I can't believe he said that with a straight face. He actually thinks you can write a computer program that can give humans permission to kill themselves. I don't think he consulted with a single engineer before making that statement.

I think it’s an interesting framing/premise to think that a human needs to be given permission to kill themselves.

Baudrillard's going to laugh in his grave for this one.

Our modern society has tried so hard to defeat death that we have essentially surrounded ourselves in it. Once we've made machines that try to defeat death, the only natural extension is to make machines that do the exact opposite, since there is no longer a distinction between the two.

(I highly recommend reading Chapter 5 from Baudrillard's Symbollic Exchange and Death, which elaborates about how modern society has ripped apart the symbolic exchange between life and death and neatly partitioned it, and as a consequence death becomes an immortal force that we cannot deal with.)

“Permission” was just a bad way to put it. I'm sure what they are actually talking about is making sure that the person is making the decision in clear mind and not under the effect of drugs, strong temporal emotions and is not being forced by someone to do this.

A reverse Turing test. A discussion with a computer to convince it you are a sane human.

This comment really made me chuckle. Well done =)

> strong temporal emotions

Well said. As Jim Jefferies said in his gun control bit referencing suicide -- 'We all have bad days.'

> strong temporal emotions

That's a pretty loaded statement. You're probably thinking of those ostentatious fools who end up in the news like "man was prevented from jumping off the bridge". Not every suicide does it on a whim, some think about that decision for many years.

As a general trend, when you make effective suicide less convenient, e.g. switching from lethal gas to carbon monoxide free natural gas in ovens, they happen less often. Not necessarily because of fewer attempts though.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/saves...

yes, that's the point, making the distinction between those two? How is that a loaded statement?

Yes, but the vast majority of people who survive a suicide attempt do not go on to die by suicide.

Some do. Some don't. It is very hard to generalize here.

I personally don't really think that a person, who is making that a leap and decide and stop existing, has a 'clear' mind. It may be an objectively rational decision ( and frankly, I believe it is up to each of us to make that decision ), but I would be hard-pressed to argue that 'this individual, who I find of sound mind opted for the chair'. There is a reason society has certain level of concern for those that try and fail.

It is possible that I do not have enough of a population sample, but I personally see it as part of an effort way to keep world population control at certain level. Before anyone accuses me of tin-foiling, I mean it in the same sense as that there are efforts to prevent suicides by means of suicide prevention hotlines.

I guess what I am saying, as a society, we are grappling with with two competing interests:

1. We care about certain individuals and we don't want them gone from our life. 2. We care about certain individuals and we want them to have control over their own body.

I don't find it very hard to think of situation where it is likely that a person has a clear mind and decides to stop existing. In particular in case of a disease where the person knows that the only thing that life has in store for them is either more pain or being palliatively sedated.

Why choosing not to exist can't be clear mind? Many are suffering, struggling yet choose to continue that trauma. That's clear mind. But as soon as one does not want to continue the trauma, they are mental.

We are going to die in the end. Why not bring that closer so that the useless suffering stops? I think people who want to continue struggle, is the mentally ill. Having to do work 9-5 whole life and yet not being able to afford healthcare, acceptable living standard is somehow okay to continue. People are delusional and having too much copium.

Lots of here have good job life in a first world country and they think everyone is living like that. Someone says different, then it's "why you are enjoying life like me? you are just mentally ill".

These supposedly normal people also bring a kid without their consent to study, work, have disease, die horrible death by giving birth. All of these just to satisfy their own selfish wish to have a child with their gene, but not for the benefit of the kid.

It’s not about permission in the idealistic sense. It’s about issues like people being pressured or manipulated into it so someone can have inheritance, so the healthcare system can save money, etc.

These would be even larger concerns in the US than Switzerland for cultural and economic reasons.

I am personally against assisted suicide for the same reason I am against the death penalty: the logic works but only if you ignore the ugliness and messiness of real human behavior.

