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Daniel Kahneman opted for assisted suicide in Switzerland

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Re: Daniel Kahneman opted for assisted suicide in Switzerland

#491

Post by ares623 »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #211
wazdra wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valuing how others remember you is definitely a motivation in life for many. I respect that it is not your own, respect that it may be mine. It is by no means "absurd".

It is absurd because it places subjective opinions over objective goods. This is the vice of “human respect”. Human beings do not have a final say about others. They can opine, but opinions are like buttholes, everyone has one. Sure, it is nice to be remembered well, if you deserve it, but I do not live for the opinions of others. This is slave mentality and pathetic. I care about being good, and if I am hated for th…

A god need not concern himself with the opinions of men

Re: Daniel Kahneman opted for assisted suicide in Switzerland

#492

Post by croes »

xpe wrote: post #59
croes wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it matter if it’s existing or upcoming? People who interested will search gor it and see if it’s already available. So beside pedantic it’s unnecessary.

I'll answer in various frames: - product development: why make someone "do one extra click" when you can make the extra click unnecessary? - writing: respect your audience's time. - humility: take one minute of your time to save other's time. - databases: optimize for reading not writing

Would the extra click really be unnecessary?

The ones who don’t care about the book don‘t click anyway.

The ones who are interested click no matter if it’s an upcoming or already existing book.

Re: Daniel Kahneman opted for assisted suicide in Switzerland

#493

Post by bsimpson »

circlefavshape wrote: post #280

My dad is in the early stages of Alzheimer's and it's made me think of what I'll do if I find myself in the same situation Assisted suicide sounds like a fine option until you think of its impact on your loved ones. Imagining putting my wife and kids through my deciding to die, and the process of them bringing me to the place where it happens - or imagining one of them doing the same thing - just fills me with horror

One of my friend's parents had a neurological disorder in his later years and was considering suicide. I don't know the details, but I know he had mentioned it to my friend. I believe he was convinced to try one more procedure that the logistics never lined up for. He ended up dying anyway a short number of years later.

He kept to himself, so I didn't know him well. I did know that he was an independent and thoughtful man who hated that his tremor got so bad he couldn't feed himself. I remember talking with his family about if those self-balancing Google spoons might help.

There are two kinds of people for whom suicide sounds appealing: those in poor health who don't want to experience it getting poorer, and those for whom the difficulty of being alive outweighs the joy of it. If you're in the former camp, that pain is coming for them anyway. If you're in the latter camp and still make the decision, maybe you don't have those close bonds that make you want to persevere.

Re: Daniel Kahneman opted for assisted suicide in Switzerland

#495

Post by Viliam1234 »

Noaidi wrote: post #212
lukan wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What if the next day his hope came back?" What if he tried that, but every day just got worse than the last day? And people don't get any younger. My grandmother is 98. She hates her life since she could not go out anymore. But she is catholic and suicide would be a mortal sin. So she waits till gods take her. And suffers till then. I would make a different choice for sure. If life is hell and no one depends on me,…

> What if he tried that, but every day just got worse than the last day? Anyone can say that about their life right now, can't they? How many people struggling today think that their life will get no better? Look at all those who made it through slavery, what hope did they have? Their hope came from their faith. Suffering has a purpose, this is something your grandmother understands through her faith. Buddhists under…

> Suffering has a purpose

Maybe some suffering has a purpose, and some suffering does not? It doesn't have to be always this or always that.

Re: Daniel Kahneman opted for assisted suicide in Switzerland

#496

Post by jncfhnb »

Noaidi wrote: post #397
prmoustache wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dementia and Alzheimer is not something that can simply be managed throught treatment. It is an inexorable descent into suffering for both the person and its entourage with absolutely zero hope of getting better. At best in the last stages you get very short glimpses of normality within hours of confusions, frustrations, anger and pain. If I am ever diagnosed with one of those, I absolutely want the chance to end my…

I’ve had a lot of people suffer in my life from health conditions, ranging from mental illness, heart disease, and cancer. And I’ve had to take care of them all at different times. Did I consider this a burden or a gift? Oh, it was hard, but does that mean it’s a burden? If you think you’ll be a burden on your loved ones can we really say they’re your loved ones? This is a serious question. If you’re thinking that yo…

> If you think you’ll be a burden on your loved ones can we really say they’re your loved ones? This is a serious question. If you’re thinking that you’ll be a burden do you think that these people really love you?

I think it’s a pretty fuckin dumb question.

Gatekeeping “love” behind service of ceaseless emotional toil with a smile is ridiculous.

