Why do so few humans kill themselves? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why do so few humans kill themselves?

#181

Post by mikeash » Tue, Jul 26, 2016, 6:53 PM UTC

goatforce5 wrote: post #166

mikeash wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the WTC jumpers are quite the same. They were faced with certain death or near certain death, and they naturally chose the latter. Falls from a great height are survivable, very very rarely. I see this an example of the human drive to survive: when faced with death, we'll try anything that offers any sort of hope, even just a slight delay.

> when faced with death, we'll try anything that offers any sort of hope, even just a slight delay Many people opt-out of aggressive cancer treatments that may add months on to their lives, and increasingly euthanasia is a (legal) alternative to letting medical conditions run their course. There are situations where ending things early can be one of the valid choices made available to you. http://www.goodreads.com/qu…

That's true, but I think there's a big difference between a long-standing condition and a brief crisis. I love the quote you linked to and I think it does a great job at giving people some perspective on what suicidal people are thinking. I just think the analogy falls apart once you start digging into it. Jumping out of the towers was a last-ditch attempt to survive, not just a better way to die.

Re: Why do so few humans kill themselves?

#182

Post by sinxoveretothex » Tue, Jul 26, 2016, 6:58 PM UTC

jdimov9 wrote: post #90

You don't seem to understand much about evolution, or life. Claiming that evolution is a random, unguided "whatever works" process is mere ignorance. To everyone who has ever looked around (or listened around, or sensed around) even for one moment, it is beyond obvious that not only evolution works "by design", but that this design is supremely personal and the ultimate in creativity. So the implied negative connotat…

Ok, so there's a "designer" out there engineering rapists, murderers, limbless people, mentally handicapped people? Why the hell did the designer create maggots that feed on people's nose tissues[1]?

More to the point: what's the design goal? To quote EY [2]:

> But when you look at all the apparent purposefulness in Nature, rather than picking and choosing your examples, you start to notice things that don't fit the Judeo-Christian concept of one benevolent God. Foxes seem well-designed to catch rabbits. Rabbits seem well-designed to evade foxes. Was the Creator having trouble making up Its mind?

> When I design a toaster oven, I don't design one part that tries to get electricity to the coils and a second part that tries to prevent electricity from getting to the coils. It would be a waste of effort. Who designed the ecosystem, with its predators and prey, viruses and bacteria? Even the cactus plant, which you might think well-designed to provide water fruit to desert animals, is covered with inconvenient spines.

I don't deny that if there is a "designer", then he gets a lot of points for creativity.

I mean, it takes a lot of "creativity" to design an 8 limbed baby [3], twins sharing the same body [4] or a child with a skull that won't stop growing [5]. Sure, it's very "creative" and even personal I guess (I mean, when you get ostracized for having an "elephant face" it sure appears to be very meant and taken very personally). So I guess you're right in at least one metaphorical sense.

[1] http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2c8_1249503802

[2] http://lesswrong.com/lw/kr/an_alien_god/

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM82Hs0LEpc

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K57IcN9DWXo

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW2SWfoPD5c

Re: Why do so few humans kill themselves?

#183

Post by Bartweiss » Tue, Jul 26, 2016, 7:10 PM UTC

Practicality wrote: post #162

Bartweiss wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, I think, is relevant to the idea that suicide is very strongly tied to exhaustion and hopelessness. Pain and grief, even when they are absolutely horrible, don't appear to be strongly correlated with suicide. Inescapable problems, even when they are not so severe, absolutely do. Broadly, people seem to turn to suicide either when their circumstances seem unimprovable (chronic pain, inescapable debt, irreparable…

I strongly agree! I think part of the reason I (and probably many others) don't see pain as something that would lead to suicide is because I would (and do) simply accept it as a fact and I no longer see it as a problem. Kind of like being short, or not as smart as the next guy. It's just the way it is. No point worrying about it. However, if you viewed it as a serious problem and when is it going to be fixed and the…

Notably, a lot of the people I know who report depression-inducing pain have distracting, breakthrough pain.

Even with chronic pain, it's probably not the end of the world when it's "an ache in my knee when I move in this direction" or even "a mild ache in my knee always". But if it's "at random, frequent times, my back hurts too badly to stand or function", that's super hard to ignore or get used to, and I can see being incredibly upset by it. Cluster headaches come to mind as following this sporadic + devastating pattern, and indeed they do cause a fair bit of suicide.

"Can't escape it" and "can't get used to it" are an ugly combination.

Re: Why do so few humans kill themselves?

