Just how much profit are they making from these kits? Must be negligible to them? I don’t understand why they think it is worth fighting this? Or is it their policy to always fight, never back down, never say sorry etc? I honestly don’t understand. Even ignoring ethics and looking at it from only economics, it doesn’t make sense to me. What am I missing?
If we can hold companies liable for what their employees recommend, I don't know why we wouldn't also hold them liable for what their recommendation engines recommend.
“People also bought” is very different from “It looks like you’re trying to suicide, let me help”.
If you ask the hardware store for a rope rated for an impact force of $X, they do not know your intentions, and they are not responsible for them. If you harm yourself, you’re culpable, not the store that simply sold you rope.
Chances are on HN you'll find people who are sufficiently detached from reality to advocate for this.
Btw: we should not encourage suicide. I think we need to help people that are in a position where they are considering and also there are things that are deeply f'ed with our society to begin with that slowly push people to this (ie helping suicidal people is a drop in the bucket if we don't fix fundamental issues)
If it's because of the reco: how do we ensure that we ban all other possible lethal combos? Disable recommendations? Ban certain things?
AFAIK, in the US, suicide is not a crime. Assisting in another person's suicide is a crime in most states.
As the post you're replying to said, we could allow physicians to offer painless and dignified deaths after the patient proves they are of sound mind or will never recover from a horrible condition. Much like the courts recognize there can be reasonable limits to purchasing and possessing guns. Admittedly, I don't know what fraction of those who commit suicide do so because of a temporary mental state they could recover from with help, but I'm guessing it's the majority. If so, it'd be inhumane to remove basic barriers that might save people, even if it'd make it easier for the smaller group of people who "rightly" believe they would rather die.
This is a complex topic that touches on so many sore spots in society. But that's when I most doubt all-or-nothing stances. They tend to come from strong emotions rather than reason.
We are hypothesing that people don't want to actually do it and that we are doing the a service from preventing it. This could be the case - but how many people decide to end their life on a whim?
Re: recovering with help. That was one of the main things i had in mind. If the factors that lead you to suicide and/or drive you insane are not removed do you actually believe that stopping you from the final act is going to be effective? As a society we don't give 2 shits about people that are struggling. Money is our religion everything else is secondary :(
Secondly, in many studies of attempted suicides, the vast majority of people of people who survived one suicide attempt did not try again (even though the risk of further attempts is much higher with an initial attempt than in the general population, it is still quite low - around 13% in one 35-year long follow-up study).
This doesn't even count the huge number of people that have suicidal thoughts and don't actually attempt suicide - at least sometimes because of barriers like those mentioned before, which prevent a suicidal thought from turning into a rash decision like jumping in from the of the train or off the building.
In fact, for many people, this type of "near-miss" offered by such barriers is exactly what allows them to realize they need urgent help: they don't want to die, but had been ignoring similar thoughts as meer fancies, until such a moment when they realize that they would have actually done and may try again if they don't seek immediate help.
My bigger point was that nobody decides to kill themselves for fun and what needs to happen is systematically helping people not knee jerk reactions like banning X or Y. I may be wrong
Seems like that would fall under basic bodily autonomy. Why should a doctor gatekeep something so important...
This is a case where rigidly basing reasoning about rights fails the common-sense test.
BTW, the chemistry set my parents gave me was the last year that they were sold.
This is how you end up with acetaminophen banned from gas station convenience stores and locked up behind the pharmacy counter. Or, for that matter, prohibition of alcohol, undoubtedly the most popular way to slowly kill yourself.
Try speaking to someone who has experienced suicidal ideation and how afraid they are they may actually do it in a moment of insanity.
That's certainly not a universal experience. There are rational and valid reasons a mentally ill person may want to die and other people should not deny them that right. It's inhumane torture and a complete disrespect of their personhood to disregard deny their capacity to so reason and force them to live in suffering.
If you actually want to help someone suffering from this, you must check that their desire to die persists for a long enough time, and is not simply a psychotic episode that they would regret later. This is often easily distinguishable, as people who start having thoughts of suicide are often terrified of actually following through just moments later.
