Do they still have "spirit" ψυχή? Is it the same person, or the person moved on? Are they human anymore?
Sorry I have no answers.
Either it does or you’re claiming to be religious and implying you know for sure what happens after we die.
Do you know what happens after we die? If you do, can you tell me how you know it?
You are shiftinf the topic. This is about self-euthanization, assisted suicide. Not others.
> Where do we draw the line?
As written elsewhere, having to draw a line does not mean that the only reasonable conclusion is to make it illegal in general. It's a hard topic without easy answers. "Don't allow it" is an easy answer that doesn't do justice to the topics complexity.
A good friend of mine passed away a year ago with an incurable disease, diagnosed 3 months before his death, and it was essentially guaranteed that he'd have to endure unbelievable suffering during the last weeks of those months. He didn't have the choice to end it early. It was heartbreaking.
I for my part hope that I can choose myself when the time has come.
When things get bad, it was usually not the drawing of lines that did it, but the intention and underlying stance on the rights and indeed humanity of others. The line is not what makes the slope slippery, but a pervasive lack of empathy seems to do it. We also know that bad actors do not care about lines much.
So I think that slippery slope is not a powerful argument on its own.
The politicians, yes. Auschwitz may return but it won't be voluntary.
That's a personal choice. Anyone not interested in that won't have to do anything and can just wait for the end.
“It shouldn't be that way” is not an excuse to torture people through your moralizing indifference to the fact that it is that way.
Currently? I'd say that I wouldn't want to live with dementia, but what if my "demented self" (kinda hate the phrasing, sorry) in the future wants to live, or doesn't remember they don't want to live?
Do I have a say over the life of someone who doesn't remember they were me?
It sounds like Daniel Kahneman was suffering from depression after his wife's death and all he saw in the rest of his life was sadness. He had no hope. What day was the best day to die? What if the next day his hope came back?
What if he tried that, but every day just got worse than the last day?
And people don't get any younger.
My grandmother is 98. She hates her life since she could not go out anymore. But she is catholic and suicide would be a mortal sin. So she waits till gods take her. And suffers till then.
I would make a different choice for sure. If life is hell and no one depends on me, why should I continue the suffering? (At the cost of others, if I would need help?)
But my plan is of course to reach 120+ in good health. But if I decide I had enough, it will be my decision.
I tell you this now in good faith, any human being can choose when to end it. That is without question. I can go get in my car and drive into the nearest body of water, if desired, and no law could stop me. Even under supervision 24/7, it is still possible to do it. We are a determined species.
The only thing in debate is if they can be ethically assisted in the task, with compassion. You say no, someone might pressure Nana into dying to pass her inheritance. Well, the same people might very well put a pillow over her face when no one is looking. A bad actor is a bad actor and murder is illegal but people do it anyways and moral hand-wringing doesn't exactly stop it from happening.
From where I stand you're just unknowingly advocating for extra pain and suffering. Perhaps you'd change your mind if you were in the shoes of someone losing their marbles or worse, someone who has to care for them.
Go to a dementia facility and hang out with your those people. You will see suffering.
If you think that "cannot feed themselves" is when a person is already completely gone and it's okay to "leave them under a tree to die of hunger and thirst", I've got news for you.
I want to be free to die on my own terms. Conversely, I do not want the healthcare system to be allowed to even suggest it.
I don't think that's the same as what you're describing.
The other poster responded to what happens, but here is the how do we know part. We understand very well how physics works, up to some small gaps that are irrelevant here. We know that information about the contents of your mind can't be transmitted outside your body in a way that would not be picked up by some of our sensors. People have tried to actually measure if there is any emanation from the body as a person dies, and there simply isn't any, in any spectra. So, there is no possibility of a soul living the body. Plus, any concept of an afterlife has no place where it could happen. There is no place on earth, in the clouds or underground, for an afterlife to take place in.
So, unless you think all of science is dramatically mistaken, we know with very good certainty that an afterlife is not a real possibility.
It is quite simple actually, you are dead and you as a whole only exist as a memory in other people's brains and your identity as paperwork, tombstones and for those that couldn't refrain from attracting attention history books, old journals artworks and memorials. Your molecules and atoms are disponible for anything else the cycle of nature needs. Expecting anything else is at best delusional.
Alzheimers destroys this stream. All of a sudden, key formative experiences that made me me disappear irreparably, and so what survives is not me, it is a new consciousness formed of other experiences (mostly a subset of the ones I had, though Alzheimers can also sometimes create fake memories from pieces of real memoeies, conjectures, maybe even dreams or old desires etc). And while this is a consciousness, it is not a regular human consciousness, since it doesn't have anything similar to the regular human uninterrupted stream of experience, it is a consciousness made up of fragments of the consciousness of another person. And it is uniquely well positioned to hurt the people that the original person loved the most in the world, without realizing they are doing so. Plus, the life of the new person inhabiting your mind will be, inevitably, horrible. Because, again, they will be in constant shock and confusion because of their missing, incomplete, disordered memories.
