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Comment by skinkestek | Hacker News Reader

The secular problem with this:

How do we make sure that people aren't forced into this?

I think it would be great if people were required to answer a questionnaire with even a psych evaluation in person for wanting to end life.

I don’t think any person should ever be refused their request to die. I just think the information is valuable to obtain for going forward by designing society to be more favorable for people to want to live. Currently a lot of people with tremendous psychological pain are being forced to continue being in pain because people don’t want to let them end their life. People with depression should be able to have free will over their own life.

> People with depression

Depression can usually be treated and results in less will to kill oneself. There is a good case to make that when you suffer from depression you are not yourself anymore.

To play devil's advocate:

Isn't it problematic to measure success in treatment by will to kill oneself rather than by whether the patient ends up happy? It sort of reminds me of the sweatshops in China where instead of improving working conditions they just installed anti-suicide nets to keep people from jumping.

By some estimates, a third of people who have depression have it in a treatment-resistant form: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4518696/ How much treatment would you require these patients to endure before granting them freedom?

You’re sense of “freedom” is kind of fucked.

Don’t load questions like that, it’s painfully annoying.

Anyway death is not freedom; what good is freedom when you aren’t around to enjoy it? Foolish notion

I salute anyone with the conviction to plan and take their own life. What other sovereignty does another human have save over their own life?

Also your snark reveals some inherent metaphysical assumptions. They may or may not be wrong, but why assume we all hold them?

My snark more comes from years of trudging through some pretty horrible experiences as well as a slew of mental problems.

I live with trauma that I deal with on a daily basis. Paranoia for days and a lot of pain.

I dont salute those who take there own lives; I’ve thought about taking mine for a decade before giving up on the idea. If you mean something to someone; don’t take your life, it hurts them way more then it hurts you to go on living. You can’t help anyone if you are dead; it’s rather selfish.

Suicide is for assholes or cowards; I award no points, your life is precious, make it worth living.

Well, if you're going to be snarky about it, all I'll reply with is the famous Big Lebowski quote: "Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, _your_ opinion, man."

>I don’t think any person should ever be refused their request to die.

The idea that abortion is some sort of settled issue because of "privacy," yet we are disallowed from controlling our own bodies in many, many other ways (hormone levels via steroids, as an example) is particularly absurd to me.

Most people are forced into it -- by things like pain, suffering, and the prospect of a future featuring more of the same.

What you're really getting at is being forced into it by humans and/or groups of humans, and when it comes to that, you'll have to delineate your categories, identify incentives, and then either counter those or eliminate them.

Two to consider would be greedy relatives looking for some kind of inheritance and health insurance companies hoping to avoid another million dollars in keeping someone alive.

A few years ago I read a newspaper article about an insurer in Oregon who told a customer they weren't going to pay for some needed medical care, and pointed out that OR had (just adopted) a legal suicide option.

I sometimes think about this incident, and wonder if the employee at the insurance company who brought this up got a raise.

How do we make sure this doesn't happen anyway with people flying to Basel? How do we make sure doctors don't overprescribe opioids and casually assume death is the best option? How do we stop people stockpiling drugs and killing themselves at home?

You're flying a strawman, if you think this is the killer reason (hah) this idea shouldn't happen.

We're not close to seeing these on the streets as in the opening scenes of Futurama.

Now the question is: could I get a refund the way Bender tried it with a coin?

You go first.

Given the profit motives in the healthcare system (in the United States at least), encouraging people to buy medical treatment seems like more ethically wrong than allowing planned death. The latter is hypothetically problematic, but the former is a textbook example of conflict of interest.

Wouldn’t it be same as making sure people are not forced to suicide ?

With suicide there would be at least police involvement and often an investigation.

It also seems logical that it would be easier to covertly force someone to take a socially acceptable option than a socially unacceptable option.

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