California To Permit Medically Assisted Suicide As Of June 9 - Polidicks

Well yeah, those things can be expensive when they definitely shouldn't be. Which goes into the whole lack of appropriate mental health care available, etc. etc. It's such a long and arduous chain of "well if THIS was better then THIS would be better" and so on and so on. But that's why assisted suicide for mental illnesses is such dangerous territory. There are so many factors and so many different things to consider that it probably would never be just as easy as "sure, we'll help you take your own life".

[QUOTE=RenegadeCop;49912866]One can be treated, though. You should at least give treatment an attempt, if a cure or treatment is possible.[/QUOTE] If they don't want treatment and prefer to die, let them. Living with a mental illness makes it's mark forever on you, and even if it's "controlled", life will get very difficult. Don't forget the prejudice some of these people face, as well.

[QUOTE=Starpluck;49912603]Yearning to die indicates some sort of dysfunction that ought to be rectified and dying is not just you "vanishing" and that's it. There is a lot of work to be done postmortem for it to be just considered as respawning or re-rolling the dice.[/QUOTE] What kind of work?

[QUOTE=Tea Guy;49912980]That's a bit of assumption there, there have been people who planned to kill themsleves for years and gone through with it. [url]http://martin-manley.eprci.com/[/url][/QUOTE] Everyone who bought, received, assembled, and used an exit bag comes to mind.

[QUOTE=Pascall;49912986]Well yeah, those things can be expensive when they definitely shouldn't be. Which goes into the whole lack of appropriate mental health care available, etc. etc. It's such a long and arduous chain of "well if THIS was better then THIS would be better" and so on and so on. But that's why assisted suicide for mental illnesses is such dangerous territory. There are so many factors and so many different things to consider that it probably would never be just as easy as "sure, we'll help you take your own life".[/QUOTE] For me personally, as a person with depression, it's not about "getting help to die". It's that no one, not a single swinging dick on this whole planet, has a right to my life besides I do. No one gets to decide that but me. And the more people have told me that it's not my choice, the more inclined I am to see it as a viable option. You can't tell a depressed person who's losing control of their lives, that their actual life isn't theirs to make choices with. You just make them worse. I don't think we should help depressed people die, but I don't think we should be so paternalistic as to think it's not their choice, or that we matter in relation to that choice. I say this as a person who's lost friends to suicide, who's seen a friend hanging from the rafters of his garage, as a person who knows a friend who's dad committed suicide. No matter how much we hurt in the aftermath, it's wrong to blame that person in a lot of ways. We hurt now, they hurt then, they had no help or saw no way through it and I have so much sympathy for that. [editline]11th March 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=Dark RaveN;49913004]What kind of work?[/QUOTE] Well young people never leave funeral arrangments, so there's that. Body disposal, clean up, possesions, the will if they had one, it's even more messy if they didn't have a will. There's an entire industry that exists around dealing with the dead.

[QUOTE=Starpluck;49912603]Yearning to die indicates some sort of dysfunction that ought to be rectified and dying is not just you "vanishing" and that's it. There is a lot of work to be done postmortem for it to be just considered as respawning or re-rolling the dice.[/QUOTE] It may not be "vanishing" to others, but it most certainly is to the person that wants to die. Also, why 'fix' people thinking about dying? They've made their choice.

I'm not saying that it's someone else's choice. Only saying that if it ever were going to be put on the table, a solution would likely never be found because of how convoluted depression and depression symptoms are and how varied people are who have it.

[QUOTE=Moronic;49912743]We don't have any evidence today. I would be inclined to say that after we die there is nothing, that consciousness completely ceases to exist in any form.[/QUOTE] there is some compelling, though anecdotal, evidence that reincarnation may be a real phenomenon [url]https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/feeling-too-much/201412/children-who-seemingly-remember-past-lives[/url] there is also all the anthropological evidence in the many, many, many cultures where reincarnation or life after death is a part of it. i have a hard time believing they all independently came to this conclusion without some evidence being there.

[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;49913058]there is some compelling, though anecdotal, evidence that reincarnation may be a real phenomenon [url]https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/feeling-too-much/201412/children-who-seemingly-remember-past-lives[/url] there is also all the anthropological evidence in the many, many, many cultures where reincarnation or life after death is a part of it. i have a hard time believing they all independently came to this conclusion without some evidence being there.[/QUOTE] Their have been many cases in ancient cultures of similar 'evidence' being used for certain beliefs, then years later we've proved those beliefs wrong. Besides, if reincarnation is real, then do you really think the person dying would be likely to go through all the pain they suffered in their past life?