So you think several cases of unintended death are more important than suffering of all who really want to die? Cause I can't imagine that percentage of wrong deaths is more than several percents.

A "wrong death rate of several percent" sounds problematic in almost any circumstance.

That must be traded off against a “prolonged suffering rate of X%” as the overwhelmingly likely alternative.

We chose to euthanize our dog this summer. No matter how obvious her medical condition was, I still questioned whether we did it too early, too late, or just right. (Upon reflection, I think very slightly too late [by days or maybe a week].) I also couldn’t help but compare that experience to that of people. In many ways, I think we treat our family pets with more compassion.

>>It’s not about permission in the idealistic sense

Then you proceed to give an idealistic reason to oppose it... A person choosing to end their life to preserve a family inheritance IMO would / should be a valid reason, your opposition to such a choice is idealistic.

>I am personally against assisted suicide for the same reason I am against the death penalty

There is no logical or idealistic similarities between the two as there is a difference between actions being forced upon you, and voluntary actions.

This has become a common trend in the modern era where we attempt to expand the idea of coercion to include scenario;s where people have only poor choices. Examples include people taking a poor paying job being "coerced" into it because they did not have "good" choices,

it is very dangerous to equate a circumstances where there are no good options to coercion

I suspect I’m generally aligned with you on the topic, but I agree that “choosing suicide for grandma to preserve a family inheritance” is perfectly valid if grandma is choosing it, but acknowledge that it’s terribly problematic if the kids or grandkids are behind it. Being in the middle part of my life, I’ve seen the pressures that arise here, the concerns over finances and quality of life, and the diminishment of mental capacity of many elderly folks.

I had a close family member express repeatedly and regularly that “they were done” and “are looking forward to finally dying”. That’s what makes me strongly support individual choice here, but I’m not blind to the possibility of abuse here (and near certainty that it will happen in some cases).

Destruction of government property is generally considered illegal.

Permission is probably correct here. Unless you can live in a close box in isolation without ever needing to depend on another living or having someone depend on you, then sure you can live/die on your own terms.

You live by the rules of whatever society you are living in. You don't live in isolation, you depend on countless other living beings to be where you are in this point of time in your life. Life is interconnected web, not an isolated event.

Your life has a value for other people too. No one can force you to live. "Permission" does not mean being forced. Unless you are physically unable to have a life, you should be needing a permission.

We already give permission in courts and write rules on how a person should live (or not) their lives for so many reasons we think are beneficial/harmful for rest of us. How is this any different?

Because it's naive to think a person wanting to end their own life is going to be deterred by a law?

Like what are they doing to do, throw your body in prison? Hand your body a fine?

They will not let you have a reliable and painless death. I bet some people will be stopped by the pain that a traditional suicide methods might bring, as well as the risk of staying alive but getting mutilated for the rest of their life as a result.

^ This. The risk of becoming a vegetable from a botched suicide is pretty high. The last thing a suicidal person wants is to make their life even worse.

That's the kind of suicide one is going to do anyway. I am here talking about the one which someone is sane enough to seek assistance or buy a device like in the article.

We already put people with mental issues in mental health facilities instead of killing them. We could probably do something similar (not the same) for people who decide to take their own lives and seek out before doing it.

So the plan is to cause bureaucratic headaches and forced treatment options for people who openly and sanely admit they don't like being here, leaving only the messy and less effective methods easily available?

This is one of those, "in theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there are" situations.

Nobody owes society anything. In fact, the reverse is true: society owes things to those brought into this world without being asked: clean water, safety, clean environment, reasonable standards of living. I just don't see how it could cross anyone's mind to try to prevent people from ending their life, since they didn't ask to be here in the first place, to support a society that has clearly failed that individual.

If a society is good and just and receives conscious support from people, that's acceptable. But I don't see how it could possibly justify interfering with a right of self determination w.r.t. ending the ride early.

I guess I just don't get it. It seems cruel and Kafkaesque.

