Comment by sinker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sinker | Hacker News Reader

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> your implication that a person walking off into the woods leads to no additional demands on others

I don't deny that dying out alone in the wilderness does end up having a cost to others. I don't agree that the potential cost of it should preclude someone from doing it.

The whole argument against McCandless begins to sound absurd.

"Does an individual have the right to die alone in the wilderness?"

If you pose the question this way, the answer becomes obvious. If you were to ask me if someone has the right to suicide by train or suicide by cop, or even if they have the right to jump off a bridge, I'd be inclinded to say no, or at least hesitate on the last one.

But being alone in the wilderness, prepared or not, is a different category.

I'm not really sure his right to die in the wilderness is what's most pertinent about his case though. Those of us who have wilderness experience should caution others who don't to prepare and educate themselves, instead of just going for it and seeing what happens. Because what often happens is a lengthy search and rescue process, and sometimes PTSD or death. Maybe that's what he wanted, but I kind of doubt it.

The question isn't what he should or shouldn't have done. That part is crystal clear. The question is why do people feel entitled to moral indignation on account of someone hiking out alone into the wilderness. The arguments so far have not been convincing - it costs money to fly them out, it puts SAR in danger.

We are social animals. Raising one person takes a lot of work from their parents, caregivers, teachers, friends -- "It takes a village to raise a child", proverb says. This is why just letting someone fall off the cliff (on their own will or not) is not in the interest of the society as a whole.

It's insane to me how people here are so libertarian when it comes to experimenting with drugs or legalising it, which has the potential to incur far more costs to society and harm to others than venturing into the wild, perhaps unprepared. For the record, I'm not advocating people be stopped from either, but IMO the latter will appeal to far fewer people, and so is a much smaller problem, and has more positive benefits.

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