Alicorn comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong

97 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 March 2010 11:23PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (1329)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: taw 16 April 2012 06:06:44PM -2 points [-]

Killing another living thing doesn't qualify as "euthanasia" if you do it for your benefit, not that being's.

By infant abandonment by giving it to an orphanage (it's not legal everywhere, but in a lot of countries it's perfectly legal and acceptable) you lose both your responsibility and your control over the baby, so you no longer have any right to do so.

And speaking of euthanasia, we really should seriously reban it. We pretty much know how to deal with even the most severe pain - very large doses of opiates to get rid of it, and large doses of stimulants like amphetamines to counter the side effects. War on Drugs is the reason why we don't routinely do this to people in severe pain.

We don't have a magical cure for depression, but if someone is depressed, they cannot make rational decisions for themselves anyway, so they cannot decide to kill themselves legitimately.

Once you cover these casese, there are zero legitimate arguments left for euthanasia.

Comment author: Alicorn 16 April 2012 07:29:34PM 3 points [-]

We don't have a magical cure for depression, but if someone is depressed, they cannot make rational decisions for themselves anyway, so they cannot decide to kill themselves legitimately.

Suppose I say now, in my non-depressed state, that if I were ever to become so depressed that I wanted to die, I'd prefer that this want be fulfilled.

Comment author: taw 16 April 2012 11:12:04PM -1 points [-]

We cannot allow this any more than we can allow people to sold themselves to slavery as a loan guarantee.

Comment author: wedrifid 16 April 2012 11:32:46PM 2 points [-]

We cannot allow this any more than we can allow people to sold themselves to slavery as a loan guarantee.

Which doesn't preclude allowing both. I can see benefits of allowing the latter. Or, more to the point, I can see situations where forbidding the latter is morally abhorrent. Specifically, when there is not a safety net in place that prevents people starving or otherwise suffering for the lack of finances that they should be able to acquire.

Comment author: thomblake 16 April 2012 11:15:20PM 2 points [-]

Sure, I can see how if you didn't like the latter then you'd dislike the former.