Forced treatment is opposite of how a person already sick of this world needs to be treated. That's not what I was suggesting. Something like providing a way to live a totally different kind of life in a totally different environment might actually help. Psychiatrists etc can suggest better ways.

Society usually tries to help, not deny the rights in a larger scheme of things. If you find someone on the verge of ending their life will you judge their sanity based on their age (what age if so and why) before deciding whether or not you should stop them or just let them do it because they must have a good reason?

I always wonder how we decide that at certain age a person is sane enough to start making decisions for their own life. In some ways or the other, we always need assistance from other people no matter how adult we become. This is just one of them. Society thinks it can help people from killing themselves just like we help kids from killing themselves unknowingly for first many years of their lives.

Attemped suicide should be a capital offence

I will add more to this. What is really fascinating is the idea 'ai' has been so successfully sold as a solution to just about any problem out there. I am genuinely trying not to just not add 'using novel blockchain protocol for full transparency' ( while naturally keeping all transparency out from the ai blackbox ).

We live in a weird time leg.

A Dutch engineer maybe. The views on this topic are so extreme in my country i find it a bit creepy. I'm sure everyone involved thinks people should be able to die at the touch of a button. The rest is just there for compliance reasons.

Not so fast. Meehl (1989) is the obvious reference here: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=meeh...

But going beyond that, Kahneman in his latest book summarises the recent research in the area as such:

- Simple linear models generally outperform experts.

- Simple linear models generally outperform experts when the experts get additional information to base their decisions on, that the model does not get.

- Simple linear models generally outperform experts when the experts get to know and use the outcome of the linear model.

- Simple linear models trained only on an expert's judgments and not the actual outcome outperform the very expert they were trained on.

- Simple linear models with random weights (!) outperform experts.

- Simple linear models with equal weights (i.e. transform the predictors to the same scale and then just sum them) outperform experts.

- Simple linear models with equal weights and almost all predictors removed except the best 1--3 outperform experts.

> Simple linear models generally outperform experts

At what? At correctly diagnosing patients or predicting prognosis once an issue has already been identified, as in Meehl's paper? That is not the same thing as determining whether a patient has the "mental capacity" to commit suicide.

At correctly diagnosing patients, too -- at least for some ailments.

The common objection against this evidence is "sure, it happened to work there, but it won't work in this case!" And of course, it's very hard to defend this research against an accusation like that.

However, it's been a remarkable stable result whenever it is tried for a new task, so I guess what I'm saying is that I like to stay open to simple algorithms making better decisions than humans. Not because the algorithms are good (linear models with random weights are not very good) but because humans are incredibly fallible.

> The second turned out not to be aesthetically pleasing. For that and various other reasons it’s not the best one to use.

Also on the list of concerning statements. Why do I get the feeling that “various other reasons” play a bit of a more important role than he’s letting on there?

You could argue nobody needs "permission" to decide what to do with their lives to begin with?

But that was not what was being argued.

My point is that the developers of the device may not believe that anyone needs such a "permission" either and thus the whole AI/computer program is merely there to fulfil some legal obligation - they don't actually care whether it's good or not.

The thing we are talking about is verifying that the person is in a mental shape to take the decision to end his life. The word "permission" is an odd choice here.

As an Engineer, I wouldn't necessarily be against it if it made EOL decisions more available to humans. I would prefer no program at all, and just have a waiting period of 14 days to nullify those who insist that all suicidal thoughts are just spur of the moment things.

But given access to data and an appeals process for those it turned down, I would be morally okay with writing the software.

We let parents have as many children as they want, why shouldn't those children get to say if the life they have is worth living?

> I would prefer no program at all, and just have a waiting period of 14 days to nullify those who insist that all suicidal thoughts are just spur of the moment things

I've not posted about this before, for a variety of reasons:

A close family friend of mine - in his mid 20s - took his own life a week or so before Christmas a couple of years ago.

