A singer apologized, closed his eyes, dropped his head and died onstage | Hacker News Reader

A singer apologized, closed his eyes, dropped his head and died onstage

washingtonpost.com

236 pointswallflower228 comments

Condolences to his family and friends, but for an entertainer, I can think of no better thing that you remember last in the world, and that is to be entertaining people and to be in the middle of your craft when the reaper taps you on the shoulder.

Somehow, me collapsing on my keyboard mid code doesn't seem all that great way to go. I will have to get another passion that I am mid stream in and enjoying life to the max before I have to cross the river Styx...

He was a family friend of mine, and everyone I have talked to has the same take.

He was a great songwriter and he wrote a brilliant ending.

When you die you no longer remember (if you do then you're not dead), so it doesn't really matter. What matters is a life full of meaningful moments, not symbolic ones.

Well, we don't really know what happens after we die. And a little bit of symbolism is a nice touch that also helps those left behind.

We kinda know that memory lies in the brain and that the brain gets rotten after you die. Symbolism is nice but it can’t replace actually meaningful moments.

True, the body and the brain both rot and die. However, whether there is something beyond that that lives on, or not, is something that we are truly qualified to comment on only after we die, however scientific one may try to be.

This is sloppy philosphy. Symbolism is clearly defined, but "actual meaningful moments" is a culturally subjective term without actual meaning.

Furthermore, symbols are largely how our species interprets and experiences reality.

Symbols provide meaning. Without them, moments are mere streams of phenomenon.

Symbolism is as subjective as it gets, an act can be interpreted as heroic by some people while others might think it's stupid. Meaningful moments don't exclude symbolic ones, they extend them by including banal moments like having an ice cream with your kid and enjoying it.

Having an ice cream with your kids and enjoying it is only meaningful due to the cultural symhols and context present in the scenario.

Otherwise, you're just hijacking short term reward systems and facilitating the consumption of empty calories to the (health) detriment of all parties involved.

There's no inherent meaning in the scenario.

Sounds like you are conflating meaning with the felt quality of immediate experience.

I don't agree. It's not necessary meaningful _only_ for symbolic reasons, in fact, you chose to give it meaning that way. You can also simply enjoy the fact your kid is happy and you are having a solitude moment with somebody who you love and who loves you back. In the same way you would enjoy a good tasting Apple, or hot water touching your skin, etc. Unless you are saying that humans are incapable of enjoying life outside of cultural symbols.

You seem to be conflating "am I enjoying this moment?" with "does what I'm doing matter?"

If what you say is true, eating apples would be a universal joy. That's not the case.

Food preferences / aversions are a product of culture.

The ability to ask both "am I enjoying this moment?" and "does what I'm doing matter?" is a byproduct of symbolic thinking. Culture is both the vector for those symbols and the product of them.

> If what you say is true, eating apples would be a universal joy

That doesn't follow from anything the grandparent said.

> Food preferences / aversions are a product of culture.

They are certainly subjective, and culture has some influence on them, but “product of culture” is far overstating the case. Food preferences exist without culture for purely (though still varying across individuals, because biology does) biological reasons.

> The ability to ask both "am I enjoying this moment?" and "does what I'm doing matter?" is a byproduct of symbolic thinking.

Insofar as all use of language is, and this the ability to ask any question framed in words is, certainly. It's less clear whether the ability to distinguish momentary enjoyment from significance is, because we don't really have address to the cognitive processes of those without access to language.

> Culture is both the vector for those symbols and the product of them.

This may also overstste the influence of culture, but it does so less than the prior example.

I did not mention what kind of ice cream we were having. Ours was a keto-compatible sugar-free ice cream

Apologies. I thought you mentioned "enjoying it".

Well played sir, well played.

On a side note, the use of Furthermore has been correlated with decreasing readability of texts https://elifesciences.org/articles/27725

So has pedentry, and yet, here we are.

Literally just semantics and opinion. What's the difference between symbolism and meaningful moments for some?

And yeah, everyone is aware you don't remember anything when you die. When I die, I want to die in a way that impacts those left behind, because like you said, I won't remember it but they will.

Meaningful moments don't exclude symbolic ones. You can die in a heroic way (that some might find stupid since symbols are subjective) but my personal opinion is that the quality time you spend with the people you leave behind counts far more than an single act at the end.

If the holographic universe theory holds true then they are indeed not stored in the brain as the brain as well as all matter is a mere projection of reality. Similar to how a monitor is only the projection of the running application. The reality of the application is far different then what user experiences via the monitor.

https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2017/01/holographic-unive...

One could argue that you live on forever in memories and historical accounts.

Those don't live forever either.

How do you know? Have you been to the future and confirmed that my history has not lived on? You might think it improbable, but you have no way of knowing that.

Some people are up there at nearly 3800 years so far, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir

A famous example from 80 years ago:

> Vierne suffered either a stroke or a heart attack (eyewitness reports differ) while giving his 1,750th organ recital at Notre-Dame de Paris on the evening of 2 June 1937. He had completed the main concert, which members of the audience said showed him at his full powers ("as well as he has ever played"). Directly after he had finished playing his "Stele pour un enfant défunt" from his 'Triptyque' Op 58, the closing section was to be two improvisations on submitted themes. He read the first theme in Braille, then selected the stops he would use for the improvisation. He suddenly pitched forward, and fell off the bench as his foot hit the low "E" pedal of the organ. He lost consciousness as the single note echoed throughout the church. He had thus fulfilled his oft-stated lifelong dream — to die at the console of the great organ of Notre-Dame. Maurice Duruflé, another major French organist and composer, was at his side at the time of his death.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Vierne

I agree. If death is compulsory, why not have fun?

Some others in this thread have brought up the point that sudden death is more difficult for those who live on. I agree with that, too, so I suppose I don't know what I think about this.

Dying mid-code doesn't sound as great as dying after having just completed a coding project or task. The feeling of frustration and confusion changing to pride and accomplishment is a powerful one, at least for me.

Dying before committing code, or before fixing a compilation failure. That sounds like a nightmare indeed.

After experiencing a few longer drawn out deaths I might argue a quick death as being "better" of the two options.

Dying mid-code doesn't sound like much fun at all. Although it would beat dying mid-HN comment.

I think Tom Petty set a better example, dying a week after the end of his farewell tour.

The best example of this is Tommy Cooper, a British magician / comedian known for his slapstick style. He'd often stumble steps in his act, or mess up on purpose so you could never really tell what was planned or not.

When he had a heart attack on stage, people thought it was part of his act and the curtain closed to a standing ovation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8zi7vcnjVc

Dubious about the "heart attack" diagnosis, at least as the phrase is usually understood. More likely "Sudden Cardiac Arrest"[1]: "In over half of the cases, however, sudden cardiac arrest occurs without prior symptoms." Like, the pump just stops. You'd feel faint and then be unconscious.

[1] https://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/guide/sudden-cardiac-dea...

Does this happen in young, healthy individuals?

I was reading the Wikipedia article linked in another thread [1], and several of the "sudden" deaths were people in their 40s that appear to have been healthy.

