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A Protocol for Dying

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Re: A Protocol for Dying

#311

Post by maxwelljoslyn »

Neslit wrote: post #278
blackrose wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The point there is that, say humans were largely the same but instead we naturally lived a very long time, e.g. a thousand years. Then someone comes to you and says, "Hey I have this great idea with lots of societal benefits: Why not kill each person before they reach 100 years?" We would say no, that is insane and pointless, why would we sacrifice hundreds of beautiful years off of everyone's life? Indeed, consider…

Thank you for restating my point more clearly.

Re: A Protocol for Dying

#312

Post by entilzha »

nihonde wrote: post #220
bsandert wrote: post #16

From personal experience, I can very much relate to and agree with this piece. My father went through a similar process: cancer (melanoma) – two years of treatment and coming to terms with the facts – euthanasia. As a family, we have been very matter-of-fact about it, which was definitely something he encouraged and participated in. We frequently talked about all aspects of his disease, the future, how it affected hi…

I just spent over a year with someone who died of cancer on Tuesday. I don't know if she would have opted for suicide if it had been legal here, but I do know that the last few weeks were extremely difficult for everyone involved. I have a very clear image of how cancer kills a person now. We did our best to maintain her dignity, but the body is not on your side. It's humbling, to say the least, which is a profound l…

I think that euthanasia is very different from suicide. Euthanasia is an acceptance of very probable death in a way that reduces both the person's suffering, but also the suffering of those who love them (much as the beautifully written articles talks about). Suicide in contrast can devastate the lives of the people who loved them.

Re: A Protocol for Dying

#314

Post by simplify »

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #255
simplify wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Christianity, religion alone (the act of doing things, force of the will, restraint, etc.) is worthless, even condemned. It's about God changing your heart to love Jesus, such that your love and joy for Him overpowers any past love for sinful things. It's kind of like romantic love here on earth. When you're single, you might really enjoy going out and meeting people (bars, meetups, events, etc.), but once you fin…

I like how the dying subject of the thread has already asked you to take this elsewhere and you are ignoring his wishes just to proselytize your belief system. How ironically selfish of you. (Which I don't think you intended, but...)

I'm sorry, could you explain what you mean? That was my first comment on Christianity.

Re: A Protocol for Dying

#315

Post by nsxwolf »

aninhumer wrote: post #304
rixarn wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can accept the idea of prolonging one's life for a meaningful purpose. But, to think that we should aim for "curing dead"? You talk about death as it is some kind of disease... Dead is part of life everywhere you look and not in the disease sense. There's a cyclic constant in all nature. You have seasons. You have day and night. Even stars that "live" for millions of years wither and "die" at some point. Why do you…

Can you give a reason why we shouldn't cure death that isn't vague mystical equivocation? People are not seasons, they are not days, they are not stars. We do not need to "deserve" immortality, we just need to be able to make it happen. Death sucks. It would be better if it didn't happen.

It's worth reminding that we cannot be immortal. We can only live indefinitely. But the universe will eventually see to it that we will end. Most models of the cosmos say so.

Barring some discovery that allows us to hit the reset button on matter and energy every trillion or so years, time will end for us all, no matter how long it seems.

Re: A Protocol for Dying

#316

Post by tommorris »

loopbit wrote: post #219
anexprogrammer wrote: post #66

Good journey sir. Thank you for this piece. I feel your model should become an international standard. I am saddened to see you are so young. > ... and enforce the barbaric torture of decay and failure. It's especially relevant for cancer, which is a primary cause of death I'm glad you find yourself somewhere enlightened. As someone who watched his father die of cancer over 2.5-3 years in the UK it almost robbed me o…

At least the UK seems to be making moves toward a better system, Terry Pratchett had a bit to do with it. The rest of the european countries are blind to this issue. This is something that hits very close to home, as I'm in the same path as Pieter and your father and I see that path getting me to the same end. If that happens, I'd like to end on my terms, not as the husk that you describe and not after having my fami…

The only real change in the last few years is when Kier Starmer, then Director of Public Prosecution (now a Labour MP), released a set of guidelines on what criteria are used to decide whether to bring a prosecution in a case of assisted dying. (The CPS have a two-stage test to determine whether to bring a prosecution: firstly, are they likely to succeed? And secondly, is it in the public interest to bring a prosecution. The guidelines clarify what the public interest criteria are for assisted dying cases.)

It's intended to make it so that the relatives of someone who travelled abroad for assisted dying are less likely to be prosecuted under the Suicide Act 1961.

See http://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/feb/25/assisted-suic...

