[HN Gopher] The undiscovered country: Can suicide be predicted?
___________________________________________________________________
The undiscovered country: Can suicide be predicted?
Author : lermontov
Score : 47 points
Date : 2021-07-20 22:13 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (harpers.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (harpers.org)
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Well that's an interesting way to fight ad blockers. Hiding the
| whole content.
| one_off_comment wrote:
| I feel like the article didn't deliver on its promise. The author
| never got to try out the device that's supposed to predict
| suicide. I was most curious about that because I find myself
| skeptical such a thing could work.
| derbOac wrote:
| https://psycnet.apa.org./record/2016-54856-001?doi=1
|
| Suicide is notoriously difficult to predict. That meta-analysis
| is one example; once you account for base rates in realistic
| scenarios, you can do very little better than chance.
|
| Some of this might have to do with the nature of predictors;
| maybe with deep learning and real-time data this might improve
| slightly, but I doubt it somewhat (there are significant
| ethical issues involved in such data regardless but that's a
| different issue).
|
| One of the biggest problems in this area is that suicide is
| such a low base rate phenomenon that it's difficult to predict
| for that reason alone. Not only that, but many of the
| predictors are relatively high base rate by comparison, so
| there's a very very very low signal to noise ratio.
| Statistically speaking, it's like finding a needle in a
| needlestack.
|
| I think adding to the complication is that it's not really that
| you want to know if someone eventually commits suicide, what
| you want to know is whether they do so within a certain
| actionable timeframe. That is, for most of the decisions such
| predictions are being clamored for, it doesn't really help to
| know that there's a 70% chance that someone will commit suicide
| eventually; what practitioners really want to know is "what are
| the odds someone will commit suicide if I make decision X right
| _now_. " This is a significantly more difficult thing to study.
|
| I personally believe that the approach to suicide in developed
| countries is horribly misguided and probably unethical, focused
| too much on the act and not prevention of the state
| (psychological, sociological, economic) that leads to it. It's
| unethical to leave someone in such a personal hell that they
| want to exit it by killing themselves; preventing themselves
| from doing so, without removing them from that state, only
| deprives them of a means of relief.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I would tend to assume suicide is fairly predictable with high
| sensitivity and the data many corporations have from surveillance
| of customers tbh.
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| Let's just say I get really concerned about my fairly stable,
| committed household when I get therapy and dating app ads...
| motohagiography wrote:
| Given ads are necessarily both targeted and predatory, and a
| not a few of them are planted as part of sophisticated
| political campaigns and operations, someone in your house
| probably just triggered a link on their trapline.
|
| Ads for therapy are to stoke fears of people they may be
| mentally ill, and ads for dating sites are to make people
| feel isolated. They're just used as priming for selling you
| an additional something else to relieve the feelings the
| primers created.
|
| If I wanted you to look at my ad, I'd present something you
| would look away from, and have my product ad right there
| waiting for where you will likely look to. Look at the
| difference between ads in the margin of pages, vs. those
| inline to the content.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| That's an interesting take, I wonder which company, Google or
| FB, has better predictors? Surely they have enough data to
| actually have the best predictors when compared to academics
| looking at monthly statistics.
| dbtc wrote:
| If suicide can be predicted then I would why not homicide? And
| then perhaps all crime.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| In _" Why do people die by suicide"_, Dr Paul Thomlinson goes
| over the research on predicting suicide.[1]
|
| First, he talks about a well supported model called Joiner's
| Model, based on research which shows that people who are most
| likely to commit suicide have all three of these factors:
|
| - Thwarted belongingness ("I am alone")
|
| - Perceived burdensomeness ("I am a burden")
|
| - Ability to commit suicide ("I am not afraid to die")
|
| Perceived burdensomeness has two components: Liability ("My death
| is worth more than my life to others") and self-hate ("I hate
| myself")
|
| Thwarted belongingness also has two components: Loneliness ("I
| feel disconnected from others") and absence of reciprocal care
| ("I have no one to turn to and I don't support others")
|
| And finally, capability to commit suicide is predicted by:
| Lowered fear of death, elevated physical pain tolerance, family
| history of suicide, clustering/exposure to suicidality, combat
| exposure, suicide attempts, childhood maltreatment
|
| And another model with the acronym "IS PATH WARM" shows that
| people who are most likely to commit suicide are likely to have,
| feel or be:
|
| - I = Ideation
|
| - S = Substance Use
|
| - P = Purposelessness
|
| - A = Anxiety
|
| - T = Trapped
|
| - H = Hopelessness
|
| - W = Withdrawal
|
| - A = Anger
|
| - R = Recklessness
|
| - M = Mood Change
|
| [1] - at about 25 minutes in to
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arywx88jMXw
| agumonkey wrote:
| interesting categorization, very much so, I find there's a
| duality in the lonely/self-hate group. So many people who feel
| like that are utterly normal, they just can't connect other
| realities than their own judgement.
| autoexec wrote:
| Joiner's Model seems to exclude people who are candidates for
| assisted suicide. They often don't feel alone, don't feel like
| a burden, but are terminally ill, in constant pain, feel
| they've lived long enough, seeing significant mental/physical
| decline etc. You can shoehorn them into "IS PATH WARM" under
| hopelessness, trapped, or anger I guess.
| FinanceAnon wrote:
| It's impossible to measure, but I wonder what % of suicides
| happens because of the culture that we live in. A lot of times
| when you read about someone commiting suicide it's blamed on that
| individual or their mental health - but is that really the root
| issue? How many of the suicides wouldn't happen if society was
| set up in a different way?
| yCombLinks wrote:
| I think the culture is extremely relevant. If you look at this
| map on the right:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_suicide
| You'll see China is a significant outlier, being the only
| country with a higher suicide rate for women than men. All of
| the western nations have rates between 3.5 and 4 as many men
| commit suicide as women, a shockingly high difference.
| xtracto wrote:
| I think you are onto something. An example for me would be,
| someone committing suicide in the USA due to the perception of
| having to confront some incredible stressful event in the
| future; whereas the exact same situation in another country
| (with different culture) would not yield the same weight to
| that person.
|
| As an example, take Jeffrey Epstein suicide (let's assume thats
| what happen). He might have sought that exit given his possible
| future perspectives. Had he been in Mexico (where I live) he
| may have had a different (more lenient) perspective of his
| future.