Do you feel symptoms, eg. during exercise, that you should listen to so as to inform you to stop whatever activity you're doing? Feeling light-headed, short of breath, blurry vision, etc.?

I run and also perform in theater, so I'm a little anxious about this. (Not to be a hypochondriac.)

FWIW, I'm going to do some research on my own, but I'm always impressed with the well-informed audience on HN that spans many disciplines.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_entertainers_who_died_...

I think some people are born with heart defects that can result in sudden cardiac death as a young adult. Also strokes. In half a century I doesn't know of any friends or friends that had that happen. But then again I know of three people that died when the car they were working on fell off the jack.

> But then again I know of three people that died when the car they were working on fell off the jack.

Yikes. I had my car fall off once when I was standing next to it getting ready to go under. Now I put two sets of jackstands under it, and give the car a hard shake first.

I've had it happen twice, once with a trolley jack and once with the car jack. In both cases the ground was a softer than I realised. There is no way I would crawl under without axle stands.

Good idea. Never assume the jack is enough.

Last year med student here, sudden cardiac arrest commonly occur in young people. Apart from infectious myocarditis which you might notice as fatigue and reduced performance after you’ve suffered a respiratory infection, hypertrophic myocardiopathy and especially hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy is often hereditary and can be mortal without showing prior symptoms. That’s why after a patient’s death you usually examine their broader family if HOCM was the cause as it can be detected via ultrasound and treated pharmacologically or interventionally (injecting alcohol in the obstructive parts or implanting a defibrillator).

I'm adopted. Can I find out if I'm at risk from a DNA mapping service like 23andme?

> it can be detected via ultrasound and treated pharmacologically or interventionally

To me that sounds like a more reliable way to find out.

Prevalence is 200 per 100k so you’re almost certainly not affected. If you want to be sure a routine ECG and a trans thoracic ultrasound usually is sufficient to diagnose / exclude cardiac myopathy. 23andme doesn’t even look at the whole genome, they just look for common disease associated polymorphisms. No way of telling if you have a mutation that’s not in their database and even if you have a mutation it could be deactivated epigenetically or other factors could lead to you not suffering the disease.

> Last year med student here, sudden cardiac arrest commonly occur in young people.

I think you mean that in the population of people who experience Sudden Cardiac Arrest/Death, many of them are young people. SCD is definitely not "common".

Yes, sorry, should have clarified that. Although generally speaking HCM/HOCM is not a rare disease either and definitely not a negligible cause of non-traumatic mortality cause in younger people.

Had it happen to a classmate in school.

I seem to remember it's either second or third most common cause of death in young people (in rich countries), usually behind traffic accidents.

But that has to be considered together with the fact that, generally speaking, young people just don't die.

Oh, and to fuel your paranoia: had a friend die in Moscow from a stroke. Death could have easily been prevented, if they had called paramedics and not the police, who thought he had taken drugs and just locked him in a cell where he died 8 hours later.

That is pretty horrible. Of course the police would suspect drugs. Maybe they should mandate medical personal being available in every police station.

One of our teachers went jogging and just dropped dead from an aneurysm in the brain. His wife told us that he wasn't feeling too well that day, but good enough for a little bit of exercise.

He was 33 when he passed and was the youngest teacher we had. His condition was only detected after his death. I don't know if it could have been prevented and if this form of atery damage could have been repaired.

I'd say nobody should even end up in a jail cell if all that happened is that person complaining of nausea, pain, and blurred vision. Or really any medical symptoms.

I'd go as far as saying even someone yelling "I have taken drugs", or having needles stuck in every visible vain should get medical treatment first. In most countries, taking drugs (as opposed to possession and/or sale) just aren't crimes, anyway.

Yes it mostly happens in young-er individuals because the reasons behind it are most likely genetic/hereditary and thus these people often don't live long enough to die from them later on. Some reasons include hypertrophic conditions( I'm not 100% sure on the english terms and I'm still an undergrad). Other reasons have to do with problems on ion channels which cause issues with electrical signals traveling through the heart resulting in ventricular fibrilation( e.g. Brugada, but you might have had episodes of passing out in the past). Some of this stuff is detectable but it's hard and there's no effective screening of the population. You might want to get checked by a specialist if you have a family history of early sudden deaths.

Environmental factors include things like steroid abuse( often in conjunction with amphetamin usage, see Rich Piana suspicions).

Famously footballer Fabrice Muamba had a cardiac arrest while playing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Muamba#Cardiac_arrest_...

I'm not a doctor but for some reason I get anxious about this as well. You said you run? My logic is that if I had a heart defect it would have showed itself playing sports growing up or during my time in the service.

A friend of mine knew someone who dropped dead on a hump to the range at Twentynine Palms.

In my particular case, Wolf-Parkinson’s has been known to kill young people (a college basketball player about 20 years ago comes to mind). My case was fixed with ablation. I asked the cardiologist, “isn’t that what killed that ball player a few years back?”

“Yup. And if it hasn’t killed you by now (in my 40s), it probably isn’t going to.” Didn’t make the tachycardia (rapid pulse) anymore fun when an incident occurred, but at least it wasn’t probably going to be fatal.

And as additional anecdata, I’ve seen a Cat 1 bicycle racer in his mid-30s drop dead mid-race from a heart-related thing. Just kind of quit riding and fell over; from my non-professional observation, it was a literal case of “dead before he hit the ground”.

> "Sudden Cardiac Arrest": "In over half of the cases, however, sudden cardiac arrest occurs without prior symptoms." Like, the pump just stops. You'd feel faint and then be unconscious.

What a wonderful way to die. No sickness, no disability, no pain. Just turn off when the time comes. I wish everybody could die this way. Not too early preferably.

Speaking as somebody who lost a loved one this way ... it's very hard on the family. I often wonder about my father's last moments ... did he know what was happening? Did he have any regrets, or any last things he wanted to say to people? For us as a family it was like a bomb going off, and we spent many many years cleaning up the debris, and in some ways nearly two decades later we still are. There are plenty worse ways to go, but it's not something I'd like to inflict on my family if I had the choice.

I'm sincerely sad for you having lost a loved one whatever a way yet I still can't imagine a way which would be less sad. And that's not because all the ways are equally sad but because all the other seem worse. So I certainly wish me and everybody else in my family are going to die this way when the time comes as long as we can't just live forever healthily and happily. Of course it would be better if we could know exactly when this is going to happen, some people do, but that's so unusual it's hard to hope.

The death of any loved one is hard on any family, but IMO a quick, relatively painless, death is definately easier. My mother-in-law died from cancer a few years ago, and after many months of pain and constantly in and out of hospitals, when she was finally lying on her deathbed unconcious as her body began to give up, my wife was tasked with making the decision of whether doctors would administer a lethal morphine dose to end her suffering.

Very sad to read that. Yet, by the way, why do they always use lethal doses of morphine for euthanasia? I.e. I would strongly prefer a lethal dose of 5-MeO-DMT (which feels like spiritual ascension and dissolution in pure light, union with the universe and non-duality, and then you just forget to breathe in case of a lethal dose) for myself.