[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;49913058]there is some compelling, though anecdotal, evidence that reincarnation may be a real phenomenon [url]https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/feeling-too-much/201412/children-who-seemingly-remember-past-lives[/url] there is also all the anthropological evidence in the many, many, many cultures where reincarnation or life after death is a part of it. i have a hard time believing they all independently came to this conclusion without some evidence being there.[/QUOTE] It's just human pattern recognition. Our brains have trouble reconciling something just "ending" like that so we dream up stories to explain it all away. We die. We're gone. That's it. I don't like sounding "certain" about it, but I've had near death experiences, I've nearly died a handful of times through circumstance and stupidity. I personally am sure of it, it's biological processes coming to end, we'd be a little self important to think the rules of physics break for our minds.

[QUOTE=Starpluck;49912864]That's good in theory — but people do not kill themselves after years in advance. If it took that long, they would likely reconsider and choose to live. Suicide is often done rashly, with little afterthought.[/QUOTE] [url]http://gawker.com/kc-man-kills-himself-leaves-behind-website-with-treas-1153793095[/url]

[QUOTE=Quark:;49913229][url]http://gawker.com/kc-man-kills-himself-leaves-behind-website-with-treas-1153793095[/url][/QUOTE] This is one example. Yes of course there are people who plan it in advance but the majority of completed suicides are the result of impulsive decisions and often made while under the influence of a substance.

Now if only they will extend this to anyone who wants the treatment.

[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;49913058]there is some compelling, though anecdotal, evidence that reincarnation may be a real phenomenon [url]https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/feeling-too-much/201412/children-who-seemingly-remember-past-lives[/url] there is also all the anthropological evidence in the many, many, many cultures where reincarnation or life after death is a part of it. i have a hard time believing they all independently came to this conclusion without some evidence being there.[/QUOTE] Well personal I find useless fragments of memories in the form chemicals arranged along neurons occasionally teleporting into the brain of random person 100 years later a teensy bit harder to believe.

i've seen someone get euthanised on national television. Not assisted suicide, but the doctor injecting the stuff. It's pretty instantanious, I think they use barbiturates and then muscle relaxants. When I have a terminal illness I would want them to add a big injection of morphine to the mix though

[QUOTE=Starpluck;49912757]Semantics is irrelevant. When you die, you are rolling the dice in assuming what happens next. Whether it be a respawn or into nothingness, it serves little to the larger argument at hand — killing yourself is not as simple as you and your estate "vanishing". Postmortem is a thing many people put their hands and hours on.[/QUOTE] What the fuck are you actually claiming that there is some kind of evidence for reincarnation lmao

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;49913148]It's just human pattern recognition. Our brains have trouble reconciling something just "ending" like that so we dream up stories to explain it all away. We die. We're gone. That's it. I don't like sounding "certain" about it, but I've had near death experiences, I've nearly died a handful of times through circumstance and stupidity. I personally am sure of it, it's biological processes coming to end, we'd be a little self important to think the rules of physics break for our minds.[/QUOTE] it seems more self-important to me to assume we know all the rules of physics. we cannot know for certain if there is not some sort of energy we have not been able to detect yet, and as such i believe it would be improper to absolutely discount theories about consciousness being nonphysical. a lot of what happens with studies into the topic coming from that angle is they either never happen or the person responsible is besmirched and career ruined for even suggesting it may be a possibility. this means we really don't have that many studies exploring those areas. i would rather have people looking into these possibilities without fear and find nothing than have everyone ignore it and never find a truth. additionally, why must we all give ourselves entirely to a materialist worldview? why should we ignore something that has been a pillar of the human experience since the dawn of history? i'm talking about spirituality, of course, as conversations of these nature breach into. why is it important that i live my life believing that everything goes to dust in the end? to me that says that existence is merely an aberration from absolute nothingness. that all happiness, all pain, everything that has happened and ever would happen, really shouldn't have happened in the first place. i used to live that existence. it was miserable, i am glad i survived it to think that perhaps there is more to everything than what only empirical work would tell you. i realized that my beliefs on the subject could be free from the paradigms of the scientific method and i would not be worse for wear. i feel free to explore topics i never would have looked at and i'm finding things that ring true to me. it is all very subjective, of course, but i find subjective experiences to be very important as the vast majority of our experience is subjective. i guess i just see it this way: if i believe in existence after death and am wrong, i won't have enough time to recognize it. if i believe in obliteration and are right, i won't be able to have that smug self-satisfaction of knowing it. i'd rather go with what brings me the most contentment

