domain:lesswrong.com
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1hr ago
You've given me the idea for a very good medical comedy about a critical care doctor who either disagrees with the concept of euthanasia, or bumbles around never quite being told which patients are involved.
He, or she, holds the record for most lives saved or resuscitations performed. In a very British manner, the actual doctors responsible for euthanasia are very vexed by his tendency to immediately save their patients, and they're in a cat and mouse game of taking turns murdering and unmurdering any given patient.
The hospital brass are desperate to figure out a way to not award him excellence awards, because it's just plain old embarrassing at this point.
I can foresee potential to change the plot to get more demographic appeal. The life saving male doctor versus the ice queen no-nonsense German euthanasia dom. Or getting Rowan Atkinson to play the male lead.
It might be delightfully British. We can fabricate end of season drama by having them come to blows, and then either fuck over a corpse that comes alive because their thrusting counts as CPR, or when they realize that they can game both metrics if they cooperate to keep the bodies clinically dead for long enough to fool the coroner.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1hr ago
From 2011 (not Scott)
FtttG
1hr ago
Apple seeds contain about 0.6 milligrams of hydrogen cyanide.
I once had the same thought about eating cherries in bulk.
You might be able to buy a pack of .308 or 12 gauge buckshot and press your head on the entire thing while you heat it up somehow, maybe a frying pan.
I vaguely recall some movie where this happens, a guy heats shells on a frying pan.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
1hr ago
All interstate transit would have to be on the I-10 and I-40 through Arizona.
Or at least I-10 after the Navajo Nation blockaded I-40 from Gallup to Flagstaff.
ArmedTooHeavily
1hr ago
Absolutely seconded. Mental coherency is, fundamentally, what makes a person a person, what makes one oneself. Getting out while the getting is good and you are still you is right and honorable.
ArmedTooHeavily
1hr ago
Despite all of this about 1/5 of the patients regularly asked me to help kill them. They were in more or less constant pain despite pain management, increasingly felt that the help the got was degrading and their minds were rapidly slipping.
Is 1/5 an exaggeration or (to quote black hawk down) a no-bullshit exception?
My mind immediately goes to "this is another reason why you should never, ever let anyone disarm you." Horrifying.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1hr ago
You can see that, but only really around government buildings of significant importance (I've almost never seen armed cops outside London). Don't seem to recall seeing them at transit stations, the police there were chill and mostly concerned with shooing away the homeless. And believe me, I've been to a lot of stations this month.
Browser
1hr ago
Saw The Lychee Road last night and enjoyed it a lot. The ending drags a tad but it's a solid bureaucracy thriller and I'd give it an 8 or so
MadMonzer
Pedo! Pedo! Pedo! Out! Out! Out!
1hr ago
And I'm saying that someone who is violent and drugged up is significantly more lethal with a gun than without one.
And the way American police are trained reflects this. American police treat a random violent drugged up person as an immediate lethal threat because of the high probability that they are concealed carrying. Non-American police don't. This is a large part of why American police shoot so many more people (of varying degrees of innocence) than non-American police.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
1hr ago
Okay so, talking to the worst people in the world all day? Yeah I could see that driving me to drink. I'd probably have to just start treating people like holograms to protect my sanity after awhile
What did you think criminal defense would be like?
MadMonzer
Pedo! Pedo! Pedo! Out! Out! Out!
1hr ago
The obvious counter-examples being Canada and Switzerland, first world nations which have similar rates of gun ownership to the US but nowhere near as much gun violence, suggesting the problem is a cultural or demographic one rather than with guns in and of themselves.
Private handgun ownership in Canada and Switzerland is not high. Essentially all the excess "gun deaths" (suicides and homicides) in the US are handgun deaths.
I agree this doesn't answer the question of "Why don't other countries with large-scale private long gun ownership see more media-friendly spree killings?" But if you care about body count, the reason why US gun culture is more lethal than Canadian or Swiss gun culture is the type of gun.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1hr ago
The standard justification for criminalizing suicide is not to punish the survivor, assuming they survive. It is, or at least I've heard it claimed, so that the police have a legal pretext to intervene or break down the door and stop them.