It sounds like death is the opposite of what you think it is. DMT is obviously highly activating and opens the neurological floodgates so to speak (as is any seratonin-based psychedelic). Death is the total opposite of this: the total shutdown of all processes, much more like an extreme and total sedation

Also is there even such a thing as a lethal dose of DMT?

There’s a lethal dose for pretty much anything.

Except you wouldn't want to die from overdosing on water.

I’d argue that suffering from water intoxication (what “overdosing on water” is called medically) is no worse than most other forms of ODing. Common symptoms are headache, nausea, cramping, and drowsiness.

For those wondering how much water it takes, it of course varies based on body weight and how much salt is in your body, but generally speaking, drinking over a gallon (~4L) of water in an hour is at high risk.

I don't know about n,n-DMT (which is a potent hallucinogen and for what simply DMT is a conventional shorthand for) but for 5-MeO-DMT (which is a distinct substance, very weak hallucinogen yet tremendously strong psychedelic) - it's not unlikely to die if you overdose. Doses above 25mg are dangerous, 100mg is probably an almost guaranteed physical death. You just experience being so free from the concepts of material (and mental) reality, one with G-d, Universe and everything, that you can (and will, if the dose is enough) forget about your physical body and it stops breathing.

Curiously enough this substance seems being safe and even very beneficial as long as the doses are reasonable and this attracts scientific attention. I.e. I've read the following paper recently: A single inhalation of vapor from dried toad secretion containing 5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine (5-MeO-DMT) in a naturalistic setting is related to sustained enhancement of satisfaction with life, mindfulness-related capacities, and a decrement of psychopathological symptoms (DOI: 10.1007/s00213-019-05236-w).

I’m not familiar with euthanasia in humans. In animals, phenobarbital is used, not morphine.

In humans, Morphine is used when withdrawing a ventilator. It’s not used to kill the patient. Morphine is very effective at quelling what we call “air hunger”, which is incredibly uncomfortable for the patient (if they can still feel it), and the family (because it sounds like the patient is gasping for air.)

I would assume it's because a lot of morphine plus a benzodiazepine is basically passing away in your sleep.

> Yet, by the way, why do they always use lethal doses of morphine for euthanasia?

Deniability.

Euthanasia is still illegal in most of the world (and yet is the moral thing to do at times). To avoid tangling with the long arm of the law, the medical staff overseeing a terminal patient will hint at what a deadly dosage would be, and leave the dosage control with a family member. So what if the coroner finds morphine - it's supposed to be there. 5-MeO-DMT (or any other non-medical compound), is far less innocuous, and could potentially open a legal can of worms for everyone involved.

It varies. My mother and my wife's father died in the same year. He died suddenly of a heart attack. He was gone, no chance to say goodbye.

My mother was diagnosed in the summer with pancreatic cancer, and had only a few months to live. She didn't want chemo, as it was unlikely to do much good, and she didn't want to spend the rest of her life in hospitals. It surprised me how calm she became about everything. She's always been a bit worried about everything, including her health, but now that her health was gone, she found peace. It was just before my parents' 45th anniversary, and she wanted the entire extended family to be there, and they were. We also planned a family weekend away. Originally the third weekend of October, but after my friends warned me that pancreatic cancer can move really quick, we moved it to the first weekend of October. We had a great time, she was fully conscious and happy, and just needed a bit more rest. On the second weekend of October, she was delirious in the hospice where she would die a few days later.

I was very glad we could say goodbye like that.

I would never wish pancreatic cancer on anyone, and the thought of passing away suddenly without being able to tell my loved ones good bye is equally awful sounding to me. I suppose it highlights the importance of making sure that your friends and family always know how you feel about them.

Exactly this. If nothing else my experiences taught me the importance of biting the tongue on one hand, and not leaving things unsaid on the other.

And don't postpone spending time with them. We knew we had little time, so we used our time well. But it's often much too tempting to postpone these things, to neglect our family, and then something happens and it's too late.

If I could have chosen whether to let my mother die from colon cancer over 18 painful months, or drop dead from a heart attack, I would rewrite history to the heart attack every single time. There is no way being able to say goodbye would overvalue the dignity of being so instantly gone.

18 months is a lot. For my mom it was only 3 months, and she was surprisingly at peace with it. More than she's ever been before, actually. But every case is different.

On the other side of this, I had a relative slowly waste away from cancer. There were no lingering questions, possessions were given away, goodbyes were said, and when the day came, everyone in the family had made peace with it, with the exception of her partner who had to endure the daily emotional burden of her suffering and care. I didn't cry at the funeral: it was as if she had died while still alive. For my relative though, the process was extremely expensive, painful, and undignified: in the end she basically starved to death in anguish, and frankly I think all of the family would have preferred her not to go out in this way.

You don't get a "don't die" choice. Only a spectrum of how.

Totally. There’s not really any easy way but would be nice to be able to get ones affairs in order and get those last things said, and make peace. Not that you get much of a choice anyway ...

> would be nice to be able to get ones affairs in order

Do that now and always keep your affairs in order ever after. Always remember the death is right behind you and live your every moment like if you knew it's the last one. This idea Carlos Castaneda taught is extremely valuable once you get it.

> I often wonder about my father's last moments ... did he know what was happening?

It's possible that he had no warning whatsoever before the event. From another article[1], a person who survived said he had no warning or memory of the event.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-51181230?sa=X&ved=2ahUK...

I imagine it depends on the age/life circumstance of the person dying too. You didn't say, but sounds like your father was fairly young? I'm sorry.

My grandfather died this way, in his 80s, healthy and active up to then... very different thing.

My condolences. If I can just add two cents through - my father spent the last few months of his life dying from cancer, with the final week being nothing but a morphine-induced coma, with his entire body slowly shutting down, him only waking up every now and then to beg for some water(Which he couldn't drink anyway). It was the most horrendous experience I can imagine anyone going through, both for himself and for us as the family. If I had a choice I'd much rather just die than go through this hell. It would have been much easier on us all as well, those days spent sitting next to his bed and knowing that no, it won't get any better and we can't help in any way, will haunt me to the end of my days.

I second this. My grandfather’s slow painful leukimia death found me relief when he actially passed. I was relieved that he was no longer suffering, it was an experience that no human should go through..

Maybe there's nothing worse than suffering, but suffering is better than nothing. I would rather suffer an extra week than die.

Have you ever suffered enough to make that comment though? It is hard to understand how an individual feels when they are on their last days fighting with cancer.

I would like to be able to go, when I no longer want to suffer. Keeping people alive seems kind of sadistic to me.

I highly recommend anyone watch documentary about Masahiro Tanaka. He was a palliative care doctor who treated dying patients, and was diagnosed with a cancer himself. He asked his wife who is also physician to ease his suffering and help him pass. The film crew wanted to film the ideal way to pass. What they witnessed was much more interesting. His wife kept him alive against his wishes, just to prolong his existence. It was quite sad.

The day before he died my father told a visitor "I just want to go".