I was with him and his father in a pub the evening before, he was telling jokes and buying drinks, he was dead a few hours later.

Unfortunately taking your own life doesn't have a cooling-off period :(

I have found depression can last much longer than 14 days.

I have too.

But we care surely agree that 14 days is looooong past the point where it can be considered a spur of the moment thing?

In some cases, a lifetime.

While it's not in the article, I could see them adding some in-person contact (ie interview/screen with a human, but not a doctor) to get a rough idea of the person. Not just accept or deny them 100% according to the AI.

just to be clear, what exactly is the epistomological basis against sucide.

Most hold that life has value, and the desire to continue living t9 be axiomatic. There are very few cases where suicide may be considered a rational choice, and in those cases it is difficult to determine that the choice was made of their own free will, and not pressured into it by lazy family, doctors or government (dictating available treatments, providing appropriate pallative care, etc).

Wouldn’t the desire to die be proof that the desire to live is not axiomatic?

IIF you hold the desire to die to be rational. I can believe that 2 + 2 = 5, but it doesn't. The desire to die may be derived not from an actual desire, but an expression of mental or physical illness which could be treated in such a way that I (rationally) do not desire to die (right now).

Whether there are valid exceptions or mere failures of treatment is what most people are inclined to debate (plus the difficulty in discerning rational consent, free of pressure or other external failures).

hold whose life valueable to who.

the very consent required for life doesnt exist.

people dont consent to being alive.

holding someone who feels suffering alive would be considered torture.

when you strip away the selfishness that is keeping others alive, suicide might be the only truly zelfless act.

i do not think you need a complicated ai to allow a suicide machine. you treat it as you would the way we sane people regulate guns. cool down periods, background checks and coercion checks.

I'm not arguing against assisted suicide. I just think it is wildly ignorant to think that a computer can accurately assess someone's mental capacity.

Nor did they consult with an ethicist, clearly.

at that level you talk to the salespeople, not the engineers.

Ethical AI, anyone?

Are they trying to create the suicide booths from Futurama? Because that sounds about as good of an idea

That's just plain crazy.

The software only knows what the (human) user tells it. What assurance does it have that the patient isn't being pressurized into giving the correct answers? Or that the suicide capsule is going to be used correctly (as opposed to being a murder tool)?

If you start looking for edge cases where this might go wrong, it turns out to be razor-sharp edge cases all the way down. A human with a remit to prevent false positives should be the last link in the kill chain: sure, allow the applicant to appeal if the human practitioner has made a mistake, but the default outcome should be "no kill" unless their mental capacity can be positively confirmed (which is a GAI-complete requirement, hence wanting a human being in the loop).

> Our aim is to develop an artificial intelligence screening system to establish the person’s mental capacity.

Please let me know when this is done, I am very curious how one would implement such a thing. How can an AI determine if the person is in a "clear" state of mind? What does it even mean? Can they actually define this mental capacity that a person must be in to be able to make the choice? They have to define it, and then they have to somehow turn it into something that the computer can understand and work with. I believe that it is not possible.

It is also not possible with human doctors, yet it it is widely used for important decisions

OK, because we have patterns of behavior, we do this and that, we do not do this and do not do that when we are in a clear state of mind[1]. Now, to make it usable for AI, we have to define what these behaviors are that you do and do not do that makes you be in a clear state of mind. It is not enough to give an exhaustive list, or use heuristics; you have to consider the context as well.

Sure, humans might do it in a more or less accurate way, but could an AI? If it could, would you please tell me how? I really am curious[2], I work at the hospital.

Oh, about working at the hospital: a patient has been deemed aggressive when in fact it is just her voice and looks and whatnot that makes it seem like she is aggressive. She is not actually aggressive in any way, she just looks and sounds as if she were. The moment you have a discussion with her, you would be able to tell that she is not aggressive at all. How would an AI deal with this, if even humans cannot? You also have to consider that these behaviors are heavily influenced by the environment and changes in environment that one has to consider.

