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I'm choosing euthanasia etd 1pm. I have no last words.

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Re: I'm choosing euthanasia etd 1pm. I have no last words.

#191
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downvoted, and flagged, the post because it's a fucking horrible thing to say in this thread about an individual person's choice to die. Feel free to have a discussion about the rights and wrongs of euthanasia in some other thread. Here people are remembering someone they know. They either know him AFK, or from his work. This thread about that man is totally the wrong place for self-righteous cunts to wang on about…

You're quite right, of course. It was thoughtless and presumptuous of me to place my responsibility to address his errant and cruel behavior ahead of the feelings of others participating here. I'm sorry for that.

Responsibility to address his errant and cruel behavior?

Get off your high horse and join us in saying goodbye to Pieter.

Re: I'm choosing euthanasia etd 1pm. I have no last words.

#192

Pieter: I don't know if you are reading Hacker News at this point or not. Most likely not. I respect your rights and understand the challenge you are faced with. We don't know each other but your work has touched me profoundly as a fellow technologist. All I have to say is I am crying at the moment. I'm crying because I feel very helpless. As a fellow human I am unable to do anything to help you. I am sorry.

>I'm crying because I feel very helpless. As a fellow human I am unable to do anything to help you. I am sorry. Although this is a poor comparison for a million reasons, I just put my beloved dog down a week ago. Helpless is the word here. Its incredible how many game-enders we casually flirt with everyday, how powerful illness can be, how illness makes us make tough decisions, how poorly we handle end of life issues…

I'm so sorry for your loss. I went through this 5 months ago, and it was incredibly difficult for me. I have lost many friends far too young, and the death of our pet was no less emotionally traumatic.

Time does help.

Re: I'm choosing euthanasia etd 1pm. I have no last words.

#193

This keeps me up at night. I hope the collective advancement in science makes it possible to defeat cancer some day. I believe/hope that my contribution as a insignificant CS-student helps somebody develop tools that help somebody researching etc. I am really convinced that every advancement is connected somehow and the collective improvement in efficiency and livings standards makes it possible to commit more resour…

Mother, aunt, grandmother, all died of cancer (brain, breast, metastasis of liver cancer). F*ck cancer indeed. Support marijuana reforms. Best hope we have.

I'm sorry, but what is the connection between those two?

Re: I'm choosing euthanasia etd 1pm. I have no last words.

#194

Sad to read this. And actually also a bit surprised, considering that 2 weeks ago he posted an article that mentioned "This is a short book more than an article. I'll continue to revise it over time, according to your comments." http://hintjens.com/blog:125

Correctly predicting timing is hard with cancer.

Yes. I knew someone (about 30 years old) who had brain cancer.

When he had chemo, he looked like he was dying any second now. A week after he looked like a normal healthy person.

Last time I saw him was a few weeks before he died, we were partying like he wasn't even sick and suddendly he was dead.

But it's generally a strange feeling to lose people around you.

In the last two years I lost about 4 people. One to old age, two to cancer and one was even murdered. I still have the last moments with them in my memories. We were like "yeah lets go do XYZ together in a few weeks/months" and now they are simply gone and won't come back.

Re: I'm choosing euthanasia etd 1pm. I have no last words.

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Radiation and chemo therapies are one of the most horrific things one can endure. Depending on the type of cancer, you can go in a few weeks, months, or fight the battle for years. Even if you endure and persist, which gets progressively easier for a lot of cancers thanks to more advanced therapies, you have to fear recurrence. I'm not at all opposed to ending one s own life if done without severe psychological issue…

It's your own life to take and as long as your brain still works and you have some freedom of movement, nobody can actually stop you from doing it if you're so determined. And granted, when talking about mental illnesses that are considered treatable, like depression, you can't expect assistance for suicide. But when talking terminal illnesses, like cancer or dementia, then not legalizing assisted deaths is not only…

"not wanting to take on some fucking responsibility for others."

They'll have to explain their sins themselves, but by observation I think its giving up that they oppose.

Going up to OPs question of who gets to decide, decades ago when my father died of some weird fast moving liver cancer no one religious had any issue with the numerous treatment options all somewhat fatal or with the concept of being able to select a treatment plan. So the oncologist says chemo option A means X amount of pain and 90% chance you'll be dead in Y months, and option B, C, D, all different tradeoffs, or we could try whatever else and you'll get Y months with X amount of pain, or do nothing and you'll be gone in about Y weeks or etc etc. Basically the patient and team of doctors pick a death date which results in an associated level of pain and medical treatment (medical profit). The Christians don't seem to mind "pick a death date" they just seem very unhappy with the idea of the treatment plan being "give up completely" "game over".

