51 hours left to live

It's not whether the person in question experiences one thing or another from their posting. The question is whether or not the tools that the community uses to rank tech gossip should be the same tools as it uses to process final words.

I find that a form of monetization of human life, and I'm not in favor of heading down that road. It leads to bad places. Not for the posters, but for the rest of the community.

I think your mistake, if you made one, was assuming that my concern was for the feelings of those posting. It is not. It is for the continuing devaluing of human life by technology. The commnenter said that this article reached out and touched him, and I think that's great. If we had 50 on here a week, it would not. And I think that is unacceptable.

I am sure you are right about that. But what I have found personally is that a) I didn't learn how to live until I spent a lot of time at death's door and b) most people who speak with me are invigorated by exposure to ..whatever I got out of that experience. They get to get some perspective on their own lives and problems and sometimes decided that the concerns they are obsessing over are just stupid and not that important. I have terrible financial problems, which are a real issue. I would likely have them had I pursued conventional treatments as well only I wouldn't be getting well. But my creditors aren't going to come cut out my lungs or the lungs of my 23 year old son (who has the same diagnosis I have), which is basically what I would be facing otherwise (lung transplants are really common with my condition). So I just can't find it in me to be as upset about my financial situation as other people sometimes seem to think I should be.

Technology went a long way towards saving my life, both literally and figuratively. It gave me a social life when I as unable to leave my house. It gave me access to research when I was too sick to go to a library. It gave me a means to occupy my time when having nothing to do but go crazy from constant unrelieved pain was a fate worse than death.

I don't really see the issue with the post on Reddit. I would agree with you if someone posted here that they have a new startup idea and plan to make a site specifically to have exactly this kind of post as its sole purpose. I thought the community was very supportive and kind and humane in its treatment of the situation, suprisingly so given how much trash gets talked about Reddit on HN.

But then I am some feverish twit just hanging out here tonight because I can't sleep and can't focus to do anything more than shoot the breeze with strangers...etc...what the hell do I know?

Edit: And it's really not intended as argument. It's intended as conversation. Since I spent some time at death's door and spent a lot of time online during that time, I have this silly idea that my thoughts on this topic might be of interest to your soul-searching...or whatever.

This is still relatively new to human society. Twitter provides a way to shout out sentences to the world in general - and to listen out for voices that we care about. Forums allow us to converse with multiple people and actually form relationships - relationships which might eventually cross over into meatspace.

The ability to converse in this way - in a 'third space', provides a lot of opportunities to encounter things that we're not used to encountering. This is an example of that.

What will happen in the future? Well - if there's a sharp increase in communication with people who are choosing to end their lives due to suffering, my guess is we'll all learn more about what those people are feeling and thinking. We'll all be a lot more educated and a lot more understanding as a result. It will be a positive thing.

I suppose that there's a chance that we'll become desensitized - but I think, when the stakes are this high and the subject is so earth-shatteringly significant to every one of us, it probably won't ever become so.

I really think that our society is worse off by treating death as a taboo. I don't particularly enjoy thinking about it, or talking about it - but I think it's worthwhile.

For example, years ago when reddit was new I used to post actual articles and consistently make the front page with them. But one day all my submissions suddenly started getting downvoted, many almost immediately after posting as if someone or something was constantly monitoring the new submissions page, killing any chances of developing the critical mass they used to get or of making it to the front page.

The nature of my postings hadn't changed at all, but the nature of reddit's voting behavior had, and not gradually but unnaturally abruptly, hence the suspicion. Whether it was a human voting ring like was exposed at Digg a while back, or actual bots, or just some no-life basement dwellers with nothing better to do than game reddit all day, I have no idea. I eventually abandoned that account, and now only post comments and the occasional question thread to smaller subreddits.

Of course one person's anecdotal experience is hardly evidence, much less proof, but suspicious nonetheless. When the reddit guys visited you and denied there were any bots, did they explain how they knew this? User agent info, statistical behavioral analysis, etc? I'd be really curious how they go about testing that hypothesis against their massive amount of data.