[1] Mind you, there are cultural differences at play here as well. There are some behaviors that would consider you "not in a clear state of mind" in one culture, but not in another.

[2] I am also wondering if an AI would be able to determine if a person has dementia based on behavior alone.

> I wan't to commit suicide HAL

> I'm sorry, I'm afraid I can't let you do that Dave

Better than the opposite case where the AI has the ability to mandate suicide.

> I wan't to commit suicide HAL > I'm sorry, but you have outstanding debt please resolve it before continuing > Program will continue after this short ad from Coffins Inc.

you cannot scale those things effectively with doctors as middlemen

Well, you know Apple watches can detect you are getting sick, before you experience any symptoms, via changes to your heart rate.

A maximally effective suicide AI should also be able to detect that you are a good suicide candidate before you even start having ideation, and proactively convince you of this fact.

> the ability to mandate suicide

'to mandate suicide' is typically reduced to 'commit homicide'

Can AI commit homicide? Does cancer commit homicide?

Someone who programmed the AI committed homicide using/programming the AI. But then... what about bugs? What if these bugs are not incidental? Let us assume that they are. Would it count then as non-premeditated murder? Who are the people who reviewed the code in this case, then? Accessories?

I’m not sure if there is any difference. They are assuming that their “AI” is acting alone and in a very narrowly defined context.

What’s to say the human voluntarily entered this capsule and the “AI” does what that person wishes? One could take the Kim Jong-nam assassination as an example where the participants may have believed something completely different was occurring than the true context.

In the absence of “AI” someone could reverse the do die/do not die button. However, adding an additional, pliable layer is a bad idea.

Whether it is autonomous weapons or this, once AI or machine learning is added, the human is no longer in full control.

There should be no gatekeepers to control what you can do with yourself. No doctors nor AIs nor governments have that right. I should be able to buy a humane means of death with no questions asked whenever I want. I am the only person who has the right to determine if/when I die, it is not their call. It makes me so mad that you have to break the law to try to find a humane way to commit suicide and that so many people resort to terribly unpleasant means. And while I'm glad to see progress from things like this and mad dog brewing in AU, it isn't enough.

I agree for ill and end of life.

But I think it's more complicated for otherwise healthy people temporarily passing through a mental illness crisis or untreated depression. Though there is a distinction here in it's a government providing the means. Anyone can figure out a means themselves.

You have a right to life. You don't yet have a right to death. Given that, it's understandable that there are barriers in place for people who temporarily think they want to die.

My point is that you do have a right to death. You could understand it in terms of the right to life... that it is your right to control. If you don't have the right to die do you really have control of your life and the right to it. IMO the right to life requires a right to die.

Can you show me where this right to death is listed? Because I can show you right to life in a bunch of international human rights documents, and from there in a bunch of law in different countries.

Very few countries give people a right to death.

As I put it, I really think it is implicit in the right to life. The right to life means you should have the control over your life/death. You don't really have a right to life if you don't control the most basic part of that, life itself.

You don't have the right to dictate what people can and can't do with their own bodies. Furthermore, you should accept the fact that some people hold opinions different than yours and it's not always "temporary", yes, differing opinions actually do exist. There's many documented cases of people consistently wanting to die over a long period of time, you deny these people exist?

> You don't have the right to dictate what people can and can't do with their own bodies

This comment is legally incoherent.

> This comment is legally incoherent.

You're gonna have to be more specific than that.

“Hi Tesla, can you help me kill my self?”

Sounds like a terrible feature

"Full Self Driving activated."

"You already own me, don't you?"

This whole thing is a terrible idea. All of it.

Why? There is no more personal thing than your own life. Why should not we be able to choose when to end it? People will be doing it anyways, just in all the gruesome ways it is usually done. Hopefully this container doubles as a coffin that can be either buried or burnt.

Because we cannot even define what "clear state of mind" is in a way that an AI would be able to determine.

