That was a powerful docu. I remember feeling unwell for weeks proceeding. Some may have very different perspectives, but it was exceedingly sad to me. However, recommended.

I was confused by that wording as well and had go to back and forth a couple times and still confused. I would think that them needing to press the button themselves would be enough to distinguish between euthanasia and suicide?

Euthanasia and suicide are not the same thing.

- euthanasia is when someone kills you

- suicide is when you kill yourself

Godard famously used these services recently

not really, you can't euthanise (kill) someone but you can help them die, which the article points out - i.e. you can give someone a method to kill themselves with but you can't administer it to them

> Swiss law allows assisted suicide so long as the person takes his or her life with no “external assistance”

If criminalization drives people toward worse methods, then I see how it would make sense to stop criminalization if we assume it doesn't affect the suicide rate.

But are you confident that stigma doesn't decrease the rate of suicide? If you believe it does, but still object to stigmatization, why?

Don't you think this could quickly devolve into legitimising suicide as something normal and valid, as opposed to something that should be avoided, through proper care, support and help?

Speaking of, here is a little short on that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9MAf245Yag (suicide topic.)

The company is actually working on one, but with the idea of a couple ending their lives together.

Why not make it a mask for the suicide. I never understood why they made it a full body capsule.

This is important, actually. Full points for bringing this up.

>I have never seen anyone articulate an actual moral theory that allows for self-ending but does not also allow for other-ending.

An individual should have the right to control their own life and their own body, including choosing to end that life. When people have freedom to choose, they may make choices you do not agree with or do not like or that you believe is a bad choice. Being able to choose for oneself is not basically the same as allowing someone else to force you to do something.

>I have never seen anyone articulate an actual moral theory that allows for self-ending but does not also allow for other-ending.

What do you mean by "other ending"? Do you mean non-consensual ending (murder) or consensual ending (euthanasia).

The fact that someone can be coerced into taking action themselves is a simple fact of life. It is always a possibility with suicide or euthanasia.

Moral theory does not need to split hairs on the probability of that coercion occurring. You can simply say it is moral for someone to decide to end their life , and either do it themselves or get help. You can also hold it immoral to coerce someone into death. Morality does not depend if those standards will be perfectly upheld by humanity. Moral standards never are.

>>And allowing euthanasia is allowing coerced euthanasia.

That's one hell of a logical leap. I guess that's an argument against abortion too then? Since allowing abortion is now allowing coerced abortion?

I'm so confused by your comparison. Children cannot consent, which is where this argument ends. Whether they are harmed by a sexual act or not is not really relevant in the slightest - they cannot consent to it which makes it statutory rape.

In case of voluntary ending your own life - we are talking about consenting adults(or at least I hope we are!).

>>Are you unswayed by testimonials of suicide survivors who say they immediately regretted the decision?

Look, we can both play the emotional game - are you unswayed by the testimonials of people living in lifelong debiliating pain and suffering who are not given any legal way to end their own suffering? Someone who is paralyzed in every way other than blinking their eyes is telling you that pure existence is suffering and they want their life to end - you're going to stand in front of them and say "no, you're not allowed to"? You'd be stronger than most of us I guess.

>>Can you imagine an opioid epidemic level of commission based kickbacks but for suicide booths?

No, I actually can't.

>>Sad? Pay us to kill you!

If you can't imagine any other reason why people want to kill themselves other than being sad then I don't know what to tell you.

Your counter arguments are basically the "slippery slope" fallacy in the sense that if we were to legalise suicide, it devolvles into chaos with no restrictions and people killing themselves because they saw an ad.

Obviously I'm not advocating for that or the glorification of it but merely the option to if someone decides that they would rather not be alive instead of continuing to live.

> Are you unswayed by testimonials...

Are you unswayed by the people with multiple failed attempts that eventually succeed? Why did they want to leave so bad and why didn't we allow them to in a safe and guaranteed manner?

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41637779.

This comparison is so absurd that it can be safely discarded without further discussion.

I feel this is an unfair characterization; there are a lot of very good reasons to argue against assisted suicide and to avoid normalizing suicide in general:

There is always the potential for those mechanisms to be abused, making it taboo instead is the best prevention you can have for this.

There is also the problem that suicide is a very final decision; people regret their choices (often years later) all the time, opening the suicide-door would lead invariably to cases where people throw away the rest of their life even though it would've had immeasurable value to them later had they lived on.

Normalizing suicide in general could also lead to societal changes where death is the expected/desired outcome, and people are basically compelled by group dynamics, even in situations where we would absolutely not see this as justified or desirable currently (i.e. people suiciding because they killed their child in an accident).

You also see intelligent folks suffer from the curse of knowledge when discussing the topic.

They assume that half the population isn’t below average when it comes to intelligence.

It’s similar to the analogy that crime would go down if every human had a gun, but the analogy fails because of human flaws.

Assisted suicide will always be abused; mentally ill will be killed; kids who want more tax savings will push the button, etc.

But it also suffers from people who insist it makes perfect 'logical' sense though they've never been confronted with the situation and still have a notion of 'logical thinking as though there's some perfect Spock-like way of viewing the world. There is no 'logical/emotional' divide in the way humans make decisions and the belief is almost nonsensical.

>but is hamstrung by a common lizard brain reaction we all have. One of those things people don't like, or feels icky, and they have no idea why they feel that way.

You clearly missed all the discourse about MAID in Canada, where people accused the government/medical care system of pushing people into committing suicide so they'd be less of a burden on the medical system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_in_Canada#Criticism

Chesterton's fence. Just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean there is no reason. Sometimes it's a vestigial evolutionary thing, sometimes it isn't.

A lot of "intelligent" people get caught up in this way.