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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

#561

Post by ta1243 »

sarchertech wrote: post #98
ta1243 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My nan made it to 92 without any mental issues, but then deteriorated significantly over the course of 18 months, forgetting she'd ever been married, had kids, etc, just reverted to believing she was a teenager who wanted to go home to her parents (in a house which was destroyed in ww2) She couldn't look after herself was was forced into care by the courts. Since going into a home she's physically never been fitter,…

That’s terrible, but you never know when or if the decline is going to happen, so if you pick an arbitrary cutoff you’ll have killed people who had plenty of good years left. Many people die suddenly with no decline at all.

It's an interesting thing. Aside from the constant complaints she's being held prisoner she's far happier now than she was 10 years ago, but the person she was no longer exists. How does that factor in to how wishes can be expressed. What is important - the mind or the body?

Your assertion

> If you’ve already made it to 90 with no major issues, you’re expected to make it to 95 and you could make easily live to 100

Doesn't really hold up, either in my anecdote (life) or in data

In the UK 70% of men aged 90 today will die before being 95. Most will die before turning 94. Women have about 40% chance of making it to 95.

Re: Daniel Kahneman opted for assisted suicide in Switzerland

#562

Post by Noaidi »

tsimionescu wrote: post #542
Noaidi wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you ever cared for someone with late stage Alzheimer or other forms of severe dementia? Yes. Did I say that it was easy? Did I say that the spiritual way through all this was just pretending like everything is OK? No, it’s a very difficult process. Avoiding suffering is impossible. Choosing to die to avoid suffering does not guarantee non-suffering. Only understanding suffering and where it originates can get…

You are not replying to my core point. Do you believe that a person with severe late stage Alzheimer is the same person they were before the disease reached that point? Do you believe that their old mind and personality still exists at that point? If so, why? For many other neuro-psychiatric diseases, we know that moments of psychosis are reversible, at least to some extent, with drugs and therapy and the kindness of…

You are not the same person you were when you were nine years old are you? Literally all your cells that you had then are gone and replaced. You’ve also had new experiences and that’s changed self-concept as well. We are not one continuous person that something like Alzheimer suddenly changes.

It’s because we associate so much with our experience as memories that makes us think that that is what we are. Are people with Alzheimer’s the same person? No, they’re different people. This is why we’re not allowed to just go around killing people with Alzheimer’s and dementia.

The thing that makes us alive is the constant change and activity in the body. If you say, someone does not change, that someone is the same throughout their whole life. That amounts to calling something dead, still, unchanging, lifeless.

These people with dementia, they still have a personality don’t they? I know my friend’s mother does. And my friends, father who died a few months back with Alzheimer’s. Yes, he was angry and had outbursts that were 100% uncharacteristically not like his old behavior. But behavior does not dictate who you are is signals that we still have a consciousness. And that is who we are. We are not our memories. We are not our current form of expression. We are our consciousness. Because our consciousness loses the function of accessing memories does not make us any more us.

You are not your memory. You are consciousness. You are the thing that reads memories.

But again, this drifted so far from the point of the article. This man killed himself not for his current suffering, but for his perceived future suffering. He was afraid of change he was afraid of what that change meant. He wanted people to see the same dead person That people saw him in life. A constant unchanging perception.

Re: Daniel Kahneman opted for assisted suicide in Switzerland

#563

Post by tsoukase »

It's another thing to not give palliative treatment to prolong life for a little more and another to provide poison to accelerate death. My opinion is to continue palliative care when the benefit outweighs the harm in the QUALITY of life (not necessarily quantity) and infuse some morphine 1 or 2 days before death in order to skip the last stage.

Re: Daniel Kahneman opted for assisted suicide in Switzerland

#564

Post by sarchertech »

Tepix wrote: post #274
sarchertech wrote: post #44

So he was very old without any significant problems, but he wanted to avoid the inevitable problems? If you’ve already made it to 90 with no major issues, you’re expected to make it to 95 and you could make easily live to 100. My wife’s grandad is 90 and he still lives alone, drives, plays golf nearly everyday, and regularly sees his 12 grandchildren and many great grandchildren. He even made the 9 hour trip to come…

As long as people are thinking clearly, i think it should be up to them. There is no financial incentive. No-one is making any money from assisted suicide in Switzerland.

Families can’t inherit wealth in Switzerland?

Re: Daniel Kahneman opted for assisted suicide in Switzerland

#565

Post by sarchertech »

ta1243 wrote: post #561
sarchertech wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s terrible, but you never know when or if the decline is going to happen, so if you pick an arbitrary cutoff you’ll have killed people who had plenty of good years left. Many people die suddenly with no decline at all.

It's an interesting thing. Aside from the constant complaints she's being held prisoner she's far happier now than she was 10 years ago, but the person she was no longer exists. How does that factor in to how wishes can be expressed. What is important - the mind or the body? Your assertion > If you’ve already made it to 90 with no major issues, you’re expected to make it to 95 and you could make easily live to 100 Do…

Sorry I was a year off for US data.

The expected life span is 4 years not 5 at 90.

