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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32806 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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In 2016 ISIS attackers bombed the airport in Brussels killing over a dozen people. A seventeen year old girl was present but uninjured. This May she chose to be euthanized because of her psychological trauma. She was 23 and she had no physical injuries. The news of her death was just announced recently.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/10/10/2016-brussels-attacks-victim-granted-euthanasia-after-years-of-ptsd_5999805_4.html

This seems absolutely insane to me. I don't doubt she was suffering but she was only 23. A lot could have changed over the next 70 years. She wasn't terminally ill, she didn't have cancer, she wasn't paralyzed from the neck down. She was very sad and very scared and had attempted suicide twice. But I know that at least some people who have survived suicide attempts have gone on to lead happy lives.

I used to disapprove of euthanasia but wasn't strongly in favor of making it illegal, even though it was never a choice I would make myself or approve of making for a relative. But cases like this have made me strongly opposed to it. It seems like the medical establishment can't be trusted to restrict it to only the most extreme cases. The people saying that allowing euthanasia is a slippery slope have been proven right in my opinion.

I think most people who support euthanasia have an ideal case in mind: the person is not going to survive much longer, they're in constant, terrible pain, and so it's a mercy to allow them to end their lives.

This is similar to animal euthanasia. If a dog's existence consists entirely of only suffering, most people seem to think it's a mercy to end its life, even if we have no way to know if that's what the dog wants.

However, to euthanize a dog who isn't in that state, and hasn't shown itself to be irredeemably dangerous, seems monstrous to most people. Imagine a person who has grown bored of their dog and so kills it.

This seems much closer to the bored-of-my-dog case than the life-is-endless-suffering case.

I have to wonder if this woman would be alive had she been exposed to different ways of thinking about adversity rather than to be medicated so heavily that she complained she couldn't feel anything anymore. It seems the doctors had nothing else to offer her.

She was an adult, 23 years old. She was not some nonsentient dog that society grew tired of and discarded with no thought to her desires. I find her decision uncomprehensible, but it was her decision.

, but it was her decision.

Why does this mean anything?

Who do you think owns your life? Who gets to decide what you do with it?

If she owned her life she would have taken it herself. Shanti De Corte did not kill herself the doctor did and while you can argue that he was "preventing further suffering" or "just following orders" but forgive me if those justifications ring a bit hollow.

Oh come now, "Just following orders" given to you by the person you're purportedly harming is not meaningfully similar to carrying out violence against people who have no sayin the orders, that allusion is ridiculous.

Being old enough to remember the original debate back in the late 00s / early 10s, and given how quickly the Euthanasia advocates have transitioned from "You're overreacting, this will only ever be used by the bedridden elderly and terminally ill." to "Why shouldn't we kill a depressed but otherwise healthy 23 year old?" I don't find the allusion "ridiculous" at all.

If depression is sufficient reason to for a doctor to recommend euthanasia, and for a medical board to conclude that, yes this person's death will be a positive benefit to society, why not any other form of disability or mental illness?.

Is there a morality external to yourself at all? I don't see how an externally sourced morality jives with total self ownership.

Self ownership is the basis of morality, if you don't freely choose to do something it isn't in the moral plane at all, it's just mechanical motion.

I'm just a horrified atheist in the style of @Tophattingson, but I believe the religious traditions' answer to that is "God". God has a plan for you, and you don't get to duck out of that plan just because you're feeling wretched. Or if you prefer sci-fi, I remember being moved by Col. Graff's line in Ender's Game: "Human beings are free except when humanity needs them."

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Why do we stop suicide attempts?

I can't imagine this argument being persuasive to any but the most extreme libertarian -- the type who thinks that recreational fentanyl, consensual incest and consensual cannibalism should be legal. If that's you, then yeah, you're internally consistent, and I'm not sure what better argument to make against your position other than that your theory permits such self-evidently depraved outcomes as legalizing fentanyl, incest, cannibalism, and the killing of depressed but otherwise healthy 23-year-olds.

As much as suicide does agonize the family you left behind (most of the time) I'll push back on it being like hardcore drug addiction/incest/blahblahblah.

  • There are reduced and finite externalities. First, you stop being a direct burden on anyone else on the day of your death, and then eventually your loss fades into the background for those who cared about you. Compare that with the unrelenting toll a fentanyl addict takes on everyone around them.

  • As /u/DaseIndustriesLtd put it: The state is "not entitled to deny people their exit rights". This isn't just a libertarian fantasy principle. The ability to opt out of existence should be table stakes for most moralities. Nobody would begrudge someone being trapped in an inescapable room and being raped day in and day out for committing suicide. Your personal line will be different from almost anyone else's.