So yes, the person we're talking about took a choice to avoid this horrid change. He was afraid of change, yes, because he knew well how horrible said change is, entirely inevitably so. It's normal to be afraid of horrible change. If someone is about to cut your leg without anesthesia, it's normal and good to be afraid of said change, and try to avoid it if you can.
The state tends to suppress methods which would be peaceful and effective, Such as Nembutal
My parent comment has driven alot of valuable discussion (other than your comment)
“His partner died in 2018 as a result of vascular dementia. The loss affected him deeply.”
I can see that loss affecting him even though he had a new partner. Depression does not always go away when you meet someone new.
But I think people with depression have lost hope in the future. And it sounds like he lost Hope in his future.
People in their 80's are watching their friends die one after the other. They aren't fooling themselves about their long-term prospects. No problems with enjoying life, I support that, but it's hard to believe the end isn't coming for you like it comes for everyone else.
I just think this idea that it is "hope" or "depression" is wrong-headed.
Having some older friends might give you a deeper perspective.
If you lived in your 80s and you have not figured out what life is about then that’s not a problem with life, that’s a problem with the person who did not figure out life.
This is the spiritual quest that I think is missing in the world right now. I’m not really being woo-woo here and I’m not talking about God or any other mythical being. I’m talking about the amazing thing that it is to be alive. Being alive is not just about happiness, but you can be joyous experiencing both happiness and suffering. Our suffering will end, and our happiness will end.
Acceptance of the things you can’t change is the key here. I am no stoic that’s for sure. If you’re too hot, move into the shade. But if I have no shade and I’m suffering the heat, how much more happy am I going to be when I finally reach shade!
It’s my friends who went through the deepest suffering that are the most happy and joyous. It’s these people who teach us about life, Not the people who kill themselves because they’re afraid of looking like an old man.
It was seeing my father's death that really solidified it for me that there are things worse than death. I am not in the slightest depressed about it, though.
Anyone can say that about their life right now, can't they? How many people struggling today think that their life will get no better? Look at all those who made it through slavery, what hope did they have? Their hope came from their faith.
Suffering has a purpose, this is something your grandmother understands through her faith. Buddhists understand this as well. Maybe the problem is not our suffering, but our lack of faith in others and in in something bigger than ourselves.
So sure, suffering and pain are part of life. And accepting that helps a lot to not get stuck in that condition by avoiding painful things, you cannot avoid.
"Anyone can say that about their life right now, can't they?"
So no, not anyone is saying that. Only those with a death wish.
And I don't consider having a death wish as a mental condition. It can of course result of a illness, but it can also be a consciouss wish and then finally a decision.
And if other people decide they may not do this, but have to remain in their state of living hell, then this is just torture to me.
At the very least, suffering (through childbirth) is a prerequisite to bringing life into this world.
edit: strange that this is flagged. my parent asked for proof that suffering is inherent in life, and I don't know anyone who has said that the physical act of giving birth is anything but painful.
The truth of dukkha: Recognizing that suffering is a fundamental part of existence
They even call Joy “hidden suffering”. Because whenever the thing is that gives us joy, if we become attached to it and it is taken away then we have suffering.
And the Christians believe that the suffering of Christ was needed to forgive everyone of their sins.
So they both view suffering as an important aspect of life. Something to be used for learning and understanding the human condition.
But the buddhist and the Christians believe that you can escape what you would think of a state of constant suffering through religious practices. It’s the faith the American slaves had in Christ that got them through their state of living hell. And we’ve even seen a Buddhist light themselves on fire to protest the war in Vietnam. So I’m sorry, but I can’t look upon suffering as something that’s negative and I accept it as part of life and just as I can learn things from joy and I can learn things from suffering, and they are both the same size of the coin and equally as valuable.
And please don’t bring some mythical being in the argument.
But those two characters taught us a lot about suffering. Where it comes from and how to face suffering with courage and not just throw your morals out the window once you have the glimpse of even future suffering.
Maybe it’s just me, but I see every moment as the best it can possibly be. Whether I’m seeing this gorgeous sunny blue sky today or I’m 95 years old with terminal cancer. It’s a miracle to be born and to exist in this world, it’s extremely rare. And I want to live every last second of it. Maybe that’s what’s upsetting me about reading what he wrote. If you just try to grab the good times in this life and use that as a goal you’re going to be severely disappointed.