It is also extremely well established fact that the vast majority of people whose suicide attempts are thwarted are thankful for it, and that cutting access to the easiest suicide methods drastically reduces the total rate of suicides: most people who commit suicide don't want to die, they are just having an irrational episode.
God luck backing that one up.
> This is often easily distinguishable, as people who start having thoughts of suicide are often terrified of actually following through just moments later.
I this is a terrible criterion because even if you've made the right decision death is still incredibly scary and so is dying (which can go wrong, especially when efficient methods are witheld.)
Your overally point sounds good superficially but you don't see why you think its within your rights to be a gatekeeper for me though. It's none of your business, __at all__.
> Good luck backing that one up.
Here[0] is a study that followed 98 people for 35 years after an original attempt at suicide, and found that 13% of them eventually died by suicide, some up to 15 years later. I would say that clearly shows that the vast majority of people who attempted suicide (87%) did not intend to die.
> Your overall point sounds good superficially but I don't see why you think its within your rights to be a gatekeeper for me though. It's none of your business, __at all__. You can want to help all you want, but forcing your "help" on others isn't within your rights.
You're again missing a fundamental aspect of mental illness: that many people who have a mental witness need an advocate to help keep them safe from themselves. Not just for suicide, but also self harm, extreme risk-taking behavior, substance abuse and others. You don't just let late stage Alzheimer's patients wander outside: even though freedom of movement is a fundamental human right, they don't know where and why they are going and can easily harm themselves in the process.
[0] https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp.1...
The vast majority of people who attempt suicide actually regret it afterwards, and have no deep desire to die. Making it hard to actually kill yourself is an extremely important safety net for these people, who outnumber the terminally ill who actually wish to die by a large margin.
Not to mention, people can be compelled to attempt suicide by social pressure, either in bullying or by family members who view them as a burden. Having to go through a neutral third party who can help make sure you actually deeply desire this step is critical to protect you from others.
The point here is that someone shouldn't be able to decide, in the course of 5 seconds, to engage in a permanent decision like this.
The reason being, that people make mistakes in the course of 5 seconds, that they regret.
So, instead of that, we should be pretty sure before allowing people to make such permanent decision.
Such as, for example, by having a doctor talk to the person.
This is why the OP mentioned the TV show Futurama.
Because in the comedy TV show, people could decide in 5 seconds to do that.
And the reason why it was in a comedy TV show, is because that is bad, and absurd, and that's why it is funny.
Is it a right or not?
> we should be pretty sure
In what sense is it a right if someone else has to agree to it?
As the other person said, stop being obtuse.
People should have a right to be as selfish as they want with their own bodies. You don't owe anyone else a responsibility to live.
Suicide is a serious decision with serious consequences. It should be treated as such, not as some flimsy debate topic about bodily autonomy.
Have some empathy and tact when discussing such serious topics.
I get that you don't agree with me. But having a different opinion doesn't make me obtuse. That's just slinging around an insult.
You choosing to ignore it all is, plain and simple, obtuse. Period. If you don't want to be called obtuse, don't be obtuse.
Good day, then. Talking to you is clearly useless.
Really?
Or are you just hyper focusing on an irrelevant dictionary definition of the single word "right", that nobody else was using?
That is why I said you were being obtuse.
You focusing on a single word is missing the point, and I don't know why you would focus on the word like that.
Yeah really. What right should I have to tell them to do something or not do something with their own body and life?
Because, if you had ever spoken to anyone who has felt suicidal, you will see that most of them admit that they have had couple second lapses in judgement and are extremely glad that they did not have a 5 second suicide button that they could press.
So, me, being someone who actually cares about these people, and who has spoken to them, know that most people who are suicidal do not want to be given this option.
You would know this if you had ever spoken to someone in your life, ever, who has had depressive or suicidal thoughts.
Actually I'm a trustee of a registered charity that provides support to people with a wide range of serious welfare and mental health issues and have dealt with them in practice multiple times, providing a great deal of support from my own personal time to people struggling.
I'm sorry that you made an incorrect assumption. I'm afraid that I find it's pretty typical among people who think they should have a right to control others.