| [deleted]
| leksak wrote:
| At points in my journey I've thought that the one genuinely good
| thing that I could maybe end up doing for others is to end my own
| life so that the way mental health patients are treated receives
| another impetus for change so that others can get the help I
| didn't get while desperately reaching for it.
| giantg2 wrote:
| 'Pote explained that the basic mechanism is comparable to the
| process "used in lie-detector tests, like you see in the
| movies."'
|
| And yet polygraphs are known to be unreliable, to the point that
| they are generally not admissible in court. It would probably be
| better marketing if they don't imply that their product is
| comparable to an qn existing tech that is unreliable.
| omniglottal wrote:
| Better marketting can and probably should include honest
| implications of a product's limitations.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/WyW6u
| hashhar wrote:
| The lack of empathy in the comments is scary. No wonder the
| situation is so bad.
|
| Let me present a scenario which might seem more relatable since
| it seems people understand physical pain but have no "scale" of
| what mental pain could be like.
|
| You have a chronic pain (maybe one of wrists is broken in a way
| that there is no solution). No painkillers help. Every doctor you
| go to doesn't have a quick-fix. People around you keep telling
| you "you're imagining things", "be spiritual", "it isn't as bad
| as you think", "it'll go away". Nothing you try seems to help.
| You wake up every day feeling the pain and it keeps getting worse
| with no end in sight.
|
| EDIT: Missed one crucial component. The pain is so much that you
| cannot have normal social interactions because 80% of your energy
| is spent trying to cover up the pain. You feel exhausted all the
| time due to this and don't have the energy or the motivation to
| do anything.
|
| Image living this for even a year (where this is what life looks
| like for some people for the last 20 years or more) and then tell
| me you wouldn't say no to "anything to make the pain go away".
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| As someone who now does suffer from chronic pain due to
| abdominal adhesions post-pancreatic trauma and having had
| issues with depression in the past, I'll take the adhesions.
|
| At least I can take a pill to get some relief on occasion.
| People understand.
|
| Your description and analogy is dead on.
| Clubber wrote:
| >"anything to make the pain go away"
|
| Sure, I think our rampant overdose problem and drug and alcohol
| over-use problem in general is a symptom of this. That's one of
| the reasons the war on drugs is so insidious, it punishes the
| people already suffering, which makes them suffer more, forcing
| a downward spiral that is almost impossible to get out of. All
| from a perceived moral failing.
|
| The US is pretty cruel to its citizens. It's not overtly, in-
| your-face cruel like historical regimes, but still cruel, none
| the less.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I have not done much traveling, but Americans seem to self-
| medicate more?
| autoexec wrote:
| Actual medication and healthcare services (especially
| mental healthcare) are not always affordable or accessible
| in the US. Recreational drugs are everywhere though, so
| plenty of people turn to them for whatever degree of relief
| those drugs can provide.
| handrous wrote:
| We take _way_ less vacation and have _far_ more financial
| uncertainty and more bills (more complexity and more to
| keep track of just to get by), so our background level of
| stress is probably higher on average than in, say, most
| Western European states.
|
| There may be other reasons that affect it more, but I'd
| fully expect that to be enough to result in more self-
| medication, all else being equal.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| This reminds me of the case of Dax Cowart[1][2], who as a young
| man suffered tremendous burns from an accident which he
| survived but which killed his father who was with him.
|
| He lost his eyes and face, had both of his hands amputated, and
| was forcibly given agonizing treatments for 14 months.
|
| At his request a documentary video was made about him, which he
| titled "Please Let Me Die"[3]. It was shown to lawmakers and
| judges in hopes of allowing him to refuse medical treatment.
|
| He was forced to endure the treatment against his express
| wishes, survived, and graduated law school to become an
| advocate of patient's rights. Still, he always maintained that
| he should have been allowed to end his life.
|
| _" No human being has the right to force another human being
| to undergo that kind of pain and to take away that person's
| right to self-determination."_
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dax_Cowart
|
| [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAQHuaua4W0
|
| [3] - https://medhum.med.nyu.edu/view/10105
| hashhar wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this - I haven't yet looked but the
| description itself makes me feel bad that we don't let people
| make decisions for themselves.
|
| I feel the only reason we don't let people chose that path is
| to make ourselves feel good and feel "guilt-free".
|
| I recently had a situation where someone in my family was
| diagnosed with a life threatening condition but the dilemma
| was that if you chose to undergo treatment their life will
| turn to shit. If you don't then they might suddenly die one
| day - albeit happy and normal.
|
| I felt a lot of guilt trying to find reasons to convince
| people why the 2nd option was better. If you think rationally
| the only reason to pick the 1st option is selfishness. For
| the person who has undergo the treatment the 2nd option is
| hands down the better one.
| Lammy wrote:
| It is illegal to kill oneself because it deprives the state
| of a taxpayer, and the state will not tolerate theft of its
| human resources.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Its way more primitive than that - christian moral code
| prohibits suicide as those will end up in hell. Then not-
| so-small part of population feels entitled to project
| their own righteous path unto rest of humanity while even
| feeling great about doing that 'in accordance to god's
| wishes'. Next thing you know, any abortion is illegal,
| heck in places like Poland even basic human rights are
| violated by exactly this kind of self-righteous crowd.
|
| Obviously this is just one of example of one random major
| religion and tells us mostly about how small many humans
| are and how it manifests across society. Feel free to
| apply this to much of evil caused by mankind, basically
| since we were humans.
|
| Eye opening for me was when I met this fellow Texan guy
| in Nepal in 2008, great guy otherwise, who was telling me
| how all those arabs in Iraq and Afghanistan would make
| great christians. They just need to understand the right
| choice. He really believed it. If felt so surreal.
|
| Interestingly, place like Switzerland which is highly
| religious has been for a long time bastion of self-
| assisted suicide, so that folks come here from all over
| the world to end their life peacefully. Tells you about
| how remarkably tolerant society this is (there are tons
| of other examples I can see every day around me, but
| that's for another topic).
| Razengan wrote:
| Just allow people the basic freedom to leave the fuck out of this
| world if they really want to.
|
| But no, that would mean one less entity to milk for labor and
| money.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Yeah, it's funny how no one gives a flying fuck about your
| suffering and will actively encourage it for their own benefit
| right up until you start talking about suicide.