Sucide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

Usually, atleast a few other methods should be used to help, before deciding on suicide (with a notable exception of being close to a very painful, inevitable death, and just wanting to shorten the suffering).

Without being at all patronising, you're lucky to be able to have such a binary view of mental and physical health.

There are so many non-temporary conditions that people live with that can lead to wanting people, very rationally, to speed up end of life.

Sure... but they should atleast try some kind of therapy, before deciding to end it all permanently.

Please advise: what therapy could help the terminally ill father of a friend of mine? Stage 4 lung cancer. Talk to a psychologist? The only thing that "helped" him were large doses of opiate painkillers.

What's wrong with large doses of optiate painkillers, if you're terminally ill? Addicition isn't a worry, certainly.

The side effects of most pain killers can also be extremely unpleasant. You'll have more time, but you'll be miserable or marginally conscious for most of it.

And they don't always work. Look up intractable pain.

In case of opiates, what side-effects are you thinking of? Constipation is an easy fix. Assuming proper use and dosage, opiates are way safer than NSAIDs.

Yes, this is the exception i put in the braces in my previous post.

But being physically ok, but having depression is something that can be solved by therapy.. or atleast should be tried before ending it

Presumably most if not all people who end up doing an assisted suicide have tried one or more methods to ameliorate their issue before they go to the more extreme approach. Do you have some reason to believe they do not?

I still think there should be a human safeguard to verify that everything else has been tried.

A few questions and an AI box is not 'that'.

What kind of therapy ought someone consider before deciding to end it because their terminal illness is excruciatingly painful?

Studies of psychedelic therapy for terminally ill patients have had some super interesting results, there’s a section on the topic in Michael Pollan’s book How to Change Your Mind which I found fascinating. Seems there is a lot of potential for helping people deal with the existential dread and get more enjoyment from their remaining time with friends and family. Here’s an article for reference: https://nyulangone.org/news/mental-health-benefits-one-dose-...

That said I’m a Swiss citizen and knew someone with a terminal illness who used the “Exit” program and it seemed extremely humane and a positive thing overall and I fully support having it available to everyone in that situation.

Yes, this is the exception i put in the braces in my previous post.

But being physically ok, but having depression is something that can be solved by therapy.. or atleast should be tried before ending it

That’s nice and all, but but in the real world, those things aren’t always available (for any number of reasons, not just financial). In the absence of other solutions, sometimes the best choice may be to end a life rather than continue suffering.

Curious as to why you see parent as lucky to hold a binary view, if you care to say. I would say holding such a view is unlucky. Perhaps I’m missing something important.

The use of the cliche "Sucide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem" demonstrates binary thinking, as though there is only one temporary problem and no compounding factors.

It's also a pretty shitty thing to say. It's designed to make people who may want to die feel worse about themselves by calling their feelings merely "temporary".

I was asking weego why they consider ajsnigrutin lucky to hold the binary view you outline.

Sure, but publicly, and I had a response (as I was thinking the same thing).

The part you didn't respond to is why they are "lucky" to be able to hold a view...

My guess is that if you have such a binary view of the world, you might have lived a simple or sheltered or privileged life.

Ah, I see, my mistake. I agree with your guess.

Suicide is a permanent solution. Sometimes it’s a solution to a temporary problem; other times to a permanent problem.

That is just a silly quote/generalization.

As an example: Old age is a permanent, and worsening, problem. Why should one be forced to live to an old age where they are dependent on others, IF they don’t want to?

Many old people just stop eating

So, what harm is it to try a few talks with a therapist, try to fix the problem, and if it doesn't work, you can still kill yourself?

Even buying guns in some states has a 3 day cool-off period.

Perhaps it could work with a much more extended cool-off period. Over the course of a year, the person needs to affirm they want to go through with it on the last day of each month. If over the last 12 consecutive months they have said yes 12 times, then assist them, otherwise no.

Yep, with therapy in between... Of course, the inevitable painful death being an exception, that can be done a lot faster.