You can just accept that you were wrong about my experience with the issue, if you want to.
That's actually the major issue in this area - people assuming things, and assuming that their experience translates to others.
Do you have any friends who have attempted suicide, failed, and now regret the attempt immensely?
Do you wish they had succeeded in their suicide attempt?
I am talking about a situation where they regret the decision, are alive now, and are glad that they are alive, and that the attempt failed.
For that situation, do you think they should have died, even though now they admit that it was a mistake and are glad that they didn't go through with it?
> I have been for the last 15 years
This wasn't about a situation where someone has made a decision, and been certain of it for years.
Instead, if you read the conversation, it was about if someone should be able to make a quick, decision, within literally 5 seconds.
Do you understand how giving someone a decision, in this short a period of time, is extremely different than if someone has thought about the situation for a long time, and is very certain?
I have a young child who has voiced suicidal thoughts and and it’s so fucking hard. The pandemic has been really rough on a lot of kids.
Thank god we are we’re finally able to get professional help (after almost a year of waiting for an available therapist).
You don’t know shit about the circumstances of these families, and jumping to the conclusion that the parents are at fault and not at least considering that a $1T company could lift a finger is kinda messed up.
Sorry for the angry tone but I’m seeing a few folks make comments like yours and it’s infuriating. This isn’t some joke topic and the Silicon Valley contrarian attitude really is frustrating to see on this thread.
I feel for the parents’ grief. I also understand how difficult parenting a troubled teenager must be.
I also categorically reject the idea that Amazon is culpable, and I think that these particular parents, in their grief, are merely attempting to externalize their feelings of guilt.
They want to rage at something or someone other than themselves.
And I *AM* parenting my children when I insist on this. The only thing I’m thinking about is if my kid goes to a dark place again and starts searching the internet.
But please: why don’t you tell me how to be better parent to prevent this?
I’m not going to do that, just like you shouldn’t be trying to force the rest of us to pay the steep costs of assuaging your parenting fears.
Saying that Amazon is not culpable is like saying Amazon would not be culpable in an overdose death if they were selling heroin to children in withdrawal, because the parents should have been more careful. Sure, they should have, they can't discharge the blame. But the source of the substance is also culpable.
I’m not going to say it’s the parent’s fault, but they’re a hell of a lot more culpable than Amazon, which isn’t any more culpable than a hardware store selling rope.
~~~
The circumstances surrounding Amazon’s sales to both Kristine and Ethan were highly irregular. Amazon has a policy that people under the age of 18 can only use the service with the involvement of a parent or guardian. However, Kristine, at just sixteen, had created her own account to purchase the poisonous chemical and was never asked her age when she set up the account. The package delivered to Kristine’s home was addressed without a last name. It read only “Kristine.”
Seventeen-year-old Ethan used the account that belonged to his mother, Nikki, to purchase Sodium Nitrite. When Nikki received the email receipt for the purchase, she immediately called Amazon’s customer service to tell them there must have been some mistake and that nobody at her home had ordered the item. Amazon told Nikki the order was cancelled. Instead, the Sodium Nitrite was delivered to her home four days later.
Everything is poisonous in excess. These are scare-words written by a lawyer looking for a big payout.
> … and was never asked her age when she set up the account.
She had to supply a credit card and agree to the terms of service.
Do you want Amazon to engage in privacy intrusive age verification? Maybe we should be forced to upload government ID?
Or maybe you should be responsible for parenting your own children, and not trying to parent the rest of us.
> The package delivered to Kristine’s home was addressed without a last name. It read only “Kristine.”
So?
> Instead, the Sodium Nitrite was delivered to her home four days later.
Yeah, that happens.
Guess what’s going to happen even more now?
All the irresponsible journalists driving social media panic are advertising sodium nitrate as an effective method of suicide to the world. People who never had heard of it or considered it are going to, now.
Parents are absolutely to blame here, our educational system is tito blame here. Our values and society in general have to be blamed here.
Stop defending actions because it's somewhat tangentially related to something else you think should be allowed.
"And yet you participate in society!"
It’s literally a suicide kit, and it’s appalling that they would sell it to anyone let alone teens.