|
| Of course, 90% of the time that's because they see an
| opportunity to sell you on a new drug, religion, or ideology.
| derbOac wrote:
| Or protect themselves liability-wise, or from guilt.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Yeah, this bugs me too. We shouldn't be talking about suicide
| prevention. We should be talking about preventing suffering.
| kmnc wrote:
| It often seems weird to me that any time a seemingly happy
| and successful celebrity commits suicide the underlying
| reasons and especially the mental state at the time are
| largely brushed away. Everyone is quick to praise them for
| their success, and be sympathetic to their "struggles" yet no
| one is willing to dig deep into anything.
|
| "Successful" people suicides are incredibly interesting
| because it forces us to ask the question "were they ever
| happy?" yet it is a question usually ignored in most post
| suicide bio films that seem to come out immediately after.
| There is this idea that suicide has to be treated with quiet
| respect, and whispers at funerals...we keep ignoring the
| actual issues and brush suicide off as a "mistake in the
| moment". Bullshit, anyone who commits suicide has been
| contemplating it most of their lives.
| underseacables wrote:
| _Robert Lowell once said that if humans had access to a button
| that would kill us instantly and painlessly, we would all press
| it sooner or later._
|
| I think this explains suicide better: For most, it's an
| irrational act done in the spur of the moment.
|
| What I think is more interesting is when suicide is done as a
| _rational_ act with planning, and consideration for others.
| easterncalculus wrote:
| I'm not convinced there's anything rational in suicide by
| definition. Every organ, vessel, and part of your body,
| especially your brain, is dedicated to keeping you alive for as
| long as possible. If it makes you feel the need to end your
| life, by definition it is not working.
|
| A lot of bad things can happen to you in a lifetime, but death
| is the worst, without a doubt. To feel the need to inflict it
| upon yourself is therefore not rational at all, even if it is
| premeditated. What seems like one irrational spur of the moment
| decision is really one that in most cases had been considered
| well before. No one ends their own life before thinking about
| it beforehand.
| TOMDM wrote:
| An argument from organ function only operates if you believe
| the process of evolution that created those organs and their
| "goals" are what defines human meaning.
|
| I personally believe humans derive their own meaning in life.
| Temporary chemical imbalances and runaway feedback loops of
| emotional harm can certainly lead to impairment of rational
| judgement concerning suicide, but that doesn't mean that if
| you accept the premise that humans derive their own value
| that there can be rational avenues to suicide.
|
| For situations like accute depression and anxiety (of which
| I'm intimitely familiar) are situations where I would argue
| ones judgement is impaired when it comes to suicide, and I
| don't doubt that said impairment is extrapolable to many
| other situations.
|
| >A lot of bad things can happen to you in a lifetime, but
| death is the worst, without a doubt.
|
| I think that comes down to whether you believe that
|
| A) Someone can experience a negative qualia
|
| B) Someone can rationaly predict that said living situation
| is now a permenant state of affairs with a high enough degree
| of certainty
|
| C) That death is a negative (negative only insofar as it can
| effect others) to neutral qualia that is still higher than
| and therefore preferable to an expected permenant negative
| qualia.
|
| I'm not of the opinion that this is something that can
| typically be done independently, as humans are vulnerable to
| a host of conditions that can impair our ability to make
| judgement B, and I sure as hell hope that anyone wanting to
| make that decision trusts the people they ask to help them
| make it.
|
| The protoypical example people tend to use is alzheimers
| victims, who are frequently (but not always) permenantly and
| irrecoverably (for now hopefully) distressed.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" Every organ, vessel, and part of your body, especially
| your brain, is dedicated to keeping you alive for as long as
| possible."_
|
| They're not dedicated to keeping people alive. They _may_
| play a role in keeping some people alive (or not, depending
| on a lot of factors).
|
| You're imagining purpose for organs and cells which just
| exist and sometimes function or sometimes don't.
|
| Even if they did have some purpose (which there's no evidence
| for), does that mean that humans should blindly submit to
| whatever that purpose is?
|
| Why shouldn't a human be able to make their own decisions
| instead of giving over decision-making authority to their
| body?
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| _I 'm not convinced there's anything rational in suicide by
| definition. Every organ, vessel, and part of your body,
| especially your brain, is dedicated to keeping you alive for
| as long as possible._
|
| I would say it's dedicated to keeping you alive long enough
| to raise children and help your children raise children.
| Which may be the same thing in practice, but more in line
| with how evolution works.
| Thiez wrote:
| That's an interesting assumption. So _only_ acts that are in
| "harmony" with what your body desires are rational, and all
| other acts are, by your definition, irrational? So when I'm
| under water, swimming up to the surface, and my body is
| telling me to take a breath _right now_ , that would be
| rational? And suppressing the urge until I reach the surface
| is irrational?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| One major challenge is that careful premeditation does not
| necessarily mean suicide is rational. There is a big crossover
| between people who consider suicide and people with disorders
| negatively impacting their cognition and decision making.
| aeturnum wrote:
| > _people with disorders negatively impacting their cognition
| and decision making._
|
| I think we should be really careful about how we think & talk
| about this.
|
| There are a few situations (like psychotic breaks) where
| people fully believe delusions that, in a short time, they
| will reject. We can cleanly call those experiences
| "irrational."
|
| On the other hand, people who experience long term depression
| literally experience the world differently in a way that we
| frequently cannot 'correct'[1]. Those people are not
| irrationally convinced that the world is hard to be in - they
| have brains for which things feel worse than for neurotypical
| brains. We can agree on all objectively measurable qualities
| of the world and their experience of that world will still be
| subjectively and consistently worse.
|
| The conversations from the right-to-die movement can be
| useful here, as chronic pain and disease offer a lens through
| which to understand. We have all experienced physical pain,
| but we have not all experienced serious depression.
|
| All I mean to say is that in the same way that someone with
| any chronic illness should have some choice in when and how
| they die, people who have chronic mental conditions should
| have the same right. We do not want to make the mistake of
| thinking that a person in a more complicated situation is
| compromised in some way - just that their world is more
| complex and we should take care to attend to the specifics of
| it.
|
| [1] It's not clear what way of seeing the world is 'right'
| but I will use correct here even with its implication that
| neurotypical people live in the real world.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I totally agree that it is a very tricky subject,
| especially regarding depression. Having some experience
| with it myself, I would argue that irrational pessimism is
| a major feature of depression. For example, people cannot
| accurately asses actions and activities that would in fact
| make them happier if they were to follow through.