There seems this weird assumption that people can't handle picking a death date or it would warp culture too much, but any cancer patient with more than one medically approved treatment option is pretty much picking their date as it is today. Especially if its terminal cancer. Adding a third, fourth, fifth treatment option of "once we agree your quality of life is below level X then you're done" isn't going to be a huge addition or huge problem.

My wife has power of attorney or whatever its called over her Alzheimer's damaged great uncle, she has full control over all of his medical treatment plan. The only real moral or ethical argument I can think of is if it were made legal maybe only only legal agreements drafted after the law change should be valid. Although then again, the whole point of her being in charge is he trusted his niece the most so if he were competent he would likely continue to trust her the most anyway.

Re: I'm choosing euthanasia etd 1pm. I have no last words.

#196
post #51
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all die at some point. While I too abhor cancer I find hard to fear it more than any other thing that can kill me - a stroke, a car accident, etc. The universe is out to get us - we've evolved into tough bastard but we've not defeated mortality.

> hard to fear it more than any other thing that can kill me - a stroke, a car accident, etc. Hm. I wonder your age. Young folk seem to think death impossibly foreign, and fear it / ignore it all equally. Older folk, that have had more first-hand experience with the decline of the flesh in themselves and those they grew up with, have more an appreciation for the difference between an abrupt death in a car accident, a…

>>Quite a lot of people fear dying more than they do death.

Hell yes. Kids are grown. Fat life insurance policy. I can accept having a fatal heart attack under the right circumstances :) The slow, painful fade is the thing that scares me. It's better to "burn out, than fade away."

Re: I'm choosing euthanasia etd 1pm. I have no last words.

#197
post #116

He has left us a lot of work. I knew about ZeroMQ, "The Psychopath Code" [1], "The Devil's Wiki" [2], could we make a summary here as a tribute? [1] https://github.com/hintjens/psychopathcode [2] http://wiki.hintjens.com/

Books by Pieter Hintjens [0].

[0] http://hintjens.com/books

Re: I'm choosing euthanasia etd 1pm. I have no last words.

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over 500,000 people die of cancer in the US, and over 8 million worldwide. Maybe you can't do something about one particular person today but millions of more future deaths can be prevented. Some of the people here will be dying "early" deaths in 10 or 20 years. You won't be saying: "well, you've gotta go someday when you have a couple of kids", for example.

I like your post, but before you will inspire few folks to visit some cancer fighting "non-profit" venture, it is important to look at cancer further then just those companies that are fighting it (but of course would never want to end it for good - I mean after all they have a lifetime mission (and salaries to pay), right?) You see, cancer was a tiny spot on radar just 50 years ago. Or 100 even more. So the question…

In all seriousness, please take your anti-science fear-mongering rant and GTFO.

Re: I'm choosing euthanasia etd 1pm. I have no last words.

#199
post #152

Third parties: Please don't downvote or flag the parent comment out of existence. I understand the urge, but it merits a considered response, and I would greatly appreciate your forbearing to deny me the opportunity to replace this placeholder comment with one.

I downvoted, and flagged, the post because it's a fucking horrible thing to say in this thread about an individual person's choice to die. Feel free to have a discussion about the rights and wrongs of euthanasia in some other thread. Here people are remembering someone they know. They either know him AFK, or from his work. This thread about that man is totally the wrong place for self-righteous cunts to wang on about…

> Feel free to have a discussion about the rights and wrongs of euthanasia in some other thread.

And yet DanBC did exactly that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12635572

And the second-highest comment currently is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12635825, which praises the decision.

Clearly some folks think this thread is for at least the discussion of the rights of euthanasia; not discussing the wrongs seems rather biased.

Re: I'm choosing euthanasia etd 1pm. I have no last words.

#200
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hard to fear it more than any other thing that can kill me - a stroke, a car accident, etc. Hm. I wonder your age. Young folk seem to think death impossibly foreign, and fear it / ignore it all equally. Older folk, that have had more first-hand experience with the decline of the flesh in themselves and those they grew up with, have more an appreciation for the difference between an abrupt death in a car accident, a…

Writing this as a reply to all the comments regarding death; I think "death" is just another condition like disease or disability that will eventually be defeated through technology. Someday we will have medical immortality and maybe even mind-backups, to "restore" a person (or a very close approximation of them) in the case of accident/violence. We should be looking at death as something surpassable and not necessar…

You make death out to be a problem, which is... unintuitive. What is to gain from "fixing" it?
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