Re: Daniel Kahneman opted for assisted suicide in Switzerland

#497

Post by jncfhnb »

Noaidi wrote: post #406
lukan wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I asked for proof that a constant condition of suffering is inherent of life. Not that suffering is also part of life. (Vouched for it to be able to reply)

There is no such thing as constant suffering and there’s no such thing as constant joy. Without suffering, we would not know joy and without joy we wouldn’t know suffering. So these are two sides of the same coin, do you see that? It’s our attachment to ourselves that brings us both joy and suffering. So, I’m sorry, if you want to get rid of suffering you’re going to get rid of joy as well. So I don’t know if dying b…

> Without suffering, we would not know joy and without joy we wouldn’t know suffering. So these are two sides of the same coin, do you see that?

Bullshit argument.

The suffering that many people experience is profound. These people don’t have a more profound experience of joy than those whose lives are chill. And the happy lives of people who haven’t suffered are not better because the sufferers have felt worse.

> I told my schizophrenic brother why he shouldn’t take his life by suicide. I just asked him if he knew what it was like being dead and if he thought he was certain that being dead would be any better. He literally told me the confusion of that question. Let him to accepting his life as it was. Better the Devil You Know than the one you don’t.

“You should suffer because the next part may be even worse suffering” is such a fucked up argument.

Re: Daniel Kahneman opted for assisted suicide in Switzerland

#498

Post by bhl »

joelwilliamson wrote: post #198
dotnet00 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a cruel perspective, implying that he'd be better off dead, for what, 3 years of inconvenience to his community, despite the previous 80 years being spent contributing positively to it? You even literally show that he isn't solely remembered for those last 3 years of his life. We owe people like that care and understanding, not murder framed as mercy. It's always so painful to see old people around who a…

He’d be dead either way, the question is if having those three years were a net improvement to his life

Not for us to question or answer though.

Re: Daniel Kahneman opted for assisted suicide in Switzerland

#499

Post by ghssds »

Noaidi wrote: post #171
AQuantized wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You really don't want to end up with dementia and related illnesses, it totally sours everyone's view of you. This seems like such an absurd conclusion to this, as though the opinions of other people of you are what matter when you functionally lose your personhood and then die. Maybe a better focus would be that there often isn't a good way for a community to manage a person who suddenly becomes irrational because…

My brother had schizophrenia. No one thought well of him. I guess he should have killed himself as well by the logic some are professing on here. Oh, he tried, but he ended up dying of heart disease. > Maybe a better focus would be that there often isn't a good way for a community to manage a person who suddenly becomes irrational because of an illness. Yes, this is the focus. Science has stalled when it comes to neu…

> I guess he should have killed himself as well by the logic some are professing on here.

Maybe people are able to answer that question by themselves and don't need the judgement of other people answering differently.

Re: Daniel Kahneman opted for assisted suicide in Switzerland

#500

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

krapp wrote: post #485
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #473

Lots of discussion of the morality of assisted suicide in this thread, and the circumstances under which it should be legal. In the cryonics community, it's a common complaint that they have to wait until the patient is legally dead in order to cryopreserve, which can make it difficult to cryopreserve under ideal circumstances. I like the idea of allowing individuals to opt for cryopreservation over end-of-life care.…

You're talking about cryonics as if it were an established, scientifically proven and effective technology, but it doesn't work and is widely considered to be pseudoscience. And mentioning the cost of end-of-life care is risible when your alternative is paying paying indefinite rent to a company for freezer space to keep a corpse frozen.

>You're talking about cryonics as if it were an established, scientifically proven and effective technology

I don't believe that. I do believe it is a hair less futile than delaying the inevitable and then burying yourself 6 feet underground.

>it doesn't work and is widely considered to be pseudoscience.

The cryonicist claim is something like: "If we save your brain in a way that preserves its information content, it may be possible for future technology to reconstruct that information content, and effectively revive you." No cryonicist is claiming that cryonics "works" with existing technology.

Consider the state of medicine in the year 1925 vs the state of medicine in the year 2025. Now extrapolate that advancement trend forwards until 2525. Is extrapolating trends forward a form of pseudoscience? If so, what do you say about global warming?

>And mentioning the cost of end-of-life care is risible when your alternative is paying paying indefinite rent to a company for freezer space to keep a corpse frozen.

Keeping a closed canister filled with liquid nitrogen is not especially costly.

Alcor charges $80K out of pocket for neuropreservation: https://www.alcor.org/membership/pricing-and-dues/

The Lancet says a typical American accumulates $155K in healthcare costs during the last 3 years of their life: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanam/article/PIIS2667-19...

Long-term care costs are rising fast: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/24/business/retirement-long-...

(BTW, I appreciate that you made a falsifiable claim here, since that helps readers evaluate the credibility of your other claims. A sort of within-comment Gell-Mann effect.)

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