|
| In this way, I think they are clearly distinct from those
| with terminal illness or chronic pain.
|
| I agree that people should have the right to choose death,
| independent of the rationality of their decision.
| Ultimately, people are the owner of their body and steward
| of their life, even if they are imperfect and irrational
| ones. Taking autonomy away turns individuals and their body
| into the property of someone else.
|
| I think there is some room for temporary holds and crisis
| management, but all such activities should be finite in
| duration.
| aeturnum wrote:
| > _I agree that people should have the right to choose
| death, independent of the rationality of their decision_
|
| I don't think that that there is an ethical imperative to
| allow people to carry out irrational decisions. I was
| trying to say that, if someone with depression or another
| chronic mental illness decides they would rather be dead
| than alive, then after we determine that decision doesn't
| come from a passing[1] delusion, then we should give that
| desire the same weight we give to people with other
| chronic conditions. We all have the right to choose,
| after a time, that we do not want to live this way.
|
| I also think that having a global standard for "rational"
| v.s. "irrational" is difficult enough that I think
| drawing strong lines tends to do more harm than good. So,
| in practice, I suppose I support people who
| "irrationally" wish to end their lives, but only due to
| the impossibility of determining what 'rational' means
| for each of our subjective perspectives.
|
| [1] Whatever "passing" means - it is not an easy
| question.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think we agree in principle. I think that defining
| rational vs irrational IS difficult, and therefore choose
| to draw the line such that it doesn't matter for a
| persons right to choose.
|
| This addresses the fact that a severely depressed person
| may not be able to make the same objective assessments of
| the world that the chronically I'll can.
|
| A severely and chronically depressed person might think
| "I have no chance at happiness" when in reality, they
| actually do. If they base their decision on this premise,
| they would be following faulty logic. My point is that
| they have a fundamental right to act based on their
| conclusions, _even if they are wrong_.
| aeturnum wrote:
| > _My point is that they have a fundamental right to act
| based on their conclusions, even if they are wrong._
|
| 100% agree!
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| Suicide is not irrational in of itself. Facing 25-Life?
| Perfectly rational. Lost all your money and have no retirement?
| Still very rational. All you friends left you and you are
| completely alone to fend for yourself? Still rational.
|
| America needs to get over itself that life needs to be lived
| until a natural death. Not everybody wants to further deal with
| the excessive burdens of life. Suicide, when not done in a spur
| of the moment decision, can be wholly rational. Wanting to live
| a garbage quality if life because society thinks it's weird to
| just end it to not suffer is some Catholic guilt being forced
| on everyone.
| autoexec wrote:
| For the most part, I agree with you, and people should be
| free to choose their own death at any time for any reason
| (rational or otherwise), but "all your friends leaving you"
| may be something that can be changed. At the very least new
| friends can almost always be found. It wouldn't seem rational
| to me at least to end your life over that for most people. I
| can respect a person's right to make that choice in any
| situation, but I don't have to agree with it.
| tpush wrote:
| > All you friends left you and you are completely alone to
| fend for yourself? Still rational.
|
| I don't think suicide is a rational response to that; I even
| think it's dangerous to frame it as any kind of 'rational'
| action to take in such a situation.
| SirFatty wrote:
| Someone can think about killing themselves for months or years
| before actually doing it.. are you suggesting that is
| irrational because there wasn't a plan or consideration of
| others?
| naturalauction wrote:
| "All 29 people who survived their suicide attempts off San
| Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge have said they regretted their
| decision as soon as they jumped."
|
| https://ennyman.medium.com/a-lesson-from-29-golden-gate-
| suic...
|
| Sure most suicide attempts aren't done this way but I think
| statistics like this showcase how many suicides are
| irrational on some level. If it was rational then you'd think
| they wouldn't immediately regret it (unless the regret is
| irrational I guess).
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Perhaps their regret is a significant contributor to their
| survival though.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Or perhaps they are only saying they regret it so they
| aren't thrown into a mental hospital. I wonder if there
| was a follow up on longterm survival.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| Of 515 people prevented by police from jumping off the
| Golden Gate Bridge between 1937 and 1971, by the end of
| the 70s only 6% of them had committed suicide by other
| means.
|
| Source: "Where are they now?" by Richard Seiden
| giantg2 wrote:
| Interesting, thanks!
| underseacables wrote:
| The final act itself is either rational, or irrational. I
| think most people commit suicide as an irrational sudden
| decision. They may have thought about it, they may have
| planned about it, but I think there's a clear delineation
| between someone who says screw it, and kills themselves,
| versus someone who plans and commits the act with thoughtful
| deliberation. To make it easier to understand, perhaps you
| might look at this between a person who sees a train coming
| and decides in that moment tk step in front of the train, and
| someone who takes a Final Exit approach at home.
|
| The mystery is what is going through the persons mind at the
| moment of self execution.
|
| edit: I used the wrong word to describe a final act.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Rationality seems like an irrelevant term here. Desire for
| suicide is obviously subjective and has no objective
| answer. I doubt spur of the moment suicides are very
| common, although the 'an hero' kid and the one that
| misunderstood their robinhood debt come to mind. Most
| suicide is going to be premeditated to a large degree. How
| certain do the specifics need to be for it to be considered
| rational? I think that's grey. A lot of people point to
| studies showing people who survive suicide attempts often
| say it was a mistake, but these strike me as having an
| enormous survivor bias embedded in them (not on the initial
| attempt, but on additional more successful attempts
| subsequently). So long as an act isn't based on strictly
| false premises or mind altering substances, I'm inclined to
| say most are "rational" if such a term can be applied.
|
| I've never been suicidal, but I've always felt that strong
| anti-suicide advocates, while strongly well intentioned,
| might not be fully reasoning out their belief systems. I
| think I'd greatly prefer to go out on my own terms in old
| age, without need for qualifiers like pain or disability.
|
| Recognizing the time for your conclusion is a tropey act
| for old characters in fiction, and implies deep wisdom. But
| in real life we assume anyone feeling similar has lost
| their mind.