Anything is better than AI in a 3d printed box.

I’m personally biased towards hope. Meaning that I keep thinking that things will be better and that I will reach a point where things will be meaningful. I call this a bias because I can remember the past and how long I’ve been in this state of mind without it panning out—it’s a false hope more often than not.

If average people are anything like me then I would think that they are more likely to think that a permanent problem is a temporary one rather than the other way around.

Suicide causes permanent state change. Life and all of life’s problems are temporary state.

That’s such an absurd point of view. When the duration of the problems is comparable to your expected lifespan, it is permanent for all intent and purposes. Sure, an incurable illness is not permanent in that it has to end when the person die. That’s not a useful point to make.

> all of life’s problems are temporary state.

Not all. Incurable disease is just one example.

Can you agree that there's some threshold where the time required to endure the temporary state is untenable?

How can anyone except myself decide what that threshold is?

Until one dies anyway.

What a neat slogan. Also misleading.

Life itself temporary, hence the death-is-permanent thing. Hence all things in life—pain, happiness, pleasure, suffering—are temporary. Suicide is just the shortening of all of these possible states (or potential states—for the hopeful). Thus a shortening of a bunch of temporary states.

Doesn’t sound as menacing and dramatic when you put it like that. And it’s equally true.

This suicide capsule concept is clearly targeted for people who have made a well thought out decision on their life. Heat-of-the-moment suicides, won't happen with rare specialty devices but common tools/environments/drugs/poisons that are found all over.

It would be a weird assumption to think that a person who carefully plans their suicide in advance, and orders a specialty device for it, hasn't considered options other than suicide. Most likely such a person has tried everything else already.

It's a good point about the rollout strategy. Is this a specialty device you must order? Or is there a row of them on display at the mall next to the massage chairs?

> Sucide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

This quote is supposed to be used in the correct context of the specific situation, *if* it's truly temporary. Not just as a generalisation.

And what of the excruciatingly painful existence that doesn't come with a near-term "inevitable death". What you're advocating is long-term inescapable torture.

You can also be against the act of suicide and for the freedom to commit suicide. The two ideas don't have to be conflated.

Sometimes the problems are permanent.

> Usually, atleast a few other methods should be used to help

I bet most of people who resort to assisted suicide in Switzerland have terminal disease or incurable pain.

You can already kill yourself if you really want to. Nobody can stop you.

The whole idea of "assisted suicide" is like Bitcoin - invented for the express purpose of finding and abusing loopholes in the current legal frameworks.

There are multiple ways one might commit suicide, it is true. But some are more reliable than others; some leave a terrible mess for someone (perhaps a family member) to clean up; some are more painful than others; some may put other people at risk. The worst outcome is when a person tries to kill themselves and ends up alive but in an even worse condition.

For people who don't have religious prohibitions on suicide, having a reliable, simple, low cost, low-pain, low-mess option sounds great to me.

Yes, someone who is paralyzed from their neck down can easily take their own life, of course. Don't see any issue here.

You have to excuse the sarcasm, but if you really can't think of any cases where taking your own life in a dignified manner is not actually possible, then I'm not sure there's any discussion to be had here

Sometimes legal frameworks are inhumane, immoral, cruel, and ought to be loopholed. I can think of at least 5 examples right now.

I see you haven't had to care for someone with Alzheimer's before.

Its not a terrible idea, as a society we retain some naïve and arguably zealous notions around death which often makes us push towards natural outcomes. Some natural outcomes are different from others in that they're significantly worse for all parties involved. Those outcomes are a subject that should be given more attention and seriousness as opposed to mere emotional rejection.

Care giver here and someone who has directly worked with individuals who have done the MAID (medically assisted induced death). A person with Alzheimer’s would automatically be disqualified for consideration as they lack the mental capacity to consent to such a thing. This will most likely never be offered for that group of people. They typically are not suffering though some do get terrified at times but in general they are just lost in their world with not much insight as to why things are that way.

