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Comment by exit | Hacker News Reader

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What you posted is not only a personal attack but a particularly shameful one. That violates the spirit of this site, especially the first comment guideline, which is first because it is the most important: "Be kind." (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

To accost somebody experiencing devastating personal loss with a trolley argument, while the person is in shock and grief and barely beginning to process their experience, is about as unkind a thing to do on the internet as I can imagine.

All: please never post like this to Hacker News.

For what it’s worth I draw the line closer to your preferences than you think - we would have stopped the CPR much earlier and let him go but everything happened so fast and we were never given a choice.

He breathes under his own power and is actually physically very healthy. We give food and water and basic care, but he is in hospice and we will not revive him if his heart stops again.

My line is that I won’t starve him to death and I won’t stop his heart myself. That’s my line. If everyone had this line the worst of the horrible lingering deaths from heroic but doomed medical interventions would be averted. On a purely utilitarian basis, I think that would be a world you would prefer to the status quo, no?

I’m sorry I don’t have your exact beliefs. If our positions were reversed I would respect your decision rather than call you names or speculate about your motives in a public forum.

I'm sorry that you got subjected to such a nasty attack in such a painful time.

I would wish that the kind responses add up to more good feeling than the unkind ones destroy, but I know from experience it doesn't always work that way.

Seconded. For reference, I have experience with this kind of scenario first hand (helping care, and living with, somebody with dementia combined with complete immobility and many other things making the quality of life for absolutely everybody involved worse). I hope that with time we become more comfortable with euthanasia, most of us in the scenario found it to be the right choice, but society goes against it.

I also have first-hand experience with this scenario (shared here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39043885) and if we had followed that line of thinking we would have unnecessarily lost a valuable life. It turns out that, just like our judges and juries convict innocent people in our justice system, our doctors can give terminal or non-improving prognoses to people who will, to a meaningful extent, recover.

His other post might help you understand the author's point of view: https://www.fortressofdoors.com/four-magic-words/

The author's other writings on the four magic words helped me understand his point of view at visceral level. He is not clinging to preserving his son, he believes that his son's life is sacred, even in its diminished state.

and I find your judgement on this quite disturbing, even arrogant.

there is a reason nearly all religions take a stance against killing, even killing yourself!

and for me it starts with: who am I to judge somebody should rather be dead than alive? do you REALLY know?

That somebody is simply gone. It doesn't make sense to view it any other way.

It's not a disturbing view. However, as long as the affected person is not capable of suffering anymore it is fully up to the family to decide what they prefer. So either way can be a valid and ethical then. It can be ethical to hang on and it can be ethical to let go.

(That being said, If there is chance that the affected person could recover or even not recover but suffer at the moment then the question becomes very complex. I think most would admit that the complexity exists.)

But the son isn't gone from the experience of the father, why should he pretend like he is?

I think you forget the fact that his son has 0 ability for self-preservance. In some cases, we may make things that have no chance to exist on their own, persist, but in this case, what does it serve, but our own selfishness?

Every human being is born with zero ability for self-preservation...

And we help them out for their own sake, so that they can live a life of their own eventually.

I don't believe in selfless acts. All selfless acts are done for selfish reasons.

What a bullshit response.

It's my sincere belief, if you think differently then we can agree to disagree. For myself, I've never done a selfless act. All my so-called selfless compassion has ultimately been selfishly motivated. Therefore I can't judge the father for keeping his son alive.

What a strange thing to say. Come on, you must have done at least something small as a selfless act. At least something does has not inconvenienced you very much. We do this all the time and not just to feel better about ourselves.

I believe it's selfish to keep somebody going when they have absolutely 0 ability for self-maintenance.

I believe the comment you reply to is disturbing (or rather insensitive) only because the article author is reading this thread.

But we should be able to have the discussion the grandparent poster wants to have.

If the author wants to do what he described in the article, that's fine – it's up to him and his partner.

However, we should as a society not expect it as a standard IMHO. No one should be expected to sacrifice themselves like that, for apparently little reason. It seems irrational and painful.

The tube feeding and pain meds are artificial life support measures in my mind. But then again I’ve never had a child or experienced anything remotely like this so it is easy to be glib and pick on logic. I’m in my sixth decade so I’m petty sure I’d feel the same way you do. I would not want to have a living altar, that term just made my jaw drop after such beautiful articulation.

We are different people. We draw the line in different places. All such lines are ultimately arbitrary. Please don’t judge me for drawing it in a slightly different place than you do; my position is likely closer to yours than you think and I’d appreciate not being judged on a public forum for not being 100% in agreement with you.

Wait where did I judge you? At no point did I say you were good or bad, I commented on the decision if it were me and words you used. I'm sorry if I offended you, I just don't know where I judged you.

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