I've no idea whether I'd feel like that or not, but consider that your guess as to how you'd feel is quite possibly only a guess.

From what I've heard, it's relatively common in hospice care for people to ask to be "helped along" on their way out. All it takes is a little Xanax on top of a lot of morphine; and honestly it sounds like a pretty peaceful way to speed up the inevitable.

Death is evil. It must be eradicated, like other nasty diseases. https://www.kurzweilai.net/death-is-an-outrage

I thought this was satire on first read, but given the context of Alcor (which makes its money cryogenically preserving heads), I'm not so sure.

Without death, progress becomes impossible as power is concentrated in the people who were there first. Without death, consumption is infinite but resources are zero-sum. Without death, life for a young person becomes increasingly bleak. Bleak prospects for young people are how big, destructive, and deadly wars happen. So I don't think eliminating death through biological means would significantly reduce the number of deaths in the long run, it would just change the means.

It goes both ways. I had a relative die of unknown causes just shy of her 90th birthday; she was working in her garden in the springtime and basically just dropped dead. It definitely was a terrible shock for us, but I really can't think of a better way to go.

For what it’s worth:

I lived through just such a thing. It was a wonderful experience - head went light, everything suddenly breezy and far away, too fluffy to cogitate on anything. If my sister hadn’t been there I would have for sure passed, because I certainly wasn’t calling for help.

I imagined for a long time afterwards that that’s probably what heroin feels like, and why it’s so addictive. I was a little wrecked by the fact that the single most peaceful, pleasant experience I’d had in living memory was of dying.

Wow, that is an amazing experience. Did it change your perspective on religion at all?

It did not. I was a secular humanist before and after, and drew no relation between that event and my beliefs.

What does this have to do with religion?

I still don't think it's worse than a slow, painful death (e.g. some types of cancer). One that occasionally gives you hope, and then plunges the patient into yet another deeper chasm, until there is one from which there is no return.

In my country, the majority religion is Lutheran, and the church has a liturgic prayer which includes a line like "save us from the wicked sudden death", with the idea that people should be able to say goodbyes to their loved ones, arrange their lives and possessions and get their last rites before death; I think that is somewhat outdated by the availability of modern social security (like, a father/mother who dies does not need to agree about who cares for his/her children so that they don't starve). And it looks like deaths are slower than before (people live older, but still, the last years are long and may not be so good).

Seriously. I'm hard pressed to think of a better way to shuffle off this mortal coil.

I was near death once - internal bleeding on the sidewalk while waiting for the ambulance. I was contemplative of my life, but it was very peaceful and I wasn't scared. So much so, that I hope I get that opportunity again when my time runs out.

A British comedian did this as well.. The audience thought it was apart of the act and didn't respond for 5 minutes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Cognito

Also apparently this is a thing that happens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_entertainers_who_died_...

I was sure your link to a British comedian was going to be:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Cooper

Me too, I saw it live on TV - along with millions of others... everyone was in stitches because they thought it was part of the act.

Redd Foxx as well

Link for the morbidly curious: https://youtu.be/HpZq3ul1ld4

Cracking jokes one second, and then quietly down the next.

There's a fantastic elegy to Tommy Cooper in a hip-hop song by Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip. Just one song out of several in a fantastic record.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8zi7vcnjVc

Or Sid James (a very famous UK comedian/actor). He died onstage in my home town

https://www.sunderlandecho.com/news/night-sid-james-died-sta...

Also apparently this is a thing that happens

Besides getting killed by something or someone else, it seems heart attacks are a very common cause of death while performing. I wonder if it's due to the stressful nature of the situation in general.

Sadly performing is also often not the healthiest lifestyle. I know my diet & exercise fall off a cliff after only even a week or two of travel.

It's astounding, if you open the wikipedia list (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_entertainers_who_died_...) and make your browser highlight all occurrences of the words "heart" and "cardiac".

I saw john Malkovich in a play once, that involved a moment where the curtain closed halfway, lights turned on, and paramedics came onstage.

This was in Germany and they were wearing local uniforms. That made it seem rather authentic.

I remember being somewhat certain that it was an act, and there were no indication from the audience that anybody fell for it (panic, leaving, yelling "I'm a doctor").

It does sound like a lovely and peaceful way to go. Although it was probably a bit traumatic to the audience since it quickly switched from "oh he's closing his eyes and taking a little moment" to suddenly they've laid him out on the floor and trying to revive him.

This was an interview of him earlier the same day. Doesn't seem like he's ready to die...very sad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v73VQVZpViA

http://archive.md/3VkKU

I've heard a few stories where a person seemed to suddenly acknowledge that they were about to die. Granted, my grandmother repeatedly claimed she was going to die that night and the one time it was true the family lore became that she somehow knew. But to stop what you're doing like that, I wonder what it is they're actually feeling in the moment. Did he know he was going to die? Did he just feel dizzy? What do people feel in these moments just before death?

I think it's more likely he just felt suddenly unwell and wanted to pause to catch his breath or rest a little bit.

I can’t speak for others but I had appendicitis about 10 years ago and ended up spending almost 8 hours in the ER waiting room suffering immensely. I distinctly remember towards the latter half of my wait that I began to feel a strange sensation of impending doom. I can’t describe it exactly but I feared that I might actually die if I wasn’t called back soon. I later heard that this sensation is supposedly one of the symptoms of appendicitis.

In case anybody was wondering, I was eventually taken into the ER. They started me on morphine and was in surgery a few hours later.

Considering that a bad trip on magic mushrooms can also be pretty effective at the impending doom thing, it seems to me more a question of particular chemistry production than the setting.

Feelings of impending doom are also a symptom of adenosine injection. [1] Interestingly, caffeine is an adenosine receptor antagonist.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenosine#Side_effects

Had it done to me twice, 2 of the worst experiences in my life. They did the first one and did not push enough. The doc said do you want the good news or the bad news. I choose the good, apparently there is a significant portion of people who's heart does not restart after adenosine, and they have to use the paddles to get it started again. The good news was that mine restarted so it will always restart when given the medicine. The bad news was they did not push enough to stop the SVT so they had to do it again. That was bad news it's a horrible experience. All of the symptoms of a heart attack with the exception of the pain. Can't breath, tingling, darkening vision. You think you are going to die when you feel you heart stop.

I've never really considered it a feeling of doom. It only lasts a partial second or two and you don't really have time to feel anything.

I mean, it literally can take your heart going 400 beats a minute, stop it, and instantly start going 72. It feels fucking crazy but I never have time to feel "doom" specifically.

I do know that the paramedics love administering it though haha.

A sense of impending doom is listed in first aid books as a potential sign of a heart attack.

Absolutely. As a paramedic, in a good instance of the number of SCDs I have attended where the family have said "y'know they said they just really didn't feel right/had a sense of something dark/impending doom, all day long".

In the setting of chest or upper abdominal pain or pressure, especially over 35 years, any pain that radiates to shoulder or jaw, especially that cannot be relieved and doesn't appear exertion-related (but even then) should be considered something serious until shown otherwise, in general, and coupled with the above.