> A person with Alzheimer’s would automatically be disqualified for consideration as they lack the mental capacity to consent to such a thing.

Which is part of the reason that people who have seen it with their parents often want to submit their consent in advance. If I get Alzheimer's, please fucking kill me.

Currently the law does not support that type of advanced directive. You can say do not leave me in a vegetative state after a car accident but not for Alzheimer’s.

What if you had an advanced directive that explicitly called out that scenario? Not saying the law would cover that, but it plausibly could.

In Canada, yes, advanced directives can be written.

Not for assisted death and something like Alzheimer’s. That directive is for something like you are in a car accident and are on life support. You can have it say no life support. You can not currently say if I get Alzheimer’s I want to die it is not legally possible at this time.

Yes, you can. That legislation passed right before covid as a modification to the original legislation.

The original bill didn't allow it, but it got challenged in court and the government was given a deadline to add that clause.

> They typically are not suffering

How on earth did you get such an out-of-touch callously asinine idea?

It is the most mentally debilitating state one can possibly be in. Their depth of recollection comes and goes. There is a persistent growing and waning sense of confusion. Their grasp on reality is in a shattered state. They recollect details out of context or in false connection to current events. I seriously fail to understand how you could underplay this disease.

I used to work in a facility with the highest rating of care required for Alzheimer’s and dementia like conditions and typically if well looked after they are not suffering. Yes some do get scared and confused but with medication and skilled workers you can minimize that type of suffering. What ends up often happening is family feels guilty placing their loved ones in such a facility and instead struggle and eventually burn out. At that point they may already be short with the person and yes they truly are suffering. But a well trained staff can really help reduce such interaction through distraction and conversation or music and medications. There are even now in the world dementia villages where people don’t actually know they are in a facility and they can wonder around because the entire thing is fenced off but looks normal with shops and places they can go to. Usually the person who is suffering is the family who can no longer manage the 24/7 care required. And that is not a poor reflection on them it takes a lot of mental drain to deal with a person ask you the same thing 300 times a day.

I apologize for my pointed accusation. I did indeed experience the difficulties of at-home care, it can be too much for a few loved ones to manage. The training isn't there. I think you paint the overall picture well from experience. I'm glad to hear that the average case of dementia, when properly looked after, can be milder on the person than I imagined.

No need to apologize I can tell you experienced a heavy burden caring for your loved one. Alzheimer’s is an evil disease. It is unfair. It can take the most loving person and test them to the limit. I now advocate for anyone in a situation of caring for an Alzheimer’s patient to really be honest to themselves if they are feeling burnt out and to seek help before things get too bad. When I was in that job I got to go home at the end of my shift and unwind but for many that is not an option. The cost of care where I worked started at $4500 per months something not everyone can afford. It truly is a horrible situation but there are some of us who really did our best to provide some peace to patients and families. I wish you well today and hope you realize you are a good person. That is why it was so hard for you because it is truly hard to see a loved one in that state.

I want to thank you sincerely for the care you provide to patients and for the solace you afford families. You are appreciated in what you do by many.

I would also like to ask - based on your experience, is there a piece of hardware or software that doesn't exist that would improve the lives of the patients and families? Voice activated, visual UI, thermal sensing, motion sensing, etc, anything you could think of. Any human-machine interaction paradigm.

Could you elaborate on what parts you find terrible? It seems like a peaceful way to die for some.

Giving AI the power to approve suicides?

Well I don’t know the details but I don’t think this is a suicide booth just anyone can use you would still need to have a doctor verify you had a terminal illness and then I could be left with you to use at the time you were ready. The AI is simply making sure you are of sound mind at the time of death. Which means you can answer a few questions and it wouldn’t be that hard to determine if someone was if sound mind there are plenty of mental state exams that a computer could give.

Why? If I ever get dementia I would like the opportunity to end my own life before it progresses too far.

Then don't use it.