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A Protocol for Dying

hintjens.com

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Re: A Protocol for Dying

#321

Post by aninhumer »

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.

Well yeah, the universe being finite sucks as well. Maybe we can't ever change that, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be better if we could.

Re: A Protocol for Dying

#322

Post by jnardiello »

rukuu001 wrote: post #306
CaptSpify wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I've heard of is people "leaving the bottle open" next to the bed. That way the ill person can "accidentally" decide for themselves.

I've heard similar. Also with family members being taught how to use the morphine IV dripper, and what a fatal dose looks like. The alternative is for patients to refuse food and water until they die. I'd been thinking about this a lot because my father was diagnosed with a terminal illness 3+ years ago. We'd discussed euthanasia, and he definitely didn't want to spend his final 6-12 months suffering. Because he didn…

Insane. In your case, I'm glad your dad was misdiagnosed for the good. I can't imagine how this misdiagnose impacted your life and your family during the last few years.

Re: A Protocol for Dying

#323

Post by djokkataja »

throwaway324324 wrote: post #300
mikebos wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this is from a personal point of view, my dad choose euthanasia. 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 th…

Thanks for your response. If I'm reading you right, you seem to be saying for (1) "suicide is better than living like that" - well... yeah, but isn't that always the motive, what's the difference now? And for (2) "sometimes, mistakes are made and people die who shouldn't have" - is that what you also think when it comes to, say, the death penalty? Sorry about your dad.

Regarding (1), you mentioned in another response the value for human dignity as a reason against euthanasia. But medicine has advanced to the point where we're able to keep a human body alive regardless of whether or not the human person has any sense of dignity. The grandparent comment is an example of such a scenario.

>"suicide is better than living like that" - well... yeah, but isn't that always the motive, what's the difference now?

The difference is that the person and their medical personnel are in agreement that realistically: there is not a reasonable hope that their medical condition(s) may be cured or alleviated, so the overwhelming likelihood is that they are going to die from their medical condition(s), and their experience leading up to their death is going to be agonizing and severely depriving of dignity.

With suicide, a person is choosing to take their own life even though they don't have a medical consensus with a reasonable expectation that they are going to die of any condition (besides old age--which I don't believe is commonly a major factor in suicides and would probably not be acceptable).

Re: A Protocol for Dying

#324

Post by mikebos »

throwaway324324 wrote: post #300
mikebos wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this is from a personal point of view, my dad choose euthanasia. 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 th…

Thanks for your response. If I'm reading you right, you seem to be saying for (1) "suicide is better than living like that" - well... yeah, but isn't that always the motive, what's the difference now? And for (2) "sometimes, mistakes are made and people die who shouldn't have" - is that what you also think when it comes to, say, the death penalty? Sorry about your dad.

So for

> well... yeah, but isn't that always the motive, what's the difference now?

See the reply of djokkataja, it covers it pretty well.

> And for (2) "sometimes, mistakes are made and people die who shouldn't have" - is that what you also think when it comes to, say, the death penalty?

There is a world of difference. Now let me say that we in the Netherlands have no death penalty, but let's take the model in America vs the process of euthanasie in the netherlands.

Deathpenalty -> Subject is not willing, evaluation is done by non trained experts (jury) on issues of law (ie guilty)

Euthanasie -> Subject is willing, evaluation is done by trained experts (at least 2 GP's) on medical issues.

In the deathpenalty scenario the worst you can do is kill someone innocent. In the euthanasie scenario the worst you can do is kill someone with a huge medical condition that for all appearances it seems to be terminal with an unbearable standard of living (ie pain).

Comparing the two is cheap rhetoric as far as I'm concerned.

Re: A Protocol for Dying

#325

Post by nickpsecurity »

Tribute to Hintjens' great work and ideas. Man is like the Bernstein of enterprise software with great balance of unconventional design, correctness, performance, and innovation. Here's a list of some of his work for those interested:

A great write-up on his theory of model-driven development and the tech that underpinned most of iMatix:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c....

Their website is a slide-show demonstrating their amazing work:

http://www.imatix.com/

Generating servers from state machines and such:

http://hintjens.com/blog:75

SMT kernel for portable, multi-threaded, fast code:

http://legacy.imatix.com/html/smt/

Web server (old and new) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xitami http://xitami.wikidot.com/main:start

One of best middleware ever http://zeromq.org/

Re: A Protocol for Dying

#326

Post by nickpsecurity »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #17

I didn't know Pieter before today. He's one of the coolest people I've had the good fortune of coming across: > My first free software is from 1991. I realized the power of community gradually from 2005 when fighting software patents in Europe. I refined and tested the techniques in the ffii for projects like digistan. I saw the failure of money and power in amqp. In zeromq it took years to find the right patterns. I…

I agree with some of these. Further, I found the stuff people said about him in the parent comments even more fun to read. Just goes to show how powerful his work is and how thoughtful is his style.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11520888

Re: A Protocol for Dying

#327

Post by nickpsecurity »

puranjay wrote: post #47
jaseemabid wrote: post #8

To anyone who does not know, Pieter Hintjens is the CEO of iMatix, where they build AMQP, ZMQ etc. Take care /u/PieterH. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Hintjens 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11520888 3. https://twitter.com/hintjens

I don't know about his work, but he is a terrific writer!

He's this guy:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11558468

Plenty links so you can all learn from and enjoy his work. :)

Re: A Protocol for Dying

#328

Post by arkangel_72 »

I can barely understand his condition.. but its good that he has euthanasia as an option. In my country india Article 21 of our constitution says right to life does not include right to die.. although recently passive euthanasia is allowed i think

Re: A Protocol for Dying

#329

Post by flashman »

Udo wrote: post #317
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 environm…

My primary motivation is to explain death at a four-year-old's level.

Re: A Protocol for Dying

#330

Post by paxcoder »

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…

Revolting. I protest against suicide, the "assistance", the approval, and the very idea that it could somehow be eu (good).
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