It's actually a real thing -- people being able to very clearly sense when they're about to die:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angor_animi

Apparently, you have to take these signs seriously when it's not a fear of death, but actually saying, "I'm dying".

Look on reddit for "when people know they're dying"...

Supposedly, a panic attack is subjectively similar in some ways to actually having a major medical emergency, especially a heart attack.

"Impending sense of doom" is a symptom of a heart attack.

Fun fact: a lot of the symptoms of a panic attack are the same as the symptoms of a heart attack. This comes in especially inconvenient if the focus of your panic attack is fear of a heart attack. It's basically a self-confirming incorrect diagnosis.

> inconvenient if the focus of your panic attack is fear of a heart attack

This is called Cardiophobia.

This happened to me once, the second time I ever had a panic attack (the first being when I was a toddler). My heart started racing and I hyper focused on it; took my blood pressure and it was a high so I called the advice nurse who told me to have someone take me to the ER. Basically the only way the situation could have been worse is if I’d actually been having a heart attack. I was preparing to accept death at age 20.

What made it worse was the doc in the ER did an ultrasound on my heart as I was coming down from my freak-out. I was thinking “wow, that’s amazing! That’s my heart inside of me!” Then the doctor says, “this side of your heart looks a little thick but otherwise it looks fine” and never followed up. I try not to think about that too much.

One of the most frightening experiences of my life at the time, but it was super interesting in retrospect.

Something very similar happened to me (20, m) recently, I drank too much coffee, felt my heart racing and had an impending sense of doom being worried to the point where I was also (trying to) accept my oncoming death. This was also happening while being on an intercontinental flight which I don't recommend.

In retrospect I also have kind of similar feelings about it, although I'm afraid the experience actually caused me being worried a lot more about some minor health issues in the last year.

We called an ambulance once for my ex expecting a heart attack that turned out to be a panic attack. The ambulance crew that responded were very clearly very used to people confusing the two, and stressed it was better to call again than not if she was not sure.

Yep, I went to the ER for what I was sure was a heart attack, and it turned out to be a panic attack. It was weird, I did not feel particularly anxious other than my reaction to the constricting pain radiating from the left side of my chest.

When my grandmother died, she sent her husband out to the store, took off her rings (which she never removed), and was dead when he returned.

She had been in failing health, was around 90 years old, had recently gone through a rough fight with cancer, a broken leg from a fall, and had just been in a nursing home temporarily. She fought with everyone to be allowed to go home and die, she didn't want to die in the nursing home. She went home and died a few days later.

She very clearly knew.

Till death do us part. Wow.

Seems like she has reached a particularly high level of spiritual development (which can be more rationally defined as self-minfulness). Great Tibetan Buddhist masters use to die the same way - they would tell everybody in advance and prepare themselves.

My grandmother had a small fall but she was frail, when she was discharged by the hospital she asked my uncle who she lived with if he would mind living alone, she passed away in her sleep that night.

My grandmother passed away a few years ago and it’s a similar story. She has been very frail and sickly, and decided to come home to be with her family. At home, she sat down on the bed, called over the care taker — took her hand and said “thank you” and sort of just fell asleep and never woke up. Everyone one in the family was relieved she didn’t suffer in her last moment.

Died doing what he loved around people that loved him for what he did.

Good way to go.

thank you for that. reminds me of the end of The Wrestler (2008): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_Yn2xOGNhI

Mark Sandman of Morphine also died on stage, as did the lead singer of The Beat Farmers. William Bennett, lead oboist of the San Francisco Symphony, died on stage and literally passed his instrument to another on his way down to the ground.

My father passed away suddenly when I and my younger brother were still studying, 29 years ago this week. It took us a decade to pick up the pieces and I don't think we ever became whole again.

I think the question of suddenness vs a slower passing is very much to do with general state of affairs. Are there people dependent? Are there a lot of open threads which need some confusion? Is it below the average age (not that it should matter)? Or are they enjoying their life, perhaps in comfortable retirement?

The passing of a parent would be traumatic in nearly all cases? Can the pain (of an extended illness) be reduced? Or the chaos of a sudden death?

in case you are out of wapo reads for the month https://outline.com/tqJsCk

Plenty of comments about how this is great for him and it might be, but I'm not sure I'd like to be in a crowd witnessing a performer dying in front of my eyes.

Outside of suicide, nobody gets to choose. Death is, as natural and perhaps even more expected than birth, yet we pretend otherwise to shelter our own sense of mortality. Its an odd arrangement to be sure, but I perfer it to the alternative.

It's not all about you.

My grandfather loved golf. He played golf every day. And he died playing golf. We all gotta go, I can’t think of a better way than while doing the thing you love most. It does make it easier for your relatives (or at least it did for me with my grandfather) knowing that he died doing what he loves.

> It does make it easier for your relatives (or at least it did for me with my grandfather) knowing that he died doing what he loves.

That's a thing to strive for: make those who outlive you feel good about it. I mean besides the inadvisable trivial solution of being a jerk who everybody including their mom wants gone.

Wow, what a way to go. His music reminds me of Blaze Foley’s sound. Deeply American. And much like Blaze Foley I believe Olney will now find fame (as so many artists do) in death. The irony is strong in art (would make a great Latin phrase).

If you don't want to go to washingtonpost (which I don't as I feel their GDPR process is not worth it) and was wondering who the article was about the singer was David Olney, age 71.

on edit: Guardian link https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jan/20/david-olney-ac...

I have been thinking a nice time to go would be at the finish of an evening of tango. If my wife is still alive we share our final dance feeling the depth of our connection. If she has gone on before me dancing with friends and a bunch of lovely ladies 60 years younger works too. Assuming I make it to 90+ yo.

Though I would like to say a final good bye to my kids. Hm. They would appreciate me making a tango exit from this life, too. So all good.

That happened years ago in Italy as well: Mango was his name

There's also the interesting case of Paramahansa Yogananda: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramahansa_Yogananda#Death

Yes—Mahasamādhi has been practiced by yogis for millennia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahasam%C4%81dhi

I hope he still performed at his age because he enjoyed it, and not like late Dick Dale, because he had to.

Women 'Cross The River - Linda Ronstadt, song written by David Olney; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XElGDuCUUd4

Personally it scares me that this can affect people so young. Heart problems are no joke - if people just take care of themselves and remember to take their pills a lot of lives could be saved.

71 is not so young... it's about 10 years below average for men.

Oh i guess i meant to respond to the general statement in the thread that heart attack can strike at any age. Try as hard as you can to do your best every day because no one knows how long they have. And stay in touch with family!

I had never heard this of this guy before, but looks like I’ll be digging into his catalog. Some really incredible stuff. I read Townes Van Zandt (a great songwriter, himself) considered Mr. Olney among the greatest music writers who’ve ever lived [0]. On the level of Bob Dylan. Some high praise, indeed.

His passing reminds me of Dick Shawn [1] who, similarly, died on stage. Because he was a comedian known for outrageous irony and meta jokes, people actually thought it was part of his act. You may remember him as Lorenzo Saint DuBois (aka LSD, or Hitler) in Mel Brook’s original The Producers.