Should we discourage suicide? Of course. 2 years of treatment seems about right to me in terms of a support system putting up a fight with the individual and making the barrier to entry sufficiently high. The bulk of these responses seem to be that she was too young and could have gotten better. Sure, maybe. But that's the individual's decision and judgment, and 23 is old enough to be a mostly formed person.

I find the arguments against Euthanasia because COVID has exposed the average government's ability and willingness to coerce suicide far more convincing than "Suicide is Wrong"

The state is "not entitled to deny people their exit rights". This isn't just a libertarian fantasy principle. The ability to opt out of existence should be table stakes for most moralities. Nobody would begrudge someone being trapped in an inescapable room and being raped day in and day out for committing suicide. Your personal line will be different from almost anyone else's.

This is a libertarian fantasy principle. I agree with permitting euthanasia for people who are terminally ill, living with untreatable chronic pain, or severely disabled (e.g. paraplegia and quadraplegia), but extending these edge cases to "anyone who wants to die" is a really fringe libertarian belief. Suicide is possible as a solo act, and the transgressive barrier implicit in the solo act is a useful check on people who would otherwise make the decision too lightly. If we reach a point where suicide is no longer possible as a solo act (quadraplegics, or some sort of post-singularity future where an uploaded mind would require admin access to delete itself) then all of this changes, but as long as people can slit their own wrists in the bathtub, the state and the medical system have no business trying to make it a more desirable option than it already is.

the transgressive barrier implicit in the solo act is a useful check on people who would otherwise make the decision too lightly

To reiterate, I sympathize with the argument that the government can and will encourage suicide, before eventually forcing it. There's so many signals pointing to this - whether it's the inevitable implosion of welfare state pension systems or climate change hysterics that overemphasize individual carbon footprints. From a practical perspective, I have radically altered my priors on state-controlled euthanasia being a "Good Idea".

(quadraplegics, or some sort of post-singularity future where an uploaded mind would require admin access to delete itself)

How are we far from this with modern medicine? People exist in vegetative states for years, bankrupting their families or costing hospitals and insurers millions.

as long as people can slit their own wrists in the bathtub

I think this isn't charitable enough to those who do want to commit suicide. I haven't checked metrics on who regrets committing it vs not, and I do believe that there has to be some barrier to entry. But it's not easy to do far simpler things like dig road rash out of my own skin or cut away lesions. There's a reason why so many people thought it was amazing when that guy sawed off his leg to escape being trapped by a boulder. I do believe that you can absolutely want to commit suicide in a real way but fumble the execution.

I mean, one person suggested black powder pistols? C'mon. I would want to have an extremely high sense of certainty that I wouldn't be signing myself up for even more excruciating pain with whatever method I chose to kill myself. The appeal of having someone ensure this happens correctly I think is natural.

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If she's not mentally healthy, it's not "the individual's decision and judgment", because the mental illness impairs her judgment.

First, you stop being a direct burden on anyone else on the day of your death

I've been personally burdened by the natural deaths of two family members, who had done adequate planning as far as wills and such, but there's still a lot of things that have to be taken care of. I've also observed another family that devolved into petty fighting among siblings over a meager inheritance.

Even a person with no possessions and no next of kin will burden some government worker with their remains unless they die in such a way that a body can't be recovered.

You're sidestepping my point a bit here - finishing up an estate or filing some paperwork is still a task with a specified end date. Compare this to maintaining a family member's drug habit, consistent depression, or financial irresponsibility.

The point is that ceasing to exist has a clearly defined limit on what negative costs you're imposing on the world around you. If suicide therefore doesn't cost anyone else something past a certain point, it's an inalienable right you should retain at all times.

recreational fentanyl, consensual incest and consensual cannibalism should be legal

Fentanyl use creates danger for others, heterosexual Incest can have large externalities, I'm indifferent to consensual cannibalism and incest that can't lead to procreation. I don't think I'd want to spend time with anyone who does any of those practices but the second and third one are famously difficult to rationally support taboos. I'm also not an extreme libertarian or even really call myself a libertarian despite liberty being one of my more sensitive political intuitions. I'm perfectly happy to have a large functional state so long as it doesn't do tyranny.

All of these decisions lead to large externalities. If you are willing to infer a state interest in preventing fentanyl use but not suicide, then I think you are just wrestling your putative libertarian framework to fit your object level support for suicide.

People will not try to steal my car radio because society accepts their right to end their life. If you think there are actual material externalities to this then make that case, don't just declare it so.

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It carefully directs your gaze away from the affirmative decisions everyone else made to assist in killing her, by placing all of the responsibility on the girl herself. Certainly, she made a decision. But so did everyone else involved, and those decisions have independent moral weight.

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