Thanks for bringing this up! I found this blog post by Scott Alexander pretty convincing as an argument that the vast majority of suicides are the result of temporary or treatable circumstances / psychological issues, but I haven’t gone through the argument very critically.
Epistemic status: I have no idea what I’m talking about and this is probably wrong and please totally correct me.
So,
I imagine that if people want to suicide, maybe we should let them?
[No idea what I’m talking about—please correct me]
[upvoted btw since I think this is anyway an interesting relevant discussion]
I once thought similarly.
Check out this 80k podcast for a good argument that suicidal people will live net positive lives if thwarted. It persuaded me.
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9wY3IuYXBwbGUuY29tL2lkMTI0NTAwMjk4OA/episode/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvNDA5ODk2ODMx?ep=14
Thanks!
Thanks for bringing this up! I found this blog post by Scott Alexander pretty convincing as an argument that the vast majority of suicides are the result of temporary or treatable circumstances / psychological issues, but I haven’t gone through the argument very critically.