271–280 of 347 posts
It seems against protocol to argue with a dying man, but refraining also seems disrespectful to Pieter. I always open the comment section hoping that someone will disagree with the article in a thoughtful way; perhaps it's my turn, since I disagree so intensely. Presumably others would like to at least hear the counterpoints. Euthanasia is bad from a practical standpoint, and an evil, because: 1. Objectively speaking…
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Do you think there's a point to be made in the detail of the distinction? My point is that death sucks, and when I say that, I'm talking about children crying because they can't see granny any more. Talking about cell death is a distraction.
Those crying children couldn't exist if their grandparents and their grandparents down the line never died. There wouldn't be enough food or resources to sustain indefinite existence for everyone who wants it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecophagy
And if food consumption truly became limiting, would you prefer a society that kills people at a certain age, or one that limits the birth rate?
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But, do you agree that the part where the whole human mind (not just some cells) has to die---a soul annihilated permanently---is not really a good thing, even if it happens to be the state we find nature in?
Not necessarily. The "whole human mind" and the "soul" are very metaphysical concepts so it's tough to say. In my estimation, the "whole human mind" or "soul" of a person is not annihilated when someone dies. Our minds are an amorphous network constantly in intercourse with and dependent upon eachother. When a loved one dies, all of the love they gave and words they said exist in some form or another within us, withi…
Some small parts of a person can be transmitted to the outside world, but this leaves out the vast, rich internal world each mind carries with it. If I picture a loved one dying, I feel pretty concerned with the part where they don't keep being alive, keep pursuing their goals and having rich experiences and exploring and loving and being loved and creating and etc. How does this compare with your thoughts?
This may be painful to think about in detail. But I think it is actually important to think about anyway, because there are actual important decisions we have to make (whether to do research in to life extension, whether to sign up for cryonics, etc.), and we seem to be making the wrong decisions when we don't have everything in view; including the most painful parts, which happen to be the most important!
I'm also pretty confused why people bring up supposed benefits of society; to be frank, it sounds to me like people are suggesting "we should kill (let die) all the old and sick people to free up floor space" or "we should kill (let die) all the old and sick people so we don't have to spend any time dealing with their backwards ideas".
Apparently the cost finally dropped below $1kUSD this year
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It would be relevant to know, of the 'involuntary' numbers, how many of those were statutory involuntary and for what reasons. My hope is that in the majority of those cases the paperwork either just didn't get finished in time, or that the subject in some way did actually want this but started the process too late to be clearly of their own decision.
So you're essentially hoping that these people, who did not give explicit consent, actually (and perhaps secretly) did want to be killed? My hope is that where paperwork did go through, no person was uncertain or regretted their life-altering decision (which, for example, increases suicide risk in one's family twofold). But I doubt that either of our hopes lives up to reality.
Euthanasia increases suicide risks as opposed to dying painfully of natural causes?
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I can't know what anyone's motivations are, but I can feel pretty confident that they are selling false hope based on bogus science.
This is genuinely not obvious to me. What convinced you of this? Or, what do you think the world would look like if there were people who actually had a strong, reasonable, non-insane suspicion that they could do the things that cryonics people claim to be able to? To me, it looks like we are living in that world. Have you e.g. looked through the information, studies, and arguments on the Alcor website?
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Wouldn't that be lovely? I wish that the immediate reaction by most people to such a thing wasn't something preposterous like "death is natural." Yeah? So? We are not beaten in the heads with rubber mallets every day at noon. If aliens showed up and proposed that we adopt the rubber-mallet system for no benefit, we'd call them crazy.[1] Yet death, which is completely real, is treated as something not even worth attem…
I wish that the immediate reaction by most people to such a thing wasn't something preposterous like "let's cure death before we all die." Death has already arrived, exists for all natural beings on our planet, and has existed for millions of years. We don't need to wait for it to show up with rubber mallets.
We would say no, that is insane and pointless, why would we sacrifice hundreds of beautiful years off of everyone's life? Indeed, consider that environmental improvements and medical technology have more than doubled the human lifespan. Would you voluntarily choose for your children to live until they're at most 35, rather than their current "natural" lifespan?
Whether or not death is "natural" doesn't seem like it ought to have much bearing on whether or not we want it. If life is good, then loss of life is bad. A beautiful mind that ceases to shine, is something I'd just as soon untruncate.
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I'm struggling to think of how to reply. This topic is both hard if not impossible to grapple and fascinating to think about. I keep going off into mental tangents about our place (and insignifigance) in the incomprehensibly huge cosmos and how you can so easily say that we humans, who have been dieing along with every other living thing for all of our collective existence, that somehow we should strive to eradicate…
>Life and death are complementary Hm, I hear people say this a lot, but I genuinely can't empathize with where they are coming from. This is a blank spot in my map. Could you say more about the intuition behind this statement, and why this makes death seems desirable or less bad? To illustrate how I emotionally parse the statement "Life and death are complementary", I want to make a possibly distressing analogy, so a…
Your inability to parse why I see life and death existing in a sort of balance is similar to my inability to have the same clarity that you do that death is inherently bad and should be eliminated. It's certainly something I'm going to think about.
It seems against protocol to argue with a dying man, but refraining also seems disrespectful to Pieter. I always open the comment section hoping that someone will disagree with the article in a thoughtful way; perhaps it's my turn, since I disagree so intensely. Presumably others would like to at least hear the counterpoints. Euthanasia is bad from a practical standpoint, and an evil, because: 1. Objectively speaking…
1. Yeah it's suicide. When you live in constant pain, lie in bed, get meds that make you hallunicate and have no realistic hope for improvement that seems like a reasonable option.
2. Suicide usually has some form of emotional component in it that is shared in the environment. That's why we call it euthanasia, it's not really comparable other then the very general "choose to end own life"
3. Sure mistakes will be made. One such controversy in the Netherlands was euthanasia on baby's with an open back (not sure about the translation). If they had a lot of pain or not. In general there are some pretty rigorous procedures in place to ensure we learn from mistakes, and making sure it are honest mistakes.
So point of this reply, it's a two way street. If you have seen the suffering in the end stages of life euthanasia is not a bad thing. Are there drawbacks sure, we're talking about ending a life, no matter what you do there's a stigma involved and because actual human beings are involved it will not always go the way it should. At the end of the day, the ideal of someone being able to tell the world enough is enough and empowering them to execute that decision, on certain criteria, is a better world then letting someone die in their own feces hallucinating that worms are digging into their feet due to meds and not being able to move due to advanced parkinson. And yes that's the way my dad was in the end before the docter decided to cooperate with his euthanasia.