| underseacables wrote:
| Anytime there is talk of suicide in this community I've
| always remembered heartbreaking final words of Bill
| Zeller. Didn't know him personally, but I would consider
| his act a rational one. I do think suicide can be
| irrational, which comes down to heat of the moment. I've
| had a few friends commit suicide, and it's a horrible
| thing to endure, but I understand. A persons choice to in
| their life should be theirs completely, but I hope it's
| one that is done with a rational thought out purpose. Not
| a spur of the moment thing.
|
| https://gizmodo.com/the-agonizing-last-words-of-
| programmer-b...
| finnh wrote:
| (sorry to be that guy, just a useful FYI)
|
| I think you may want "ultimate"? penultimate = second-to-
| last.
| underseacables wrote:
| Ah! Thank you, you're absolutely correct. I changed it to
| "final".
| kar5pt wrote:
| Living can be irrational too. There are plenty of people
| who are completely miserable with no hope or plan to make
| anything better, but still choose to live out of pure fear
| of death.
|
| There's always a conversation over whether suicide is
| rational, but no one thinks to ask if living is rational.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> Robert Lowell once said that if humans had access to a
| button that would kill us instantly and painlessly, we would
| all press it sooner or later.
|
| > I think this explains suicide better: For most, it's an
| irrational act done in the spur of the moment.
|
| Or it's rational, but we have some "irrational" mechanisms to
| prevent it that are best defeated by an impulsive act [1].
|
| I don't actually believe that, but it's hard to argue against
| it under certain common sets of assumptions.
|
| [1] e.g. from a rationalist/materialist perspective: suicide is
| to avoid/escape pain, and it also removes the pain of guilt for
| doing it and the pain of missing out on all future pleasures,
| etc. However, evolution has formed us to reproduce, no matter
| how painful the struggle is and how subjectively irrational it
| is to endure it.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" Robert Lowell once said that if humans had access to a
| button that would kill us instantly and painlessly, we would
| all press it sooner or later."_
|
| They'd push it even sooner if no one they cared about depended
| on them.
|
| A lot of people stay alive simply out of a sense of
| responsibility towards others.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I think the storage space for our notion of 'others' or
| 'loved ones' is one extremely potent part of our minds. I am
| who I love somehow, my brain goes against destroying that
| bond.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| "They'd push it even sooner if no one they cared about
| depended on them. A lot of people stay alive simply out of a
| sense of responsibility towards others."
|
| That would be me. I don't want to be a burden to people.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| Barring cases of extreme physical pain or terminal illness or old
| age I can't understand the point of suicide. You are not around
| to enjoy the result of your consequent non-existence. Chronic
| severe mental illness is another possible reason but even for
| that I believe it can be treated in many cases with
| unconventional approaches like pschedelics (eg ketamine,
| exercise, religious experience, etc).
|
| Suffering is a natural part of life not something to be escaped
| on a whim.
| hashhar wrote:
| TL; DR -- You have a chronic pain. No painkillers help. Every
| doctor you go to doesn't have a quick-fix. People around you
| keep telling you "you're imagining things", "be spiritual", "it
| isn't as bad as you think", "it'll go away". Nothing you try
| seems to help. You wake up every day feeling the pain and it
| keeps getting worse with no end in sight.
|
| Image living this for even a year (where this is what life
| looks like for some people for the last 20 years or more) and
| then tell me you wouldn't say no to "anything to make the pain
| go away".
|
| ---
|
| Hear me out.
|
| Let's say you wake up tomorrow with a bit of a headache. You
| take an aspirin and go about your day.
|
| You wake up tomorrow but it's still there. You visit a doctor
| who tells you to "take it easy" and you go about your day
| again.
|
| You wake up the next day and it's still not better. You
| begrudgingly get out of bed and go about your day. Someone
| tells you that you seem a bit irritable today. You then try to
| be aware of it and end up spending considerable mental energy
| trying to be "sociable". You get back home a bit exhausted.
|
| You wake up and it's worse. Your brain seems to amplify little
| things up to 100. You spilled some milk and you think the
| entire day will be like this. You feel "let's stay in today". A
| friend comes over, you end up exhausted trying to put on a
| normal face and overthink about how come it looks so easy for
| your friend to plan a night out today? They invite you and you
| accept hoping it might help.
|
| You visit the party and you feel a bit okay while in the
| moment. You go back home and you feel exhausted and sleep.
|
| the next day is even worse. Your brain tells you why bother
| getting out of bed - it's not like anything nice is going to
| happen to you today. you fight it and get out of bed but you
| can't find your slippers - you feel the day is going to be shit
| again but you go out anyway.
|
| Repeat previous paragraph x 1 year. Now the next day your brain
| convinces you there's no point in getting out today. You stay
| in, skip a few meals and it's night. You put on a movie and you
| enjoy it. Once it's over the feeling comes back. You get
| frustrated - you pick out some substances to help you "feel
| less". Maybe this feels a bit better.
|
| You repeat this for a few months.
|
| You are now so irritable and so envious of others that your
| personal relations start to suffer and you lash out on others.
| Slowly your circle shrinks.
|
| Now it's easier to not get out of bed.
|
| By now you've had the same day for the last 5 years and you
| can't see it getting any better. You go to a therapist. If they
| are good maybe you both figure out some things together that
| help you conquer small things - like getting multiple slippers
| one for each room and your brain no longer needs to panick if
| it can't find the slipper.
|
| But sadly most of the people aren't so lucky.
|
| You try many medications, substances but nothing seems to last.
| You want a quick fix but there is none to be found (unlike for
| physical pain). 10 years have gone by with the same morning
| every day - each a bit worse than the last. Now you think "This
| isn't going to improve I think. Nobody has answers. There are
| no solutions. Nothing seems to help. There is no sunshine.".
|
| Your inner voice tells you about a few other things you haven't
| tried yet. And that's how we lose you.
|
| So forgive me for saying this but people like you who have no
| empathy and are so willing to invalidate how many people feel
| on a daily basis don't deserve to be making decisions for
| others.
| kenjackson wrote:
| > You are not around to enjoy the result of your consequent
| non-existence.
|
| For a lot of people, that isn't the point. They've really lost
| hope. They think there is no end to the suffering. Many times
| they've already tried ways to effectively blunt feeling in
| their life with, at best, limited success. I've heard it said,
| "what's the point? i can't go through this any longer".
|
| > Suffering is a natural part of life not something to be
| escaped on a whim.