[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;49914585] i guess i just see it this way: if i believe in existence after death and am wrong, i won't have enough time to recognize it. if i believe in obliteration and are right, i won't be able to have that smug self-satisfaction of knowing it. i'd rather go with what brings me the most contentment[/QUOTE] And this is the real crux of these discussions would you rather believe in something true, or comforting? For me, the truth is more comforting than any thing we could come up with. Knowing reality is cold, hard, shit, and no sky father is looking out for me gives me a reason to keep going on. Because I know, it's in my hands. We actually have very sophisticated methods. We know what "YOU" are. We know how "YOU" function. We know, for a fact(unless you start going down Cartesian doubt), what your "Mind" is. Even just simple logical thought experiments bear out that this makes no sense. Souls are not a concept that can be proven, even if they did exist, nothing could ever prove it. It's unfalsifiable. For me, believing in that, is defeatist, and says that we shouldn't even try and understand the universe. You may say that's wrong, but look at this way. If there's an element of the universe that is truly unfalisifiable, then the universe is forever a mystery, and based on non-consistent properties. [editline]11th March 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=Mingebox;49913977]Well personal I find useless fragments of memories in the form chemicals arranged along neurons occasionally teleporting into the brain of random person 100 years later a teensy bit harder to believe.[/QUOTE] Pretty much this. I mean feel free to believe what you want, but you can't expect another person to not go "How the fuck does that make sense" [editline]11th March 2016[/editline] I look at the universe as a giant mystery, but a solvable one. If you add in reincarnation, then suddenly we're unfalsifiable because an element of our natures is now no longer explained by our biology, physics, chemistry. All that goes out the window, and universe can't be understood in a consistent manner. For me, it's so disconcerting to imagine a universe that isn't self consistent that I personally can't imagine how you came to your conclusions.

I never understood why we have laws that effect somebody's personal choice to do to their body what they wish. Drug laws and anti-euthanasia laws further the divide between having personal freedoms and the reality of living in the "freest country on earth"

I don't see why reincarnation or the soul is something that limits our understanding of the universe. Surely there would be a way to study them if they did in fact exist?

[QUOTE=MaximLaHaxim;49912989]If they don't want treatment and prefer to die, let them. Living with a mental illness makes it's mark forever on you, and even if it's "controlled", life will get very difficult. Don't forget the prejudice some of these people face, as well.[/QUOTE] We need to stop this idea that somehow you cannot live a life with mental illnesses, this is more endemic of North American outlooks but we always see people with mental health issues as hopeless or forever scared. We see them as hopeless when that's further from the truth than thinking they can easily live normal lives if they stop being sad or paranoid or what have you. There needs to be a fundamental change in how we approach mental health as it stands right now we attempt to treat it as if its a physical malady like the plague or cancer. We throw medication at the the weakest of cases and throw our arms up in defeat at the hardest ones. Some of our greatest creators, especially comedians, have been some of the hardest and most detrimental cases to exist. There are ways and methods beyond just the regimented pills and scheduled therapy. We can prevent and if not make someone happy, make them content and maybe over time make them happy. Suicidal depression is something I've fought and still have deep and fixed urges about but I know that ending it all is also not the answer because that's an answer, that's the equivalent of seeing a question on an exam and leaving it blank. [editline]11th March 2016[/editline] Fighting mental illness is not about snap decisions, its an entirely long and painful road leading to a place of content thinking and maybe a smile once and a while.

[QUOTE=BelatedGamer;49914686]I don't see why reincarnation or the soul is something that limits our understanding of the universe. Surely there would be a way to study them if they did in fact exist?[/QUOTE] That's basically saying everything we know now about how our brains function, how we work, is wrong, and is a misleading pile of garbage. Look, we know [B]so fucking much[/B] about how our brains and bodies work, there's obviously more to learn, monumentally more, but the basics are there, and they're not going to change realistically. You are neurons and chemicals being exchanged in your brain. When you die, that's lost. We know this for a fact because we've watched brains die. So, if souls, or reincarnation happens, then those elements of the personality, didn't matter. Your brain didn't matter, so all the science we have on it is garbage because of the "soul". I use this as a great example of why it makes no sense. Phineas Gage was a railroad worker who was a really nice man. Then, a rod was ejected through his skull and brain matter. Gage didn't die. Gage, a soft spoken and nice man, became a rude royal dick after his brain injury because it turns out, that section of his brain that governed his personality was damaged. So his personality changed in relation to a physical change to the brain. Now, this leads me to a few questions 1) If he had a soul, did his soul change? 2) If his soul changed because the body changed, then this change must be detectable 2a) If that change isn't detectable, what does that mean? 3) If his soul changed, does he go to heaven, or get reincarnated with that brain damage? 4) Is the brain the seat of personality or is it the soul? 5) if the soul is the actual seat of the personality, and "You", why the fuck do we have brains?