Maybe some suffering has a purpose, and some suffering does not? It doesn't have to be always this or always that.
I’m less concerned about what was in his head than the message that he sends. The message he sent was that perceived future suffering is not worth enduring. He killed himself because he was afraid of suffering. He was afraid of the natural process of dying.
Is that the message we want to send about old age and dying? That it’s unnatural? Can anyone choose what age they think is old enough? Maybe it should be 65 years old, the retirement age. That would save the United States a lot of money for sure.
Is this setting up the president for some sort of real life version of Logan‘s run?
I don't think he was afraid. I think he mapped out his late age future, and wanted to fast forward to what his next adventure even in post-death while leaving his last touches on the world a good one. Leaving the world a better place than when he started, as they say.
> I’m less concerned about what was in his head than the message that he sends.
As quoted from the article: Daniel Kahneman did not want to make a statement or start a debate. "I am not ashamed of my decision," he wrote, "but I don't want it to be discussed publicly either."
I read a bit about him after I read the article. He was a behavioral economist and he treated his life like a piece of capital. This is why I do not want economists running the world. And I also saw he had a lot of trauma in his life.
His thoughts: "Predicted utility is the predicted experienced utility for a future experience."
Did he see no predicted utility in his life? Should we adapt this to judge others lives or our own? Are we as great reasoners than him? But what kind of fool tries to measure, tries to quantify, happiness! Economics is not a science, and behavioral economics is just a cold psychology.
He evens seems not to be able to live up to his own words: "Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it."
But thank you for making me read more about him. It seems even his friends thought he was a pessimist, and who can blame him living through the holocaust.
Interesting that his son had schizophrenia, I have Ashkenazi Jewish heritage and think this is why it runs in my family. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26198764/)
(Vouched for it to be able to reply)
Without suffering, we would not know joy and without joy we wouldn’t know suffering. So these are two sides of the same coin, do you see that?
It’s our attachment to ourselves that brings us both joy and suffering. So, I’m sorry, if you want to get rid of suffering you’re going to get rid of joy as well. So I don’t know if dying brings us joy or gets rid of our suffering. We really don’t know what happens to us after we die, do we? You can say that everything just ends, but I’m really not wanting to say that because, well, I’m still alive.
I told my schizophrenic brother why he shouldn’t take his life by suicide. I just asked him if he knew what it was like being dead and if he thought he was certain that being dead would be any better. He literally told me the confusion of that question. Let him to accepting his life as it was. Better the Devil You Know than the one you don’t.
Bullshit argument.
The suffering that many people experience is profound. These people don’t have a more profound experience of joy than those whose lives are chill. And the happy lives of people who haven’t suffered are not better because the sufferers have felt worse.
> I told my schizophrenic brother why he shouldn’t take his life by suicide. I just asked him if he knew what it was like being dead and if he thought he was certain that being dead would be any better. He literally told me the confusion of that question. Let him to accepting his life as it was. Better the Devil You Know than the one you don’t.
“You should suffer because the next part may be even worse suffering” is such a fucked up argument.
You can leave it unsaid if you aren't going to say it, and either way you claim it isn't relevant.
Some people have great suffering. Some people have small suffering. But the suffering is the same, and the source is the same. You don’t need great suffering to understand suffering.
A lot of people who have everything they want still suffer, even though nothing is wrong in their life. That is the most interesting kind of suffering to me. But it almost seems like you think these things you’re totally independent or maybe I don’t understand your argument.
> “You should suffer because the next part may be even worse suffering” is such a fucked up argument.
It’s a logical argument. And it kept my brother alive who had no hope and wanted to kill himself, then he has Hope again and he didn’ think about killing himself.
I don’t know what he might’ve done if he read the original article. I might’ve not have had the 20 years with my brother that I did.
There is no clear answer that extending life is for the best. Not unlike a painful, fruitless intubation that has no chance of providing quality life-hours.
Not saying this is true of your brother but a lot of people are content to say “good job team, he will suffer tremendously, but he is alive!” And that’s fucked up.
But are you saying since my brother was suffering he should’ve died by suicide?
The man in the original article was not suffering at all yet he killed himself. What kind of suffering was that? It’s not that he was suffering. He didn’t wanna suffer at all. He didn’t want to suffer shame. This man knew so little about suffering that he took his own life rather than try to figure it out and the remaining years of his life.
What religious belief are you trying to explain here?
All I wrote was a remark about how suffering has the same source. Why do we suffer? Isn’t that an interesting question? Do we need to suffer? Can we have pain without suffering? These are not answers I can tell you. These things people have to understand by experience and observation.
I want saw a Whitetail deer with a compound fracture to its rear leg. The bone was sticking straight out. Probably hit by a car. But there it was walking with its herd, calmly eating grass with the rest of them.
