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Comment by technotony | Hacker News Reader

What's your evidence for this? In my experience, losing both my parents and all grandparents, everyone was ready to go long before they did. My dad passed away comfortably in his sleep in reasonable health (for 84 year old) and he'd been talking about being ready for months. My grandmother told us she wished she was dead like all her friends for a decade before she passed away (she was late 90s). My mother had cancer and chose to go at her own time like one of the comments above about MAID.

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Similar here. My grandfather told me he prayed for death to come a few months before actually dying.

So it does depend on the individual and their specific circumstances.

I agree, very much depends on the individual. Currently witnessing a 94-year-old who can no longer get out of bed who absolutely does not want to die. Otherwise, I'm convinced it would have happened by now. I'm not surprised though, it's her personality.

It's definitely a lot of things, like religious beliefs, personality, fear, guilt. And I think our society is absolutely terrified of death. A rational person might reason, "Well, I'm only a burden now, I'm not going to get any more enjoyment out of life, and I'm going to die soon anyway. This is a perfect time to end my life." But we aren't taught to think like that.

We're taught that death is the worst thing that can happen to you, that when you die you might go to a place full of fire and burning and torture forever, that trying to extend your life (exercise, nutrition, psychology, cosmetics, etc) is the ultimate goal. We are not taught to get the most out of life when we're young, we're not taught the practical skills that would give us more contentment through life, and we're not taught that death is a natural and normal part of life.

We need a class in school called "don't fear, just plan: organize your way to a happy life and be fine with dying sooner." Teach people how to stop sitting around wondering how to be happy, and just give simple practical skills and workbooks. Things like "how to pick your career", "how to choose where to live", "how to actually manage your finances", "how to make friends", "how to get a significant other", "how to manage your emotions", "how to deal with conflict", "how to deal with a life change", "how to enjoy life for free", "how to balance work and life", etc. There are answers to all these things, but they aren't taught in school; we're just expected to bump into them somewhere in life, after decades of grasping around pretending like we know what we're doing. We waste so much of life because nobody has taught us what to do.

By the time you're 60, you should have already had a vivid, exciting life full of friends and opportunities and special moments. But many of us haven't! I put it down to simply not learning how. If we expect every kid to learn completely useless shit like Calculus, we should definitely teach them the more important life skills sooner.

I'm not sure that anecdotal evidence should really be at play here. For instance, the only person that I personally knew who paid a Dignitas subscription chose not to go through with it, but that doesn't demonstrate anything about the population at large.

Terry Pratchett, after being diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's, made a documentary called Choosing To Die, which you might be interested in. He had stated that he wished to die by assisted suicide, but ultimately Terry died at home from Alzheimer's.

Given the choice between living and dying I believe a vast majority of people choose living.

That being said I think assisted suicide should be an option and everyone should have this option.

You're forgetting there's still a huge percentage of people that think suicide is immoral and won't do it.

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