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

Re: Daniel Kahneman opted for assisted suicide in Switzerland

#566

Post by sarchertech »

EasyMark wrote: post #344
sarchertech wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I feel the desire to stay alive long enough to be a liability for yourself and those around you is a decision motivated by ego and fear, rather than compassion or logic. Everyone becomes a liability at some point. By that logic we should just go full Logan’s run and kill people as soon as they stop being productive. There nothing wrong with saying that you aren’t going to take extreme measures to preserve your life…

the big question is why do you get to choose that for me or why is it society's choice and not my own? assuming I'm of a healthy mental state.

If you want to kill yourself the way many old people have done forever (by no longer eating), in most cases society doesn’t have a say.

If you want to involve society by petitioning the courts to have a doctor kill you, society gets a say because you’ve involved society.

There’s no country with assisted suicide laws where society doesn’t get a say because killing someone by default is murder, and exceptions must be highly regulated.

Re: Daniel Kahneman opted for assisted suicide in Switzerland

#567

Post by oreally »

Noaidi wrote: post #560
N_Lens wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I respect your perspective on the value of suffering (which seems to arise from our sense of self and what we associate with “I”) and figuring out life, I think you judge Kahneman as an outside observer without access to his inner thoughts, state and factors that went into his decision.

I agree with you. All I can judgment is his actions. And his words. This man was afraid of future suffering. And he was so afraid of it that he would rather die than face it. But the truth is, he could’ve tripped and fell down the stairs the next day and died on his own. So not only was he afraid, but he was arrogant. He thought he could predict the future. This man certainty took whatever life he had left away from…

I'm not sure if you even read the article nor his books, and I disagree with your interpretation of his actions because they have very extravagant presumptions, judging from your comments.

I don't think he was afraid. I think he mapped out his late age future, and wanted to fast forward to what his next adventure even in post-death while leaving his last touches on the world a good one. Leaving the world a better place than when he started, as they say.

> I’m less concerned about what was in his head than the message that he sends.

As quoted from the article: Daniel Kahneman did not want to make a statement or start a debate. "I am not ashamed of my decision," he wrote, "but I don't want it to be discussed publicly either."

Re: Daniel Kahneman opted for assisted suicide in Switzerland

#568

Post by E39M5S62 »

jkhdigital wrote: post #445
LorenPechtel wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not contempt for human life. It is a recognition that sometimes as the body deteriorates that the quality of life becomes negative. I watched both of my parents deteriorate in the end. The morphine blotted out my father's ability to form long term memory, if it wasn't in front of him things were like they had been before so much morphine was needed. There can be no value in such "life". As far as I'm concerne…

This is about assisted suicide. You can argue all day long about how you have the right to end your own life, but the real issue is whether you have the right to grant another person immunity from charges of homicide for facilitating your death. That is an entirely different beast.

Now you're just shifting the goal posts.

Re: Daniel Kahneman opted for assisted suicide in Switzerland

#569

Post by Noaidi »

oreally wrote: post #567
Noaidi wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. All I can judgment is his actions. And his words. This man was afraid of future suffering. And he was so afraid of it that he would rather die than face it. But the truth is, he could’ve tripped and fell down the stairs the next day and died on his own. So not only was he afraid, but he was arrogant. He thought he could predict the future. This man certainty took whatever life he had left away from…

I'm not sure if you even read the article nor his books, and I disagree with your interpretation of his actions because they have very extravagant presumptions, judging from your comments. I don't think he was afraid. I think he mapped out his late age future, and wanted to fast forward to what his next adventure even in post-death while leaving his last touches on the world a good one. Leaving the world a better pla…

Yes, presumptions is all of have, it is all we have of anyone since we cannot get inside their heads. But his actions do reveal something, about which I can make assumptions. Even a hermit is known to be a hermit, so he is not ever alone in his hermitage. So he was even a fool thinking his actions would not be debated.

I read a bit about him after I read the article. He was a behavioral economist and he treated his life like a piece of capital. This is why I do not want economists running the world. And I also saw he had a lot of trauma in his life.

His thoughts: "Predicted utility is the predicted experienced utility for a future experience."

Did he see no predicted utility in his life? Should we adapt this to judge others lives or our own? Are we as great reasoners than him? But what kind of fool tries to measure, tries to quantify, happiness! Economics is not a science, and behavioral economics is just a cold psychology.

He evens seems not to be able to live up to his own words: "Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it."

But thank you for making me read more about him. It seems even his friends thought he was a pessimist, and who can blame him living through the holocaust.

Interesting that his son had schizophrenia, I have Ashkenazi Jewish heritage and think this is why it runs in my family. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26198764/)

Re: Daniel Kahneman opted for assisted suicide in Switzerland

#570

Post by rpdillon »

voakbasda wrote: post #339
rkomorn wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but this feels kind of specious. Especially if the person has already admitted to trying to commit suicide (which they presumably did considering the context from parent comment).

Admitting to a past feelings and actions is quite different than admitting to present feelings and potential future actions. Wishing it worked indicates the a possibility that they might want to try again.

You have a good point. Thanks for pointing this out. It hadn't occurred to me, but I think it's obvious now that I think about it.
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