#184

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 26, 2016, 7:10 PM UTC

Practicality wrote: post #162

Bartweiss wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, I think, is relevant to the idea that suicide is very strongly tied to exhaustion and hopelessness. Pain and grief, even when they are absolutely horrible, don't appear to be strongly correlated with suicide. Inescapable problems, even when they are not so severe, absolutely do. Broadly, people seem to turn to suicide either when their circumstances seem unimprovable (chronic pain, inescapable debt, irreparable…

I strongly agree! I think part of the reason I (and probably many others) don't see pain as something that would lead to suicide is because I would (and do) simply accept it as a fact and I no longer see it as a problem. Kind of like being short, or not as smart as the next guy. It's just the way it is. No point worrying about it. However, if you viewed it as a serious problem and when is it going to be fixed and the…

[deleted]

Re: Why do so few humans kill themselves?

#185

Post by Bartweiss » Tue, Jul 26, 2016, 7:12 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #111

Bartweiss wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems very likely that this is a context issue or typical mind fallacy. The View From Hell is written by an anti-natalist and, if I recall, 'nonpracticing suicide'. This, I think, is someone who has a radically different baseline for "desire to live" than a lot of the people responding to it. And, on the flip side, a statement like "the drive to survive is what's fundamental" might well sound completely bizarre to…

I agree with your point at the end. The question of what keeps many suicidal people alive is quite interesting, and no doubt complex. I just feel like the introductory question of "Why do so few humans kill themselves?" is backwards: the basic strangeness of human suicide is why we do it at all. Beyond that, there is then the interesting sub-question of why some people feel a desire to do it, but refrain.

This is a fair summary. I suspect that the author might disagree about how strange the basic urge to suicide is, but I completely agree that the really interesting category is "internally suicidal but not acting on it".

Re: Why do so few humans kill themselves?

#186

Post by DanBC » Tue, Jul 26, 2016, 7:13 PM UTC

onetwotree wrote: post #129

intoverflow2 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is very likely because they are the most likely to own guns America is not the world

I think the data were taken among Americans (they included Native Americans). You're right though, and looking at data from other countries with stronger gun restrictions would be an interesting way to check this hypothesis.

In England you can use the Office for National Statistics data sets. These are good quality, and they're very clear about what is or isn't counted as a death by suicide.

http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdea...

You can also use the Public Health England "Fingertips" datasets which breaksdown the data a bit more.

Here's the main Fingertips site: http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/

And here's the Fingertips mental health stuff: http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental-health

And here's the Fingertips suicide stuff: http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental-health/pro...

Currently the ratio of deaths by suicide for men:women is something like 4:1 or 3:1, and we think that's because (as you've said) men tend to use more lethal methods. (Although we've seen a really worrying increase in lethality of method in women in the UK).

Go careful when comparing the UK stats with the US. I think we count different things. For example: a death that would be counted as a suicide in someone over the age of 15 is not counted as a suicide in someone under the age of 15. I don't think the US does that.

Re: Why do so few humans kill themselves?

#187

Post by enraged_camel » Tue, Jul 26, 2016, 7:14 PM UTC

jdimov9 wrote: post #90

You don't seem to understand much about evolution, or life. Claiming that evolution is a random, unguided "whatever works" process is mere ignorance. To everyone who has ever looked around (or listened around, or sensed around) even for one moment, it is beyond obvious that not only evolution works "by design", but that this design is supremely personal and the ultimate in creativity. So the implied negative connotat…

Evolution is about selecting mutations that provide the species with survival and reproductive advantages. Since said mutations are indeed totally random, it does also introduce a certain level of randomness to evolution itself.

Re: Why do so few humans kill themselves?

#188

Post by andrewfromx » Tue, Jul 26, 2016, 7:17 PM UTC

i think the author misses the data point of actuall doing it, is not easy. He keeps repeating, everyone has the ability to kill themselves, but is this true? I think most people, even if pain is at 100% and desire to do it is at 100% the knife/gun/etc just won't go. So re-think the whole thing from the point that VERY FEW humans have the ability to do it.

Re: Why do so few humans kill themselves?

#189

Post by allendoerfer » Tue, Jul 26, 2016, 7:23 PM UTC

jokoon wrote: post #152

allendoerfer wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society is natural.

Government, laws, science, technology, management? Do all those things appear in nature without our initiative? They seem to be made by humans. I don't really know. Ultimately you can argue that everything happening in the universe is natural, but I would make a difference between things created by intelligent creatures and the things that appears with natural selection. That doesn't involve intelligent design.

Many other species have different forms of complex societies.

Re: Why do so few humans kill themselves?

#190

Post by tathougies » Tue, Jul 26, 2016, 7:27 PM UTC

_jgvg wrote: post #23

Maybe 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…

Lithium can cause severe problems for those who have hypothyroidism (a significant portion of women). For these people, the lack of thyroid hormone would likely worsen their depression.