Pretty much all attempts at legal change (whether through legislation or through court action) in the UK have been a failure. It pops up every few years in Parliament and is then roundly voted down.

Re: A Protocol for Dying

#317

Post by Udo »

flashman wrote: post #61

> Imagine you have a box of Lego, and you build a house, and you keep it. And you keep making new houses, and never breaking the old ones. What happens? "The box gets empty, Daddy." Good, yes. And can you make new houses then? "No, not really." So we're like a Lego houses, and when we die our pieces get broken up and put back in the box. We die, and new babies can be born. It is the wheel of life. I am stealing this.

> I am stealing this.

You shouldn't. I have seen this ideology come up on HN a lot (strangely almost never anywhere else), as an argument against human life extension. If this is your ideology, it's of course not productive to argue against it, but if your mind isn't made up yet, allow me to very briefly present some bullet point-like counter arguments:

Returning a couple of kilograms of mostly-carbon to the environmental cycle isn't critically important to nature. In the grand scheme of things, never breaking the old legos is probably not a net loss in a universe filled to the brim with more lego bricks. It's hard to make a compelling argument that our mental or cultural landscape would improve if this specific person was removed. Individual minds do have an intrinsic value that is lost when death happens, with little-to-no balancing benefit on the other side.

If your primary motivation for a "death is good" paradigm comes from the perception that it's the only antidote to overpopulation, there is even more to talk about than would be prudent in this thread, but suffice it to say that over-procreation is due to a faulty feedback loop, and not an inevitable fact of human existence.

Of course, you may - and probably do - disagree with this opinion, but it's at least something to consider.

Re: A Protocol for Dying

#318

Post by tommorris »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #95
anonymous777 wrote: post #84

This whole thread reeks of death acceptance culture. HN readers show off how cool they are for accepting death instead of discussing how we as a tech community could help cure these diseases or at least give more people an option of being cryopreserved. The really unpleasant truth is that if we as a society began doing serious focused R&D on these life-threatening diseases earlier, the OP and many others wouldn't hav…

I appreciate your point, though I didn't read it this way. > The really unpleasant truth is that if we as a society began doing serious focused R&D on these life-threatening diseases earlier, the OP and many others wouldn't have to die. I absolutely agree with that and the fact that fighting death is so low on social priorities is something that boggles my mind. However even if we dropped everything and started worki…

> I absolutely agree with that and the fact that fighting death is so low on social priorities is something that boggles my mind.

Really? Because the amount of money put into researching how to cure life-threatening diseases, as well as prevent and vaccinate against them, seems pretty high.

Pharmaceutical companies spend billions trying to research drugs to cure diseases, and so do governments, universities, private research funders, and charities.

There are people who dedicate huge portions of their lives to raising money and resources for charities trying to research cures for diseases that kill millions of people.

And we've had some success. Just the other day, there was an article published about the men who thought they were going to die of AIDS in the 80s, but whose lives are now in their 60s and approaching retirement age because of the provision of highly active anti-retroviral therapy. (And now they face issues because they never thought they'd survive and so didn't plan to have a career or a retirement etc.)

http://projects.sfchronicle.com/2016/living-with-aids/story/

I just don't see how anyone can claim that society isn't "doing serious focused R&D" on life-threatening diseases.

Re: A Protocol for Dying

#319

Post by TeMPOraL »

emodendroket wrote: post #215
TeMPOraL wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no such thing as "faith" as separate to "knowing something is true". Many people who even call themselves religious miss that. If you really believe that the doctrines of your faith are God's prescriptions (and there are ways to make that as a logical inference of some basic axioms within the system of a religion), then it's not "arbitrary set of rules" - it's the set of rules God wants you to follow. That's…

Well, do they "not understand it" or do they just have a different way of being religious?

That "different way of being religious" is stretching the meaning of the word "religious" quite a lot. Kind of like calling yourself a 2nd-level vegetarian - "cows eat grass, I eat cows...".

Re: A Protocol for Dying

#320

Post by TeMPOraL »

nsxwolf wrote: post #315
aninhumer wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give a reason why we shouldn't cure death that isn't vague mystical equivocation? People are not seasons, they are not days, they are not stars. We do not need to "deserve" immortality, we just need to be able to make it happen. Death sucks. It would be better if it didn't happen.

It's worth reminding that we cannot be immortal. We can only live indefinitely. But the universe will eventually see to it that we will end. Most models of the cosmos say so. Barring some discovery that allows us to hit the reset button on matter and energy every trillion or so years, time will end for us all, no matter how long it seems.

True, and I'd happily spend a few thousand years researching a way around it.
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