[extropy-chat] the question of self-termination

[Damien Broderick]

At 04:58 PM 11/19/2004 -0500, Eliezer wrote:

>>while we hope to make death yield, still there will be those who chose it 
>>(in whatever remediable or persuadable state of mind we will never know).
>
>You should know better than to invoke the unknowable.  Not all attempted 
>suicides succeed....a study on suicide had found that very few failed 
>suicides try again.  In the case of people who survived a jump, most 
>reported regretting the decision almost the instant they started to fall.

We can't know the thoughts of the dead. True, we may infer certain 
second-thoughts from the responses of those who survived an attempt. But 
perhaps those individuals were largely the ones who allowed themselves some 
leeway, aware, at some level, of their ambiguous motives. Still, this would 
be the best grounds for intervening to stop the vulnerable, especially the 
young, from taking an irrevocable step (as one would stop children sniffing 
petrol, and then doing what's possible to resolve their unhappiness and 
despair).

>I had come, even before this point, to the conclusion that death is the 
>worst thing in the world because it can never be repaired, never be made 
>up for afterward.  Philosophical angst seems to me a lesser problem than death.

Angst in one form or another, including intolerable suffering, is surely 
the *cause* of many suicides, and we need to address it *as a community*, 
as thinking and feeling and caring persons.... as philosophers of the real.

Damien Broderick