Probably has something to do with the theory of natural selection.
Well in society artificial selection seems to have much more influence on us.
Why do so few humans kill themselves?
21–30 of 226 posts
Re: Why do so few humans kill themselves?
#22Remember that it's technically a valid evolutionary strategy to live to, say, 25, have a few kids, then off yourself. Suicide before reproduction is all that would be selected against.
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Re: Why do so few humans kill themselves?
#23Maybe we should just add lithium to the water supply, although that would drive conspiracy theorists crazy!
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1699579
"Using data for 27 Texas counties from 1978-1987, it is shown that the incidence rates of suicide, homicide, and rape are significantly higher in counties whose drinking water supplies contain little or no lithium than in counties with water lithium levels ranging from 70-170 micrograms/L; the differences remain statistically significant (p less than 0.01) after corrections for population density."
Edit: on a second thought, it wouldn't drive them crazy, it would literally calm them!
Edit 2: I'm not proposing adding therapy-level doses of lithium to the water, just equalizing it to the water in other regions.
Re: Why do so few humans kill themselves?
#24According to the link, around 1 in 100 people commit suicide. It could be argued that this is a rather high number. Certainly any other diseases that achieved this would receive significant attention. What is interesting however, is how suicide rates haven't changed with other things like medical improvements and improvements to quality of life.
I think you're vastly overestimating how much people care.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
Check out, Chronic lower respiratory diseases at nearly 4x suicide. Can't remember hearing a thing about that in the news.
Re: Why do so few humans kill themselves?
#25the highest suicide rate is among people 85 years or older. With the advancement of healthcare people are living longer. So the rate of suicide amongst younger demographics most likely has declined slightly
Re: Why do so few humans kill themselves?
#26Remember that it's technically a valid evolutionary strategy to live to, say, 25, have a few kids, then off yourself. Suicide before reproduction is all that would be selected against.
That's a valid evolutionary strategy assuming your kids will be fine once you off yourself. If that plan lessens the chances of your children's survival to child-bearing age themselves, it would be selected against.
Re: Why do so few humans kill themselves?
#27Easy answer: because we want to believe life is precious and that you only live once. Mental health is taboo. I'm not trying to say that we should let people die, but the living standard has really skyrocketed, meanwhile we still have behaviors and systems that do damage to mental health, and we still disregard those problems.
I think actually it's because we fear death. Even if you're an atheist and know that when you die nothing will happen besides you disappearing, you still don't want to do it. Even people who commit suicide often would rather if they didn't have to use that option.
The worst thing about war in my opinion is not just that people die, but that people live in constant fear of death.
Re: Why do so few humans kill themselves?
#28the highest suicide rate is among people 85 years or older. With the advancement of healthcare people are living longer. So the rate of suicide amongst younger demographics most likely has declined slightly
Interesting. I've often contemplated about it. I don't think I want to live past 80. I mean unless there would be a medical revolution where you can retain youth or slow down aging significantly.
Re: Why do so few humans kill themselves?
#29The relationship between depression and suicide with age is just correlation not causation, so it's silly to draw a line there and assume they are connected -- especially since we know depressed people have a higher suicide rate than people without depression. I think this post is an attempt to make an obvious question seem like it has deep or non-obvious answers; but in reality I think the answers are pretty obvious…
I think the post is very interesting, and not completely obvious.
It's not as much about people deciding whether or not to commit suicide; it is, that all of the benefits of intelligence also come with one potentially huge evolutionary problem, suicide. Given that any natural variance in likelihood to commit suicide should be very heavily selected for or against, what adaptations might we have that were picked up to decrease it's likelihood?
The idea in the post is that some mental illnesses may be connected to these adaptations.
Re: Why do so few humans kill themselves?
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
The paper does not draw a causation, nor does the article. The paper asks a question, and the article tries to think along the lines of the question and asks some more. ---- > I think the answers are pretty obvious. Most people don't kill themselves because they don't want to. That is a simple conclusion, indeed; and it's not wrong either. The article tries to reason how that conclusion came to be. People who have ha…
> The paper does not draw a causation, nor does the article. It does draw a conclusion: > Indeed, there appears to be a slight elevated risk > of suicide in people taking some antidepressants, > especially young people. But the effect is tiny. > And some people do think antidepressants relieve > suffering. If depression caused suicide, treating > depression should reduce suicide rates, but of > course it hasn’t. This…
Exactly. Treating the symptoms does not mean treating the cause and might even enhance it.