|
| But if you all feel and foresee is suffering, what is the
| benefit of living? I'm not advocating suicide at all, but I'm
| trying point out why it can seem rational.
| sneak wrote:
| > _Suffering is a natural part of life not something to be
| escaped on a whim._
|
| All major life choices can be made on a whim, if the chooser so
| desires it. That's the nice thing about liberty.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| So it is ok if somebody kills you on a whim?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Some people are just generally unhappy. They have been for
| decades. At that point why would they want to continue? After
| 30 years of unhappiness one day they'll wake up happy?
| 98Windows wrote:
| You have been blessed with a happy life then, feel glad you
| don't understand the appeal of suicide
| morpheos137 wrote:
| actually I have a pretty bad life right now. I just chose not
| to feel too bad about it and I know it can and will change.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| The point of suicide is to end suffering, not commit to a happy
| predictable retirement. If you ever have a moment in your life
| that causes you to contemplate it, you'll understand.
| Otherwise, I personally don't believe people like you should be
| making decisions for those people who do. You have no
| understanding of what it feels like to consider that as
| actually being a rational thought.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| Nothing about life is rational.
|
| I believe I "contemplate" suicide frequently but I have no
| inclination to do it because what good would it do me?
| Suicide is self-murder no matter how we sugar coat it. If we
| reach a point as a society where murdering ones self is
| condoned why wouldn't that make murder of others less severe?
| If life is not sacred then it seems to me that murder becomes
| more like a property crime.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| cmehdy wrote:
| I like the article for the most part. I've noticed many comments
| here are lacking the empathy that is so fundamentally needed in
| this world to help those who suffer alleviate the pain, so as a
| fellow struggling one I figured I could throw my words to the
| wind.
|
| People more readily mentally visualize somebody without a leg,
| somebody with open fractures. Not so much for mind stuff, it's
| not concrete enough to most until it turns physical (i.e. you're
| a bloodstain on the floor). That's why some comments go along the
| lines of "I can understand suicide for physical pain but not for
| mental one". I would suggest that a broken self hurts more than
| an open fracture, and lacking certain central abilities to
| stabilize the self leaves you much more legless than if you lost
| your physical legs.
|
| Other comments point out the endless rational vs irrational
| discussion. I'd ask them: when you go get a drink at a cafe and
| you're about to order a cappuccino but you ask for a latte, how
| do you see the whole process? You've planned something rationally
| (going to get that cappuccino) and made a seemingly irrational
| choice at the end (getting the latte). Are you rational or not?
|
| Furthermore, by what lens do you judge when the absence of
| rational decision is an illness? Typically people will reply
| either with a utilitarian point of view or a selfish one: either
| you are being counter-productive to society with your guts and
| bloods that need to be cleaned and the lack of your presence in
| the consumerist world, or I take it all backwards and call you
| ill first because that's what agrees with my worldview ("you're
| sick, you can't know what's good for you").
|
| What I have done with myself and others is to acknowledge that
| those bits of perhaps-irrationality are not relevant to helping
| things, as we all have them in different places as we live and
| that's okay. It's also important to acknowledge that one can be
| right to feel like they're backed into a corner when a lot of
| evidence accrues towards that. BUT, the essential part is to show
| methodically that (1) there are levers of action that we are
| steering clear of due to cognitive distortions or lack of
| awareness, and (2) all suicidal people are fighting to be alive
| much more than even they might know, as they're still around even
| when making aimless steps due to the crushing pain. In short, tap
| into what wants to live to push back against what wants to die,
| and show that the realm of what is possible to advance is much
| larger than one might think when in the fog.
|
| ----
|
| With that said, I have my own take on parts of the article
| itself.
|
| > A reader of a late-nineteenth-century edition of Chambers's
| Encyclopaedia would find committing suicide described as a
| "heinous crime," for which the punishments included "an
| ignominious burial in the highway, with a stake driven through
| the body." Today the National Institute of Mental Health cautions
| against saying that a person "committed" suicide at all; better
| to say that they "completed" it, to avoid the implication of an
| illicit or criminal act.
|
| As if suicide wasn't still considered a vile and illegal thing.
| You can share your mental health struggles with a therapist just
| fine until you're a risk to yourself and they call people to,
| forcibly if needed, remove you and take you wherever they want.
| Your rights can be severely limited or removed entirely when a
| psychiatric emergency is considered - how is that any different
| from being treated like a criminal? Psychiatric intake can
| pragmatically be worse than prison intake, from someone who's
| seen both.
|
| It's not seen as vile by everybody but there are still far too
| many people who frame the process with words of abandonment, with
| selfishness, with dismissal of all the inner work of the
| suffering through the singular use of irrationality as an
| absolute concept ("you're just irrational"), and so on. You're
| not considered as an equal to your peers when you're suicidal,
| and that's not something you get to argue against because that's
| just part of how you're defined by them. See the following
| paragraph for something related.
|
| > When patients told Freud that their lives were hopeless or
| without purpose, he considered this an impressive display of
| self-awareness. "We can only wonder," he wrote, "why a man must
| become ill before he can discover truth of this kind."
|
| That's Freud we're talking about so whatever.. but that train of
| thought still seems to exist quite a bit nowadays. The
| introspection and the ability to shatter illusions is put in the
| same box as the delusions that a "sick" person has, leading a lot
| of people with severe depression and other disorders to associate
| one with the other since society does it too. "My ability to dig
| deeper is part of why I am sick" is entirely the wrong message to
| send to a vulnerable person, and it is just incorrect. For it is
| not the power to see beyond the surface that is a problem, but
| the delusions one might hold or acquire about the process. CBT
| points it out with the terms of cognitive distortions, which is a
| start. It doesn't necessarily offer a wholly coherent narrative
| for the emergence of those distortions, nor does it offer a
| strong logical argument to disprove the utility of those
| distortions (i.e. somebody in pain could say "so what if I see
| everything in black and white? this is how I've managed to
| survive so far, so you better prove to me that what you're
| offering would help me survive better").
|
| > (about Shneidman) "I am against suicide committed by other
| people," he wrote, "but I want to reserve that option for
| myself."
|
| This holds meaning that most healthy people might not realize.