Europe isn't a country. Talking about stuff that Europe is doing is like talking about how Americans love Samba dancing, mate tea and poutine.
On the other hand, if you start breaking down homicide rates by sub-populations, the claims about the "ability to easily kill" start looking less credible.
Surely more credible? Making it easy and legal for your citizens to own guns includes making it easy and legal for sub-populations (you mean black people right? You can just say that here) to get hold of them too.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1hr ago
I must try so very hard to not get nerd-sniped again into an argument about convenient household or pharmaceutical techniques to kill people quickly and easily.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1hr ago
Have you heard of three branches of government:
- The legislature
- The executive
- The judiciary
They teach that factoid in the US, the UK, and even in India. Some parts of the government exist to exert checks and balances on the others. The judiciary doesn't cease to be part of a functional government because that's rhetorically convenient.
phailyoor
1hr ago
You might assume they only try to interview patients who survived the procedure. Though that also would imply the procedure was botched extremely badly.
Browser
1hr ago
Yeah but the medical doctor who's likely spending significantly more time in the company of the hospiced and hospice-adjacent probably has a better bead on this than a layperson.
Can't remember the Scottpost but the stats on medical professionals opting out of end of life interventional care at a highly elevated rate are likely relevant here.
Children are often nigh-unkillable
"...and believe me, folks, I've tried." :P
I take your point. My intuitions could be wrong. But I think also 'assisted dying' was marketed as being for much more specific freak cases where people have an absolutely certain and very short life expectancy, and were in horrible pain that could not be alleviated through even strong pain medication. I would be willing to bet that if you raised the figure of "5% of all deaths" before this stuff was legalised you would be dismissed as a scaremonger if anti- and if pro- you would be taken aside and given a stern talk about staying on-message.
Browser
1hr ago
Yeah people massively underestimate how good modern medicine is at prolonging that last 6 months to a year now. My father who's in good shape for mid seventies now had successfully-treated skin cancer a few years ago and some of the people he and I saw clinging to life whilst visiting oncology were medical miracles.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1hr ago
I think Gaza is in the reference class of "A government which is willing to commit genocide and has access to tanks and bombing planes can defeat an insurgency regardless of however many small arms the insurgents have."
All these years of Israel genociding the Palestinians, and yet there's more of them than ever.
Browser
1hr ago
Especially these days when the medical apparatus is increasingly good at keeping people alive when they probably shouldn't be
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1hr ago
Really? Okay? What if I say 5% is massive, or not massive? You can make the same fuss either way. There are people who are categorically against the euthanasia of even a single person, and people who think that every human should be euthanized. What do you have to say to them?
Do you have an intuitive or even an intellectual understanding of how miserable the average death is? Did you remind yourself that euthanasia is meant to replace that inevitable, often painful and undignified death, with one that doesn't draw out the inevitable and lets people go out on their own terms?
Please, if you accuse me of being miscalibrated, then produce your own ISO calibrated standards. I remain in earnest anticipation, and until then, this is probably the queerest objection in the thread.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
1hr ago
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - I'm Gonna Booglarize You, Baby (1972)
During their 1972 European Tour, Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band appeared on the German TV show Beat Club. This song is quite the performance, even by Captain Beefheart standards. Some of the other tracks took multiple takes for various reasons, but they nailed this one. It sounds like chaos until the 3 guitarists and the drummer hit the groove. I would make some of Beefheart's vocalizations my text notification on my phone if I were more tech-inclined.
Makes sense. I've done Jiu-Jitsu for a long time and whilst I've never been out-out I've spent a lot of time being choked in various guises and if somebody's got a clean bite and catches a blood choke perfectly it's blackness oncoming almost instantly. But also plenty of chokes where it's see-sawing the line the whole time and can be minutes of awkwardness
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