281–290 of 306 posts
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Some of the biggest critics of euthanasia are the disabled.
For example: http://notdeadyet.com https://dredf.org/assisted_suicide/assistedsuicide.html http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/06/disability...
I'm a geek, I sort of get it, but aren't the people talking about themselves and their choices and their views even slightly ashamed? Could we have a fucking moment to just honor this guy? I don't even know him, I'm just cringing.
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But how is that any different from getting enough sleep, foregoing tobacco and unhealthy foods, etc.?
Odds. As you get older your chance of getting cancer increases substantially.[1] Getting older doesn't increase your changes of getting in a car accident. 1: https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/a...
I beg to differ.
> In 2012, there were almost 36 million licensed drivers ages 65 and older in the United States.1 Driving helps older adults stay mobile and independent. But the risk of being injured or killed in a motor vehicle crash increases as you age. http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/older_adult_drivers/
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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…
> 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. Backing up your brain does not prevent you to die. Your organic form will die anyway and you will have to go through death, it's j…
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> 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…
Arent abrupt deaths more likely to happen to a young person? Shouldn't a young person then not fear cancer (less likely) any more than accidental death? I wonder your age. Old folk tend to assume they have some sort of wisdom and that they can't possibly be wrong simply because of extra years spent on Earth.
I'm not "old folk," but I do work in medicine. I may have seen a bit more death and death-fear than you. Then again, maybe not; I don't know you.
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> 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…
Sorry, I didn't mean to speak of death in dismissive form. I've seen too many relatives and those close to me perish in various of ways before old age not to care about it. To me all forms of it ... just feel equally bad in the end from the point of fearing some personal fate or another. My view is not of someone oblivious to life's hardship. Life hits you, you take the punches, and stand as long as you can. "Cancer"…
A young person generally hasn't seen (many or any of) their close friends grow infirm and die, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with the fact that they don't see life through that lens yet.
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It amazes me how many people will favor putting a suffering animal out of its misery, then fight tooth and nail against offering that same mercy to their fellow human beings.
In many cases, it's social virtue signalling, with no real sapience behind the actions. See how virtuous I am empathizing with lower-order animals' suffering. See how virtuous I am championing the sanctity of human life. A lot of the latter can be mitigated: make those who want human life preserved "at all costs" pay cash-over-the-barrel into that "at all costs" effort, on an individual basis. Voluntary, elective eut…
Generally euthanasia is considered an ethical option when medicine can't help anymore, and any prolonging of life would either be useless (patient is braindead) or unable to mitigate the pain of the patient.
Personally I think bringing economics in wil obfuscate the moral discussion.
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No it won't. All first world countries have less than sustainable population growth as it is. We produce vastly more food than we need, and will be able to produce even more in the future with genetically engineered algae. We have vast areas of the Earth left to settle including deserts, antarctica and the Oceans. Not to mention space. We have millennia worth of nuclear fuel available on Earth, not to mention other f…
>We produce vastly more food than we need Global warming could cause some nasty food shortages.
I'm pretty astounded at how some pretty cool guy's decision to die has morphed into people talking about themselves. I'm a geek, I sort of get it, but aren't the people talking about themselves and their choices and their views even slightly ashamed? Could we have a fucking moment to just honor this guy? I don't even know him, I'm just cringing.
Take your post as an example.
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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?
One of the things that are necessary to attain the next level of civilization, or perish. Yes, achieving a post-scarcity industry/economy is also necessary, and goes hand-in-hand with sustainable immortality.
At a certain scale, those that don't have these technologies may be seen as primitive.
I suppose there'll some kinds of biologies where immortality won't be necessary, like a insect-like hive-mind species, where each member is more or less already a copy of each other, but in species that have concepts of individuality and value them, achieving immortality is inevitable.