| People who commit suicide go to the last place where there is a
| semblance of effective control and ability to choose an option,
| have some agency, in a world that (objectively sometimes but not
| most of the time) presents no other option. Healthy people have
| the comfort of a grip on their existence, or at the very least
| the comfort of an illusion of a grip on it. Despite having their
| own beliefs and instabilities, they aren't mandatorily taught CBT
| and other such similar things - whereas it is expected of the
| "sick" to do more of the homework. It's like breaking your legs
| on a hike and then being asked to do leg workouts to keep up,
| when other people happen to be luckier and go without both things
| and wouldn't themselves be able to do the workout.
|
| But this is a necessary thing for a person with mental illness to
| do nonetheless, and I'm not debating that point. What I am trying
| to point at however is that the world of people who are unaware
| of such struggles is filled with a violent hypocrisy that
| contributes to the reasons for very lacking mental health
| services and very lacking social support from peers, as it drives
| the ones who suffer away from everybody else. It would do well
| for any healthy person to acknowledge that they, too, could be
| cornered into helplessness if their need for control (or the
| illusion of it) shattered. That brings them closer to the person
| considered ill, and thus narrows the gap for bridges to be built
| - showing both kinds of people that there is a passage between
| the states. That's an application of empathy that would
| strengthen the vulnerable at no other cost. But the healthy too
| can have cognitive distortions and might actually fear that it
| weakens them.
|
| This sort of disconnect between those who study the subject
| matter and those who experience is it nothing new, so it's funny
| to see that it surprises people who've worked on the subject for
| a while (as the article highlights about Brent and Shneidman)
|
| > "One of the problems with suicide," he said after a time, "is
| that the person who killed themselves takes a lot of the answers
| with them."
|
| And the people who failed are not being asked much of anything,
| but instead being told what to do. You'll be diagnosed this,
| given those meds, told to apply this and that method. Any
| question about mind and life are only there in order to give you
| a method, not to understand. Something diametrically opposed to
| the mind of the suffering in the first place, which seeks
| understanding of self and answers so much that it spirals and
| loses track of healthy methods to do so. Funnily enough, I think
| both sides are going at it kinda wrong, and we can do much better
| by weaving both approaches together and treading the middle line.
| Sometimes you need a practical tool, and sometimes you need to
| understand for the sake of understanding. Be both to yourself, be
| both to others.
| hashhar wrote:
| > People more readily mentally visualize somebody without a
| leg, somebody with open fractures. Not so much for mind stuff,
| > it's not concrete enough to most until it turns physical
| (i.e. you're a bloodstain on the floor). That's why > some
| comments go along the lines of "I can understand suicide for
| physical pain but not for mental one". I > would suggest that a
| broken self hurts more than an open fracture, and lacking
| certain central abilities to > stabilize the self leaves you
| much more legless than if you lost your physical legs.
|
| 100% agreed. People have felt physical pain of very wide ranges
| before so they have some "scale" on which they can measure it.
| e.g. stubbing toe to a fracture to a chronic pain. But people
| thankfully don't have similar breadth in the level of mental
| pain they have experienced. So they cannot imagine a "mental
| pain" ever being equivalent to getting your leg amputated
| without anesthesia.
|
| I like how Mike Shinoda talks about it - if you woke up with a
| bad back tomorrow you might take some rest; if it was worse the
| next day then you take some painkillers and the next day you
| might visit a doctor. But we don't think similarly for mental
| health.
|
| If you are not feeling good you may try to go through the day
| anyway; next day it's worse so you should think "I should take
| it easy today"; the next day you might visit the doctor.
|
| Another issue which people cannot seem to understand is that
| someone not taking mental health seriously and saying things
| like "you are overthinking", "it's not as bad", "knock it off",
| "you're a downer" etc end up invalidating the other person's
| existence (since that's what life is like for them at the
| moment and people are essentially saying your life isn't real),
| make them feel like a burden, make them feel that the other
| person's life is worth more than their own, that they aren't
| useful and that nobody cares if they didn't exist anymore.
|
| Imagine:
|
| Your leg got crushed and I tell you "it's not that bad", "stop
| being a baby", "get over it", "you are making a big deal out of
| this". There is no solution for your leg so it hurts the same
| every day and I keep saying things like that every day. At some
| point you'll break. Combine the invalidation with the pain you
| are already feeling and you'll be like "no one understands me",
| "there's no one to support me", "i'm a burden" etc and maybe
| one day you'll be gone.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| If there was a simple and dignified way to end my life I think I
| would have done it multiple times already. My whole life so far
| has been a struggle with feeling that I am not fitting in, with
| social anxiety, depression and other stuff. There have also been
| good times but it seems whenever I start to believe that life is
| good, something happens, and the happiness is taken away. The
| older I get the more tired I get and I really don't feel anymore
| like fighting to find a place in life where I feel ok.
|
| What's holding me up mainly is that this would probably freak out
| family and friends and I don't want to be a burden to them. I
| also still have the hope that one day things will get better but
| that hope is diminishing.
|
| I just watched somebody go through a serious cancer treatment and
| I am 100% sure that I wouldn't have gone through the treatment
| but would have ended it. I don't want to go through the hell of
| treatment only to end up back in a life that's not much fun
| either.
| okareaman wrote:
| As someone who has struggle with suicidal ideation his entire
| life, whenever the subject comes up I try to educate people by
| quoting author David Foster Wallace (who commited suicide) with
| the best explanation:
|
| _"The so-called 'psychotically depressed' person who tries to
| kill herself doesn't do so out of quote 'hopelessness' or any
| abstract conviction that life's assets and debits do not square.
| And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person
| in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level
| will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually
| jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake
| about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of
| falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be
| for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just
| checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a
| constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's
| flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death
| becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not
| desiring the fall; it's terror of the flames. And yet nobody down
| on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling 'Don't!' and 'Hang on!',
| can understand the jump. Not really. You'd have to have
| personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a
| terror way beyond falling."_
| jsmith45 wrote:
| One flaw with the analogy is that a pretty significant portion
| of suicides (successful or attempts) are impulsive. Many people
| who attempt it have literally no idea they will when they wake
| up that morning.
|
| A 2001 University of Houston study of survivors of near lethal
| attempts showed that 70% of them had only decided to do it an
| hour or less before the attempt, and 24 percent had only spent
| 5 minutes before the attempt.
|
| If when attempting it, they discover that their chosen method
| won't work for some reason, many will just give up on killing
| themselves rather than looking for an alternative measure.