[0] https://www.savingcountrymusic.com/legendary-songwriter-davi...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Shawn

All due respect and condolences but THAT is the way to go out.

I hope I can go that peacefully some day.

What the way to leave if you know it will happen soon?

That's how any sane person would want to go.

It's funny[.] how much time and money and effort goes in to keeping aged people alive in conditions that are terrible.

Do what you love, and go out on top.

[.]appalling

I cannot wait until we cure aging so we can die on our own terms. The right to death should be as inalienable as the right to life, and nothing short of the heat death should be allowed to make this decision for a sentient being.

I really want what you have said to be true, but I think there are upper limits we can reach that prevent us from really ever being the arbiters of our own death. That which allows us to become living, must also force us to become nothing, death is the necessity for life, and life is the necessity for death. Skipping death, means skipping life.

If every human that ever lived could live forever, would we have been born? And today, would there be enough space, enough resources, to live a comfortable life worth living if forever? I'm not saying that it makes sense to kill people to create more comfortable life here (as some might take it), what I'm saying is there's an upper bounds to letting people live for a long long time without impacting any future life negatively. One person living forever is not really be a big deal. But everyone? At which point we have to ask, if people have that right to death, how does it impact other's right to life, right to shelter, right to clean water, and so on. They impact each other.

On a side note, there's a fantastic albeit cheaply made film called The Man From Earth that follows a conversation with someone who claims to have lived since the dawn of man. It's great concept, and I highly recommend a watch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_from_Earth

> One person living forever is not really be a big deal. But everyone?

I think any society that is capable of letting humans live forever — on the scales being discussed — would probably be virtualizing sentiences instead of relying on wasteful fleshy bodies.

Living via a human body would be a novelty experience, a vacation, a limiting of capabilities and senses.

Essentially, I think your point would be mostly mute by the time we develop true immortality.

For sure, you might very well be right. Atleast I would hope so, or else it would probably be immoral, which is really what I was attempting to say.

> enough space, enough resources

Have you looked at the universe lately? There are enough resources out there that every human being currently alive could easily have thousands of civilizations of their own, even making very conservative extrapolations regarding the true energy use of a human mind.

When engaging with hypotheticals we tend to want to ascertain whether it's inherently good or bad.

For instance, imagine a hypothetical about whether or not it's safe to shoot someone in the chest, we wouldn't say it's safe simply because they could wear a bullet-proof vest, we would have to ask 'what are the odds that they are going to be wearing a bullet-proof vest'.

Personally I would assume that in technological terms stopping aging is somewhere below being able to harvest the large amount resources in space safely and efficiently. But I could be wrong.

Why shouldn’t we ask that without eternal life?

Seeing how I change with years, I’d like to live to 200-500-1000 years old. Not because I want to live so bad, but because this is a frightening distance that is a completely wild territory for us to imagine. I’ll watch that movie (if not yet), thanks for the reference. Everything I watched before was pretty “same person tired and/or mindless”-centric, like interview with a vampire, highlander, etc. But it was more entertainment, what humans like to see at cinema, than a really deep analysis of thousands of years old beings.

Thinking that you’ll be the same after an amount of time is naive.

It's probably the strongest part about the movie — it deals with perspective of immortality from a mortal's perspective in a very realistic way, which is normally thrown by the wayside for more simplier tropes in entertainment. Not that it's wrong to like that, it's just hard to find something that doesn't these days. It comes across more like a well written hard sci-fi story, yet it's mostly just a group of people talking.

It left me thinking about immortality from a normal human's perspective for a long time. He explains how it changed him, and where he started from. It's very compelling in my opinion.

Every cow would choose live i imagine. İmagine the world with billions of horny immortal cows.

A couple of thoughts:

1. If everyone lives until the end of the universe, what does that mean for the prospect of having children? I would think it would mean that we would need to stop having children at some point, or else we would overcrowd whatever portion of space that we are occupying at some point. Not being allowed to have children would be sad. I don’t have any children yet, but I want to have children in the future. It is an amazing thing.

2. Neuroplasticity decreases as we grow older. If we live forever, could we end up being stuck forever in our old ways?

3. Evolution could change us in very interesting ways. But only if new humans are born and old ones die.

4. What’s the point of living until the end of the universe anyway? I mean, I agree that life is too short and it would be cool to witness what the world was like in the future. But to live until the end of the universe.. I would not enjoy that.

5. Tbh I’d rather die of natural causes than have to kill myself. As long as my life is not ended too soon I will be content for having been alive and having had all of the good and some of the bad experiences that I have had. (Most of the bad ones I would rather have done without, but some of the bad ones were useful, and we don’t get to choose these things anyway.)

I don't understand why whenever there is a discussion about aging research, people always bring out the problem of us living forever or till the end of the universe. I mean how about just double or triple our lifespan which is nothing wrong and we still have no idea how to do that. I think maybe the reason why so many people is against it is because of religion.

Double or triple would be fine. I am not religious. The person that I am responding to explicitly said he wanted for life to extend to the end of the universe, so that’s why I am responding with my thoughts about exactly that.

If someone wants to live until the heat death, it’s their prerogative.

There's a very famous series of books by Isaac Asimov that deals with this problem - The Robots. Basically once humans are able to increase their life span, they become reluctant to take any risks and the become stuck in their own "immortality". It's no different than what the GP says. Weather it's until the end of the universe or just a few hundred years, we still become more risk adverse and less capable of change.

I do not see this as a bad thing. I would rather live happily ever after than take life-ending risks.

That said, I disagree with the premise. Any true form of immortality would virtualize us. As individuals we would be able to take risks as never before. Paragliding through dangerous canyons? Why not? Worst case scenario your fleshy avatar dies, and you wait a few weeks in a virtual utopia as a new one is printed.

And even that is only if we choose to continue to confine ourselves to human qualia. Being virtualized would enable us to experience the universe in whole new ways - who would want to constrict themselves to mere human experiences ever again?

I think this short story explains these concept really well. Don’t worry about the cliche romance backstory - it was written in 1989: http://www.skyhunter.com/marcs/GentleSeduction.html

Gonna be honest - once we have backups, I'm totally intending to go into seriously risky behaviors. So this is 100% the opposite of how I intend to live my life.

The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect [1] describes a post-singularity world where an AI prevents people from dying permanently, and one woman in protest takes up finding creative ways to kill herself (and getting stopped and patched up each time) and turns it into a sport with a following... I'm sure there would be some people that'd take risks to that extreme.

[1] http://www.localroger.com/prime-intellect/ (with the warning that it is pretty gruesome)

So you'll kill yourself doing risky things... and then a clone of your mind will continue your life?

Seems...shortsighted.

Patternism is the only theory of self consistent with materialist reductionism.

Technology can increase our lifespans and it can also reduce the risk of whatever we’re most worried about. People already use technology to drastically reduce the risk of activities that are desirable for various reasons. Obvious examples include prophylactics for sexual activity and seat belts for automobiles.

