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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

>I wish society would be humane and let people end their life by an injection.

What's "humane" about that? It's the easy cop out, and hiding the problem under the carpet.

Unlike terminal disease or something "suffering psychologically" is not unsurmountable...

Not to mention tons of people tried to suicide because they suffered, failed, and then found out they're OK after all, and lived their lives just fine afterwards...

>It confirms to me that people are monsters that force their will on others by forcing them to continue suffering or commit suicide in a manner that can fail

Or, you know, people are angels, and don't just give poison to the first idiot that decided to kill themselves just because they temporarily suffer and think in their bad judgement that it can't be fixed...

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Let's keep it very simple here. What possible justification can you have to force another being with feelings to suffer?

By the way, even the part of "something "suffering psychologically" is not unsurmountable" is quite often unjustifiable, such as when psychological suffering is caused by the environment and there is no way to escape the environment.

The fact that sometimes suffering is very intense and temporary and that forcing someone to live through that can later lead to a fulfilling and happy life. A life where they are grateful they suffered through the temporary thing without ending it.

That alone should be enough to acknowledge that sometimes, people who want to die should not kill themselves.

Besides that, the fact that quite often, a person killing themselves will inflict a lot of suffering on their surroundings. If you argue we don't get to force someone to suffer, why does a suicidal person get to force others to suffer?

Neither the position "No one should ever get to end their own life" nor the position "Everyone should be able to end their own life at any instant of their choosing always and immediately" seem tenable to me. With a decent solution lying somewhere in between these to positions.

>>Besides that, the fact that quite often, a person killing themselves will inflict a lot of suffering on their surroundings. If you argue we don't get to force someone to suffer, why does a suicidal person get to force others to suffer?

This is such an irrational line of thought. Absolutely irrational.

The suicidal person is in no way accountable for others feelings. Zero questions to be had about that. It's akin to as if a debt collector could come after you for your deceased parents debts. In the U.S. at least, that's illegal, because it's obviously bullshit.

I wish I could experience your own ideas of what empathy is, because from what you're saying, mine seem to greatly differ.

The section you quote is not really relevant to my broader point.

As for:

> The suicidal person is in no way accountable for others feelings.

I disagree very much, and the few things I have seen from people who are suicidal suggests they would disagree as well. Suicidal people really hate the effect they have on others. And just in general, people are accountable for how they make others feel.

As for the broader point. I do not think that "killing yourself will hurt others" plays a big role in cases where people should not kill themselves, but I do think it plays some role. And moreover, I think it is inconsistent to say we can't force people to suffer by staying alive if we can force other to suffer by ending our own life.

> It's akin to as if a debt collector could come after you for your deceased parents debts. In the U.S. at least, that's illegal, because it's obviously bullshit.

I don't see the analogy at all.

Your and people's inconsistent and sweeping generalizations about people who want to die seems pretty irrational and illogical to me.

Some people are hurt by women's right to abortion. Are you against abortion?

Some people are hurt by taxes or debt. Are you against society or debt?

>> Some people are hurt by women's right to abortion. Are you against abortion?

Actually, in some cases you can make the same argument against abortion as already made in this thread against euthanasia for depressed people:

since the pregnant woman is most affected by the unwanted pregnancy, and maybe feeling like her whole life is falling apart because of it, then maybe that woman in her mental state shouldn't be making decision about abortion on her own.

The sad thing is, some western countries try to penalize putting any "pressure" on her, even if the attempt to influence her decision is coming from the child's father, or woman's family members.

These are nowhere near sweeping generalizations. I am making small hypothetical examples against the case "anyone who wants to die should immediately be able to do so". My aim is to show there are at least a few cases where this is not the case.

As for your questions. I actually think that sometimes doing things that hurt people is to be accepted. For example, sometimes (SOMETIMES, NOT ALWAYS, POSSIBLY EVEN RARELY) it is better to not allow someone to end their life. Similarly, sometimes it is better for someone to end their life even if that would hurt others.

>The suicidal person is in no way accountable for others feelings. Zero questions to be had about that.

Actually there are. Zero questions to be had about that.

