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Daddy isn’t coming back

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171–180 of 430 posts

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#171
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Suppose each person in a sample of 100,000 people were asked how much he or she would be willing to pay for a reduction in their individual risk of dying of 1 in 100,000, or 0.001%, over the next year. Since this reduction in risk would mean that we would expect one fewer death among the sample of 100,000 people over the next year on average, this is sometimes described as "one statistical life saved.” Now suppose t…

> The gain is that the average mortality goes down by 0.001%. What made you come up with that nonsensical figure? Suicide is the leading cause of death in males under 45 in the UK. [0] And here's another tidbit [1]: > Eliminating suicide as a cause of death would have increased life expectancy at birth by 1.92 years for males and 1.36 years for females from 2011 to 2015 [in the US]. We can debate whether and how much…

The figures were not for suicide specifically but from their source for generating the cost of a statistical life.

I'm simply saying reducing mortality 0.001% doesn't equal 10 million dollars saved per 100,000 people as they somewhat implied. It's that society as a whole is perhaps willing to spend $10 million to reduce mortality 0.001%.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that I cannot get housing just proves no one cares. All it proves is that there is a big housing shortage. Have you tried taking your van somewhere where housing is dirt cheap? I hear small poor towns are better at taking care of the downtrodden too. Walk into the church poor people go to, and see what happens.

[flagged]

n-gate.com, although it hasn't been active in a while.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I'm with you. I was chaos and anarchy before becoming a parent. Now if I lost mine in such an accident say, I'd immediately do it. What would be the point of waiting? Not because they were the only thing stopping me, but because life without them, by now, is incomprehensible. To be honest though, I think suicide is probably the best way to go unless you die instantly. I mean, say I get diagnosed with some horrib…

Alzheimers reduced my father to a lost shell of his former self, but I wouldn't trade any day I ever spent with him for anything. Regardless of the state he was in at the end, he was still my father and I loved every moment we had together. He was the gentlest, kindest, strongest and most thoughtful man I ever knew and that's exactly how I remember him. That's just my own opinion.

edit: Apologies, this is really personal stuff but I'm talking generically here -- please don't take any of the below as judgmental: I'm simply trying to work out my own feeling on the matter: I get you, but how would he have felt about that? I'm so, so uncomfortable with the idea of my kids having to look after me in such a condition that I hope they would understand that doing so is kind of selfish ... hmm I don't really have the words in English, but I guess the closest translation of selbstgerecht is 'self-righteous' but it doesn't really convey what I mean. At some point, the wishes of the remembered personality should be considered no?

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#174
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty harsh view. Let me try something else: the author notes that 6,000 people take their lives in the UK every year. That has a very substantial cost, potentially measurable in many ways, but let's measure it in dollars. The US EPA uses a value of about 7 million dollars for a statistical life in 2006 dollars [1], or about 10 million 2021 dollars [2]. The cost of suicide in the UK in the aggregate is some…

>Suppose each person in a sample of 100,000 people were asked how much he or she would be willing to pay for a reduction in their individual risk of dying of 1 in 100,000, or 0.001%, over the next year. Since this reduction in risk would mean that we would expect one fewer death among the sample of 100,000 people over the next year on average, this is sometimes described as "one statistical life saved.” Now suppose t…

It’s not a false statement.

You are correct that saving lives in this way doesn’t put money in anyone’s pocket. Nor can the value generated be taxed.

However, it generates $50 billion relative to the actual state of the world in which there is a cost that large due to suicides.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#175
post #149

The fact that people in here are considering waiting to have a kid till they can self-diagnose themselves as mentally stable enough not to kill themselves, is itself an indicator that people who clicked on this HN thread are at higher risk for depression. Me included. The non-depressed person goes about the world as they owned it, thinking nothing but good things will come their way, they have the confidence to try h…

Your "own the world" idea sounds more like the manic side of bipolar disorder rather than a healthy moderation that represents a "non-depressed person".

You're right that "own the world" mania is dangerous and destructive. I hope you're not suggesting that this is the inevitable tragic state as the only alternative to depression.

People in the thousands-of-years-ago African plains were still people. They weren't in a constant state of narcissistic mania. And the idea that they were violent and dangerous until civilization or depression moderated them is as contrived as the idea that they were noble-savages who lived in peace and harmony.

I fear that a lot of depressed people wallow in their depression by critiquing non-depressed people as though they were all manic and dangerous, and thus this is a defense of staying depressed and doing nothing about it.