People take plenty of risks before the tail end of their life span now. Don’t see why that would change if we live a long time.

I would think, that if, living forever in perfect health was as easy taking a shot, a pill, or even drinking from the public water supply ( we might get very creative when distributing the aging cure ), society would probably view dying of natural causes as killing yourself.

> society would probably view dying of natural causes as killing yourself.

Not much differently than we do anti-vax or people who deny themselves lifesaving treatments today.

All of these problems are solved by transcending flesh and blood. Why wouldn't a brain-emulation want to live forever, with just as much zest for life and learning after a billion years as today; and what's stopping us from eventually hosting a googolplex such ems (= plenty of room for raising kids) on "only" the computational substrate of a single Sol-powered matrioshka brain?

If I show you a machine that people step into and are then brought out the other side on a single Sol-powered matrioshka brain then I suppose you would take that offer, however there is a leap between the two states that cannot be conclusively proven. How do we know that the consciousness is in the matrioshka is the person who went in.

The trick is to do in gradually, ship of Theseus style.

> How do we know that the consciousness is in the matrioshka is the person who went in.

If we could solve this today we would already be well on the way immortality! But there are some theories, the most prominent of which is a Moravec Transfer[1]:

> A neuron-sized robot swims up to a neuron and scans it into memory. A computer starts simulating the neuron. The robot waits until the neuron perfectly matches its simulation inside the computer, and then replaces the neuron with itself as smoothly as possible, sending inputs to the computer and transmitting outputs from the simulation of a neuron inside the computer.

> This entire procedure has had no effect on the flow of information in the brain, except that one neuron's worth of processing is now being done inside a computer instead of a neuron. Repeat, neuron by neuron, until the entire brain is composed of robot neurons whose guts are inside the computer.

[1]: https://everything2.com/title/Moravec+Transfer

Ok, but in the black mirror episode I think we should have each neuron's worth of processing done in the Cloud owned by Google. Then they shut it down.

“We have determined that the target audience for this product simply is not big enough. Apologies to all of those housed in our servers. Toodles!”

Certainly, there might be ways of achieving this; but in terms of talking about the continuation of our species as a whole, does it matter if people today can do it? Us flesh-and-blood humans can live out our limited flesh-and-blood lifespan, while raising children who are born as brain-emulations. Nobody has to cross over for “humanity” to eventually attain immortality. It just might not be immortality for us living now.

1. I think its perfectly fine that if you choose to extend your life you also choose to undergo sterilisation. If the state offers this facility, it might put some additional conditions on it - terms of military/community service. There will also be some heavy taxes paid on your wealth and/or a reduced rate of interest.

2. Living till the end of the universe would mean reconstructing your body/brain millions of times. I don't truly see any way around that. There can be 'gaps' of thousands of years between such reconstruction depending on the current resources of human civilisation.

3. It's perfectly acceptable to have both old and new humans in the mix. Natural selection isn't the only factor driving evolution and besides by your logic everyone suffering from medical conditions should be allowed to perish so that only 'fitter' humans reign.

4. The wonder of knowing what human civilisation is like thousands or millions of years from now. Learning hundreds of professions - each to mastery and the limit of human knowledge. An unbroken chain of human history. The ability to gain advice from your ancestors and lend advice to your descendants.

5. Yes, life extension should be a choice. By law, no one should force this on anyone. But again, no one should be forced against it either.

What if we gained the technological ability to colonize other planets and make them habitable, it would mean nearly infinite resources and people could still have children, would that not make it worthwhile living forever?

1. Everyone can have one kid and we will merely double the amount of humans. This is because it takes 2 persons to produce one kid. And the infinite series 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8.... sums up to 1.

Those are all good points.

1) By the time we would live that long, we'd arguably be mostly virtual, and spread throughout the universe. So space wouldn't be an issue.

2) Yes, we might be stuck in old ways. But we could tweak ourselves however we wanted. With backups, of course.

3) I'm sure that there'd be lots of biological reproduction, somewhere anyway, so evolution wouldn't stop.

4) Most of the SF that I've read posits that people will spend most of their time in stasis. Or in bobbles.

5) Yeah, it'd be a tough decision to make. But if we got to the point of living that long, one hopes that we'd be doing it in good health. And if felt like you needed a break, you could just sleep for a billion years :)

1. It won't effect it. Considering that the entire current human population could fit into France or Germany at about the same density as some parts in SE Asia. Not saying this is desirable. But consider how many people could live in the entire solar system? Ultimately in intergalactic space:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQliI_WGaGk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojEq-tTjcc0

2. Any neuroplasticity loss due to biological aging is itself accumulated damage which will have to be repaired as part of life extension.

3. Human evolution is now overwhelmingly the evolution not of genes but of ideas/culture/memes.

4. That's for an individual to decide. At the moment there are plenty of old people who can apparently think of no reason to live but they hide the fact. They are in effect waiting around to die. They eventually go to hospital and care home for a few years before death which entails a fair bit of suffering and costs a lot of money. This is a sad and somewhat cruel situation in my opinion.

5. I bet that the cheapest way to treat things like heart disease and cancer will turn out to be life extension technology (i.e. damage repair). So you may have to decide not to get treatment for things which are currently routinely treated by conventional means. Of course you might still fall down the stairs...

Curing aging doesn't mean you'll live forever. Something will eventually get you. I'd be surprised if the median lifespan were more than a few hundred years once age and age-related diseases are eliminated as causes of death.

Well if it takes a few centuries to work these out, I'm willing to do the work!

There's a tale for that - soldier and Death. Even had a storyteller episode.

Liability insurance is going to go through the roof.

Have you noticed that the things that go on forever in media (soap operas, comic franchises) tend to become zombie-like and be consumed mindlessly rather than having any cultural value? In many respect, death is what makes life so interesting.

Though I disagree with your premise I’d gladly take a longer life for a more boring one. Life is already a monotonous routine for most. Dying at our own will would let us live to experience anything we want to experience.

I'm pretty happy about the fact that everyone has an expiration date built in. I know of very few people in power who don't start abusing their power in some way eventually.

Eventual death puts some limits on the amount of bad things one person can do.

Many organisations suffer from their geriatric leaders, who have amassed too many followers and too much power over the years. But at some point they die, and there's place for change.

It would be interesting to see how everyone reacts to an instant death switch or ability to set your own death date lower or higher than your natural life expectancy without society having control over it. Not only people want control over their lives but once they get it, they will naturally want to control others.

I wonder about the ethical complications. If someone is dying from heart attack but you can save him every time he goes through it, will you force that even if the person want to die via heart attack? At what point do you differentiate between suicide or ability to quit it?

Speak for yourself. I want to live for as long as I have even brief moments of lucidity.

I don't believe in an afterlife, I intend to savor everything I am receiving. One of my biggest fear is that people fail to appreciate that I value more existence than the absence of suffering and may take a very bad decision for me at one point.

The idiom is "speak for yourself"

(sorry if I offend)

Not at all, thanks! I stumble on these every time I inadvertently translate things directly from my native language. Ill be more careful thanks.