People have connections, have relationships, have responsibilities (e.g. little kids), have spouses and loved ones, and so on. We're not carefree individual snowflakes only concerned with and accountable to ourselves.

>It's akin to as if a debt collector could come after you for your deceased parents debts.

In the case of suicide, you are the "deceased" and the debts are yours. So a better example would be suicide forcing your debts on others (the lender in this case).

That said, strong feelings about suicide and how unsurmountable some pain is point to some deep depression rather than clear thinking. I used to have some thoughts like that back at some point. Maybe talk to someone about it? Doesn't have to be a specialist, but friends etc would help.

> The fact that sometimes suffering is very intense and temporary and that forcing someone to live through that can later lead to a fulfilling and happy life. A life where they are grateful they suffered through the temporary thing without ending it.

I will have to disentangle myself from this discussion to remain polite. This is veering too much into the 'being bullied will make you stronger' territory.

Isn't it closer to "a short period of treatment (for almost any condition) will be uncomfortable, but will be better than leaving the condition untreated"?

Here, a short period of distress while in therapy is preferable to years of distress while being untreated, followed by death.

I am not at all saying that suffering makes you stronger. Nor am I saying that being suicidal is good. I am saying that sometimes, the condition that leads to being suicidal is temporary and that people afterwards are happy they did not end their life.

I feel that it is good that those people did not end their life. Not because they suffered back then, but because they got to be, and are, happy right now.

To that, I would add that if legal euthanasia were very very low threshold, there is a decent change that some of the above people would have ended their life. And that would be a shame.

My proposed solution is not 'ban euthanasia' that is mis-interpreting my stance. Instead I think the solution is 'make euthanasia possible under certain conditions'.

I do not know exactly what those conditions are. I do expect any conditions chose will be wrong in certain edge cases. I also expect people will probably try and block euthanasia by strengthening those conditions (as is being done with abortions). That still doesn't mean we should drop all conditions for euthanasia.

The solution does not lie at the extremes but somewhere in the uncomfortable middle. To my mind, euthanasia should be easier than it currently is in the parts of the world I know about. (Mostly this is the Netherlands, and from what little I know about the US probably there as well).

edit: to clarify when I say "forcing someone to live through that can later lead to a fulfilling and happy life" I do not mean that having lived through suffering makes life better. I mean that, having lived at all, sometimes life gets better. Either because of treatment, because conditions around you change, or just dumb luck. Note the 'sometimes' there. Because there are plenty of cases where this is not the case. Similarly, there are probably cases where things do eventually get better, but not enough to be worth going through what someone is currently going through.

>This is veering too much into the 'being bullied will make you stronger' territory.

Well, being bullied will indeed make you stronger. That's how most people learn to adapt to social dynamics, fight back, stand for themselves and so on.

In actual life suffering often tells us what to avoid, leads us to know ourselves better, teach us lessons (like e.g. suffering caused by bad decisions), and even punishes us when we deserve it (e.g. suffering caused by doing something illegal and going to prison etc) so on. Is there's suffering with no greater message? Yes there is (e.g. a car hitting us while we cross the road just fine, or a sudden disease we did nothing to get). But that's part of life too.

Sorry, life is not a road paved with roses for ultimate hapiness 100% 24/7. In that magical land suffering would serve no purpose.

>What possible justification can you have to force another being with feelings to suffer?

For one, that "beings with feelings" make decisions against their better judgement all the time. Others who can see more clearly, like e.g. lawmakers and society at large, could help guide them towards better decisions.

Second, that "suffering" is the ultimate thing to avoid. Death can be worse.

Third, there's the justification that some degree of suffering is inevitable, and people should just accept it.

Fourth, the idea that people should "not let people to suffer" is a moral one - not some law of physics or inescapable logical proof. In the same sense, the idea that you should not just let "people kill themselves" is also a moral one (that is, belonging to a moral system). The decision which of those ideas should prevail, is thus, also a moral one - there's no ultimate answer. And this society chose that just willy nilly allowing people to kill themselves and giving them the means is not OK.

Fifth, "when psychological suffering is caused by the environment and there is no way to escape the environment" -- well there are people in the same environment (or even worse ones) who are still happy and fine with themselves, so it's never just the environment. It's how people see it, and that can change.

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