There really are healthy moderated ways to live. For tons of different reasons, we see huge variations in the level of difficulty people have in finding or maintaining that healthy moderation.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#176

I have a black thought on this. I would be happy if someone corrected me. When something breaks, sometimes we repair it, sometimes we throw it out. The more valuable the item, the more we will spend to fix it. However even with the most valuable items, we sometimes reluctantly decide that it is broken beyond repair. Are people like this? Are some simply too broken to fix? I feel awful thinking this, but I wonder if t…

I don't think there is such a thing as broken beyond repair. How would you even begin defining that? If you're thinking in economic terms then sure, we can try to optimize a limited budget to save/improve the maximum number of lives. It would still be beneficial to have at least a few people look into whether new methods can be developed to increase the amount of "good life" you get per dollar. Giving up and deciding…

A burnt match is broken beyond repair. And certainly there are human medical conditions which presently elude our technical ability to "repair" them. Rabies is a good example; if we didn't have the vaccine for it, then I think it would be pretty clear that an infected person is broken beyond repair.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#177
Couple weird things in the article that stood out to me

>I told the children early on Saturday morning. “Daddy isn’t coming back,” I said as we lay curled into each other in bed. “He didn’t want to live any more and he made himself die.”

is that really the best way to break the news to young children?

>That was Saturday. On Monday, the children went back to school and two weeks later I was back at work.

She's off work for 2 weeks to grieve but the kids go back to school 2 days later?

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#178
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Search string: life is suffering People have been thinking on this very question since the beginning of people.

Well, I kind of identify with the soto sect of Zen Buddhism, but I actually reject the standard interpretation of the four noble truths (the first if which, as you've said: life is suffering). Life isn't all suffering. Idealistic thinking of life is a kind of suffering, I suppose, but you're not suffering all the time. When you're eating an awesome meal, having some hot sex, seeing your code pass CI on the first atte…

Ah, well I had no intention of implying that all of life is suffering, but the succinctness of my comment can be read that way, sorry. Your take is quite reasonable, IMHO. The gist of a lot of the quotes that search brings up is more or less the same: without suffering, it may be more difficult to understand how deeply good the pleasant experiences of life are. Which for me, would include looking out the window at the rain. (I live in a desert.) My best friend (lives in Belgium) thinks the opposite.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#179
post #99
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure our biology is great at that, but paradoxically as an almost 40 year old... I have the resources to support a bunch of children. Maybe the change to make is change the dynamic between men and women to introduce more age differences for child rearing. My parents fought about money all the time, but if they had delayed then they would have been better off. If they were better off then maybe my mom wouldn't hav…

People on their 20 ties are more energetic and better handle sleep deprivation that comes with kids. Kids are not just costing money, they cost energy and effort.

Yeah. In a lot of ways, the push to have kids at an older age is detrimental... although in a lot of ways it's not. It's a tradeoff.

My earliest kid I had at 21; my latest, at 45. Sure, I have more money and emotional stability now. But I was also a lot more active back then, with the ability to deal with sleep deprivation when the kids were infants, and to handle playing tag after work for an hour.

Plus... whatever emotional strength and resilience I have comes in large part from being a practicing father for 20+ years. If I had been childless this whole time, I'd have far less emotional growth.

I'd recommend couples at least consider having kids as soon as they can (a) drag themselves out of poverty and (b) have enough time together that they have some confidence their relationship won't fall apart. Maybe (c) have some 3rd party backup.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#180
This is the part where every one piles in posting suicide hotline numbers. I would argue most of those people do not have any experience with, or understanding of those hotlines and it's just a trite thing to throw out to show support like "fuck cancer".

You should seriously understand what you are signing yourself up for if you call one of those numbers on yourself or someone else.

For one you are volunteering that person for involuntary incarceration in a mental health facility for an unspecified and potentially unlimited amount of time.

Need to show up to work tomorrow to avoid losing your job? That probably isn't happening.

Need to pay your bills to avoid losing your house? That might not be within your capabilities for the next several months or longer.

Kids need to get to school? CPS is likely going to be handling that for the indefinite future if they don't have another guardian because you aren't going to be around to do it and you are no longer fit to be a legal guardian anyway.

I'd probably rather end up in Jail than in that system.

Simply put, in our society indicating you are suicidal is a defacto crime and you should never do it(including and maybe especially to a psychiatrist/psychologist who maybe taking on legal risk if they don't institutionalize you after the admission) unless you are ready to suffer the consequences.

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