I'm not arguing for the existence of the soul at all.

[QUOTE=BelatedGamer;49914785]I'm not arguing for the existence of the soul at all.[/QUOTE] Reincarnation is largely the same concept. Your special "You"ness continues past your death. Same deal.

Or reincarnation.

[QUOTE=cody8295;49914668]I never understood why we have laws that effect somebody's personal choice to do to their body what they wish. Drug laws and anti-euthanasia laws further the divide between having personal freedoms and the reality of living in the "freest country on earth"[/QUOTE] Well you see there are social consequences to both drug use and being able to commit suicide whenever you feel like it. Drug abuse has many consequences that are external such as ruining families, relationships, and occupations. They also put strain on a medical care system because substance addiction is a disease. Anti-euthanasia laws are also in place to prevent people from killing themselves because of something that is temporary, curable, treatable, or is causing them to think irrationally or impulsively (such as with Depression, Bipolar Disorder, Psychotic Disorders etc). There are very good and valid reasons to have these laws in place.

[QUOTE=BelatedGamer;49914851]Or reincarnation.[/QUOTE] okay then what were you talking about? Those as concepts, would be untestable, unfalsifiable. There's an invisible unicorn behind you. There's [B]literally[/B] no way to prove, or disprove that. Might as well take it as a fact, right? No. Same concept. [editline]11th March 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=InvaderNouga;49914857]Well you see there are social consequences to both drug use and being able to commit suicide whenever you feel like it. Drug abuse has many consequences that are external such as ruining families, relationships, and occupations. They also put strain on a medical care system because substance addiction is a disease. Anti-euthanasia laws are also in place to prevent people from killing themselves because of something that is temporary, curable, or if a disease is causing them to think irrationally or impulsively (such as with Depression, Bipolar Disorder, Psychotic Disorders etc). There are very good and valid reasons to have these laws in place.[/QUOTE] There's good reasons for the medical system to not help people kill themselves willy nilly. There is no good reason to tell people that their lives, are not their own.

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;49914869]okay then what were you talking about? Those as concepts, would be untestable, unfalsifiable. There's an invisible unicorn behind you. There's [B]literally[/B] no way to prove, or disprove that. Might as well take it as a fact, right? No. Same concept. [editline]11th March 2016[/editline] There's good reasons for the medical system to not help people kill themselves willy nilly. [b]There is no good reason to tell people that their lives, are not their own.[/b][/QUOTE] Yes this is true which is why I find it unfortunate that people think that this is what the intent of these laws are.

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;49914869]okay then what were you talking about? Those as concepts, would be untestable, unfalsifiable. There's an invisible unicorn behind you. There's [B]literally[/B] no way to prove, or disprove that. Might as well take it as a fact, right? No. Same concept. [editline]11th March 2016[/editline] There's good reasons for the medical system to not help people kill themselves willy nilly. There is no good reason to tell people that their lives, are not their own.[/QUOTE] I never made the claim that the soul or reincarnation exist; I said that their hypothetical existence wouldn't limit our understanding of the universe because they could be studied like anything else. So I was closing to agreeing with your overall point than anything -- we currently have no way of studying these things therefore they probably don't exist. [I]Don't yell at me, I'm mostly on your side![/I]

[QUOTE=BelatedGamer;49914926]I never made the claim that the soul or reincarnation exist; I said that their hypothetical existence wouldn't limit our understanding of the universe because they could be studied like anything else. So I was closing to agreeing with your overall point than anything -- we currently have no way of studying these things therefore they probably don't exist. [I]Don't yell at me, I'm mostly on your side![/I][/QUOTE] Sorry if it seems like i'm arguing with you like you're the opposition, i'm just highly passionate about topics like this.