So that’s what I do, I look at my life outside of me and I look at the life inside of me.
Perhaps it did. I hope it did. Likely a large portion of people who get past suicide and don’t later commit suicide do feel it got better.
But for a lot of people it doesn’t get better and telling them to keep living is just a cruel self serving choice
What you've attempted is a philosophical sleight-of-hand that collapses under minimal scrutiny. Your "suffering is suffering" assertion—tracing all human agony back to a singular, universal source is a fallacy of composition. I encourage you to look into this concept, as you seem like a person who would like to be thoughtful in the way you approach these subjects.
The deer example highlights that you are mashing vastly different experiential realities to avoid dealing with the contextual depth of human distress. The resilience of a wounded deer, driven by biological signaling, offers no insight into the psychic anguish, societal shame, or cognitive collapse that is often part of human despair. Pretending these are equivalent is intellectually bankrupt from the start.
Claiming the person noted the article "was not suffering at all" and "knew so little about suffering" is stunningly out of touch.
The issue here is intellectual humility: your personal framework cannot possibly encompass the private hell another person lived with - well, until they couldn't anymore.
How is my hypothetically deciding to end my own suffering “morally bad”? I don’t owe suffering from a terminal illness to anyone.
Your calculation for what you will suffer to enjoy another day of life may be different than mine and that’s fine.
Because you’re saying that life is not worth living at some point. But that’s just my level of morality. I think life is so rare and precious that I do not even want to miss the suffering that’s given to me.
Glad for you. I really hope you never come into a situation that you wish for your life to end. But please take into account, that other people might experience life different at times.
No one has a death wish, because things are a bit rough sometimes. But if life is constant hell and when there is no hope anymore. Then you wish for death to release you.
(Also do you know what latestage cancer can mean? Constant pain that does not go away, ever.
And Jesus might have been a real person, but that he choose crucification out of his own choice is very much part of the mythological story that other people told after his death)
When you deal with suffering every day, you come to have a different relationship with it that is, if you don’t take the view of material list and instead follow the past of the several spiritual leaders who dealt with suffering and understood it in a way that is much deeper than “suffering is bad”.
Christ test there is much more complicated than he wanted to die because he was suffering. Christ chose his suffering and his death as a sacrifice for other people. Christ did not die by his own hands, but from others. He chose peace and love over his own suffering and death. It’s one thing to die because you have no hope and it’s another thing to die to give Hope to everyone else.
The man in the original article, he died for nothing. He died for his own selfish desires. He died because he thought it was embarrassing to be old.
Hanging in there with cancer? Sure, fight it and deal with the pain. Dementia? No, please end it. The two aren't even close in comparison, cancer feels easy and merciful.
But this is what happened with the man in the original article. He had a sense of himself that he wanted preserve. And that to me as a sickness, a spiritual sickness, greediness almost.
> you really can’t suffer if you have no sense of self
... there's no way to know if this is true.
No, it sounds like you would be disappointed in that scenario. Many would be elated to get through this hell-hole relatively joyous & unscathed.
I see your last paragraph as naive, and cruelly dismissive of what true suffering is. It is possible to be in a place where the only life you have left is excruciating and intolerable. You are in a privileged position to have never seen a beloved family member die a slow and terrible death, or to have had a serious prolonged health event and have the moment of realization that for some people, your horrible weeks of insufferable illness are their entire experience of life, and wonder if you'd even want to live if that was all you had left.
can I say this is not true without going into details?
is it because I had insight of my suffering that were different than yours that you don’t believe me?
"It's going to get better" is a reasonable position. "It's not going to get better, but still keep hanging on while you experience intolerable torment for all the time you have left, however long it may be" is sadistic and sick.
And he’s taken something, he’s taking his own life. Which I do not believe it was his to take.
Are we even sure that our life ends when we die? I’ve had to have someone come back and tell me one way or the other.
I think we are so certain of things that once you really start thinking about them that certain you can disappear quickly.
I also don’t know if there are little green men living on the moon. But I’m almost sure that the earth wasn’t created in 6 days less than 7000 years ago. Can you tell me abt religious belief that makes sense?
And I’m not staying the state owns his life, I’m saying I don’t know who owns it. I’m saying that’s a really difficult philosophical question.
But in the United States, you cannot die by suicide legally. So the state does have control over your life.
But let’s say I own my life. Why would I want to destroy something I own? Who is the I that benefits from that action?
If you own your life then why do you allow your life to suffer? Why don’t you just stop you’re suffering if you own your life by other means then killing yourself?
You see it gets very tricky.
And the US has always been hypocritical about controlling people’s lives.