|
| This has been reliably seen many times. If a change is made
| such that one suicide method becomes unfeasible, the overall
| attempt rate drops. If one were committed to offing oneself it
| is almost impossible to stop them, as there are countless ways
| to do it. But the statistics are very clear that if some method
| is removed, alternatives are not always used.
|
| The British had an issue with people killing themselves with
| oven fumes, back when the ovens used coal gas which created a
| lot of carbon monoxide, with this accounting for about 50% of
| suicide deaths. When things were changed to use natural gas
| where this approach does not work, suicides dropped by 30%.
| Obviously while that means a portion ending up using some other
| method, many others simply never killed themselves.
|
| Of 515 people prevented by police from jumping off the Golden
| Gate Bridge between 1937 and 1971, by the end of the 70s only
| 6% of them had committed suicide by other means.
|
| Weirdly even some of the non-impulsive cases where people had
| planned an attempt for days or weeks just give up if their plan
| is foiled, rather than coming up with some alternative method.
|
| Now obviously not everybody is like this. Some people will
| continue to try over and over until they succeed. But the
| numbers suggest that those are very much a minority.
| smolder wrote:
| These are great points but I don't see them as conflicting
| with the analogy. The suffering DFW refers to that drives
| someone to suicide is something felt in the moment. He
| contrasts the impulsive decision to die with deciding the
| same based on some balance sheet of suffering.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Of 515 people prevented by police from jumping off the
| Golden Gate Bridge between 1937 and 1971, by the end of the
| 70s only 6% of them had committed suicide by other means.
|
| Perhaps much of that is because they got the help they needed
| following the incident. It probably also helps that they were
| a group made up of those who were able to be persuaded by
| police to not jump in the first place already showing at
| least some willingness to keep living.
| vmception wrote:
| You are reducing things to statistics at the detriment to a
| large number of people.
|
| You are responding to a thread of someone not like what you
| described, who exists in great numbers as well. The two
| examples you presented are wildly different: Britain's
| suicide rate dropped 30% and now they are at square zero
| again how to prevent all those suicides that keep happening!
|
| The point of even talking about it is to show how useless
| telling someone "hey just call this phone number, because I
| care about you, well I don't actually know you but I avoid
| the topic of suicide" is just as useless as the people on the
| ground telling someone not to jump from a burning building.
|
| Even if they don't jump (or do call the suicide prevention
| number), the fire is still there (the underlying problem is
| unresolved and still not reconcilable)
| Jare wrote:
| > One flaw with the analogy [...] Many people who attempt it
| have literally no idea they will when they wake up that
| morning.
|
| Can you elaborate? That sounds pretty much like the people in
| the analogy to me. They jump because the alternative they
| face right now is more terrifying for some reason. It makes
| sense that not all methods of suicide fulfill that criteria
| (being less terrifying than the alternative), even if they
| are all methods to end your life.
| dalmo3 wrote:
| I reacted the same way when I read that part too, but the
| rest of the comment illustrates it well with the failed
| attempts data.
|
| To go back to the analogy, it's as if they try to jump from
| the window, but there's a safety net that blocks them.
| They're stuck inside and the fire is mysteriously gone.
| _tulpa wrote:
| Having been there personally and spent time with others in by
| same place: it probably can't be anything but "impulsive" for
| most people. It really is a "hang on til it hurts too much",
| reasons for/against tend to come and go, and the decision can
| be made/unmade all the time.
|
| This is human behaviour, and causality is really not as
| simple as wanking some stats around and making a bunch of
| super tenuous inference. 'fuck outta here with that
| reductionist bullshit.
| tialaramex wrote:
| > The British had an issue with people killing themselves
| with oven fumes, back when the ovens used coal gas which
| created a lot of carbon monoxide, with this accounting for
| about 50% of suicide deaths.
|
| This detail is a little wrong or at least confusing. The coal
| gas (typically called "Town gas") was about 10-20% carbon
| monoxide, along with hydrogen, and other flammable gases.
| When set aflame in a ventilated room, the carbon monoxide
| burns - like the other gases - producing mostly carbon
| _dioxide_ which is still slightly poisonous but since we
| breathe huge amounts of it already it 's not near the top of
| your list of problems.
|
| In this era British people (maybe 1000 per year or so) commit
| suicide by turning on the gas supply to an oven but _not_
| lighting it. The phrase "stick my head in the oven"
| signifies suicide for this reason, the implication is not
| that you would cook your head, but that you would
| deliberately breathe the poisonous carbon monoxide and die.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Also some levels of pain completely fuzz the upper layers of
| the brain in ways that are hard to describe.
| rubyfan wrote:
| This is an amazing explanation, thank you for sharing this.
| kingsloi wrote:
| I agree, thank you.
| phkahler wrote:
| I can agree with DFW on that because it sounds reasonable and
| consistent with people I've known. The error is in thinking
| there is a single train of thought leading to the end.
| "Hopelessness" may not be sufficient, but Demoralization is
| probably an indicator. I would also posit that excessive or
| increased rumination (possibly leading to an increased sense of
| demoralization) is also an indicator. It is apparently also a
| thing that Borderline patients are at increased risk, though I
| have no idea what goes through their mind in that moment.
|
| So DFW rejected others ideas on the subject in favor of his own
| experience? Sounds a little narcissistic doesn't it?
| ppod wrote:
| >It measured for what Emotra called "electrodermal
| hyporeactivity" by running a weak current over the skin as the
| sweat glands open and close. The association with suicide had
| been advertised by an experimental psychiatrist named Lars-Hakan
| Thorell, Emotra's founder,
|
| This has regulatory approval in the EU? Why is Harpers even
| writing about this?
| gmuslera wrote:
| Wrong science fiction reference, it should be The Minority
| Report.
|
| Would your prediction cause it? avoid it? It was really about to
| happen? If you are "testing" it, stopping the people that is
| about to do it would mess with the test? And not stopping them
| would count as unintentional murder?
|
| My objections are not about suicides, but about predictions in
| general and predictions that can affect human lives in
| particular.
| 3520 wrote:
| In order to predict suicide you'd need real-time data of wide
| variety of aspects of a human being (levels of pain,
| hopelessness, connectedness, capability for suicide, etc) in a
| way that is impossible to achieve at the moment (insufficient
| measures and insufficient data gathering techniques).
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-07-21 23:01 UTC)