Corrected, by the way.

The definition of "idiom" as per the google search is

"a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words (e.g. over the moon, see the light )."

The sentence "speak for yourself" has the meaning that is directly deduced from its words. How does it qualify as an idiom ?

I’ll assume you haven’t been close to people in the last stages of some of the crueller diseases such as MND/ALS.

See? People would assume tons of things about other people. And one common assumption is that "what I want for me is what others want for them."

My opinion on the issue was already strong, but seeing people die after long diseases and people around them talking about "unplugging" them is what made me certain I do not want euthanasia.

My grandfather wanted to live even with half a lung functional and painful breathing.

Do what you want with your life, but please don't decide for others.

I have no interest in deciding things for random internet strangers.

Lungs don't control whether you have any understanding of the people around you...

Trust me, when your brain does not receive the amount of oxygen it needs, even though mostly breathing pure oxygen at that point, your understanding becomes blurry at best.

My wife was a palliative care nurse. She has seen hundreds of patients in the late stages of their lives. She has always told me she wants to go well before she reaches that stage and has a do not resuscitate order.

I would imagine many other nurses and doctors would feel the same way. You may want to expose yourself to people who only have "brief moments of lucidity" otherwise be careful what you wish for or you might receive it.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2011/11/30/how-doctors-di...

Oh! Look! Anecdotes from a country where you can get broke if you go the hospital! Surely it applies to people all over the world!

You imagine and you assume. Please don't argue about ending other people life based on assumptions and imagination.

Okay, as a paramedic, who has lived in Australia and the UK as well as the US.

End of life quality of life is its own issue, regardless of who is or isn't paying.

Let me paint you a couple of examples and have you tell me about your desire to face any one of them rather than finding peace:

1) the lady with metastasized bone cancer who (thankfully) we were taking home so she could die there, as her family had set up a bed in a family owned home so she could watch the sunrise. She was a morphine drip for her pain. To be clear, most patients with cancer can be controlled by oral morphine at 200mg/day. She was receiving 120mg per HOUR. And still we had to drive the ambulance painfully (hah) slowly because every little bump in the road (not pothole, but bump) caused screams of pain from the back. Despite her being 45kg or so, we used six people to move her into the home (normally two would have done it) to make it as smooth a process as possible, and she was still incontinent from pain as a result). I do take some mild comfort in knowing she got to see two more sunrises out of hospital. But even as someone who has had multiple kidney stones (and large ones at that), I could not imagine enduring what she was.

You call it "living", it's not, I chose "enduring" for a reason.

2) A man who had Alzheimers with some lucidity. Maybe 10 minutes an hour. The other times he spent in terror, because he had a constant playback loop of about four separate WW2 scenarios where he was an infantryman in Europe. During those times he was entirely reliving the most terrifying experiences of his life, his eyes would be wide, his pulse would be 160+, he'd be shaking and unapproachable (because he _would_ attack you), pinned down by German troops in a French village. Or breaking his leg as he cut his parachute when he was stuck in a tree. Or when he was temporarily deafened by mortar and artillery fire landing near him, spraying him with mud and bricks and glass.

You're entitled to your own opinion as we all are. But it's certainly not a coincidence that _many_ people who have spent a good amount of time around end of life events want nothing less than to see it happen to them (or for their own loved ones to have to see it happen).

And all of the above, again, has nearly zero to do with "who is paying the bill".

And a seemingly subtle but very important distinction: it is not _ending_ someone's life to _not prolong_ it beyond nature. And trying to twist the parents remarks about "do not resuscitate" into "ending peoples lives" is a blatant reductionism that is neither merited nor fair. Apropos of anything else, a DNR is the written expression of the _patients_ wishes. Just as you want your own freedom.

We spend more in the last year (be it NHS, Medicare in Australia, or health insurance) of people's lives than we do in the last decade of their lives, and more in the last decade than we do on the rest of their life.

> You call it "living", it's not

Well she did not kill herself despite being able to, now did she?

> A man who had Alzheimers with some lucidity. Maybe 10 minutes an hour.

Who again did not take those 10 minutes to take his life.

Nietzsche wrote many of his pieces of literature in similar conditions.

> But it's certainly not a coincidence that _many_ people who have spent a good amount of time around end of life events want nothing less than to see it happen to them

Or that could be a bias towards spending most time with the most extreme examples. A bit like how policemen tend to become more racist during the course of their career. A professional's opinion on a moral issue can be more informed but also often more biased.

> Well she did not kill herself despite being able to, now did she?

She asked not to be resuscitated. She wasn't. On a couple of occasions, now, you have conflated DNR (or POLST, more accurately, these days, Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatments) with the act of suicide.

> Who again did not take those 10 minutes to take his life.

Again.

> Or that could be a bias towards spending most time with the most extreme examples. A bit like how policemen tend to become more racist during the course of their career. A professional's opinion on a moral issue can be more informed but also often more biased.

Oof. Comparing a medical professionals experience with the negative side of end of life palliative care with an increasing racism is a pretty ugly and unjustified comparison, one that says that you believe that those physicians, paramedics, nurses have intensified flaws or failings by virtue of recognizing/ believing that not everyone needs to or should stay alive to the very last by means of medical care, regardless of their wishes or quality of life, that that is somehow akin to "racism" in terms of character traits. Wow.

> On a couple of occasions, now, you have conflated DNR (or POLST, more accurately, these days, Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatments) with the act of suicide.

I certainly did not and having a few idiots who cannot make the difference does not mean we can't still be opposed to other people choosing for you what it means to "die with dignity", which was the starter of this discussion.

And I am happy that you find racism abhorrent but I doubt you misunderstood me to the point of missing that I am just criticizing the idea that professionals the most exposed to a situation necessarily have unbiased and superior moral opinion on this situation.

Jeez. That's dedication. "Sorry, I must apologize for interrupting the performance."

Strange to see so many comments praising the way this guy died. Do people really want to die suddenly in front of strangers without any time to prepare and get your house in order?

So many here say that's the way they want to go, but that's hard to believe. Personally, I'd rather be given a few months or years notice so that I can prepare.

I'd say that if there are things you need to prepare, then do it now. If there are things you want to do so badly that you'd drop everything to do them if you suddenly knew you were going to die, then do them now.

With that in mind, I'd prefer no warning, because I wouldn't want to spend my last time alive thinking about running out of time.

If you know that what awaits you is a peaceful death, well maybe. But if the process implies a lot of suffering (physical or emotional) a quick end sounds way better.

Depends if you have been in hospital and shared a bay with very seriously ill patients you might not say that.

I recall a older guy who had renal failure and had to be fed through the nose, and another who started to become unstuck in time and was calling out for mother at night

Few of us will decide, many of us will die in pain. You could die any day so prepare now.

I'd love to go out playing music.

“Dropped dead” is, if you ask me, a disrespectful term To dying or passing away.

Im not sure why i have a problem with it, but i do.

"dropped his head" != "dropped dead"

Oh my brain skipped that!

This doesn't seem appropriate content for HN.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com