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Sewing-Machine comments on Ethics and rationality of suicide - Less Wrong
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Comments (190)
I don't think your post was irresponsible, but it does frighten me. Your reaction to the suicide -- to try to put yourself in the man's shoes, to understand the mindset and grievances of a person who might make such a decision, and to withhold the judgement that his decision was a mistake -- is clearly borne of kind and humane impulses. But I suspect that you're depressed yourself, and that your depression has hijacked and perverted those impulses.
Many commenters here have reacted to the suicide not with "how must he have felt" but with "how can we prevent more such things from happening?" It seems you think this reveals a lack of empathy or respect, and that someone who understood better what it's like to "not always be enthusiastic about their own existence" would approach the issue differently -- in the way you're approaching it. I wonder if it's occurred to you, and I hope that you'll consider it, that your understanding of what depression is like might actually be poorer than those making the banal and maudlin point that this was a tragedy and a mistake, precisely because depression can rob you of perspective.
I am not, in fact, currently depressed, although I have been in the past. But I (in my non-depressed state) respect the feelings, wishes, and preferences of my depressed self, just like those of someone else like Chris.
I haven't said much of anything in response to most comments here; you seem to be extrapolating from things I said in the post. But there I was criticizing specific bad arguments, ones that are encountered in the general culture and not necessarily here ; the remark about lack of empathy was in specific reference to the argument from grief of friends and relatives.
That it was a tragedy is certain; unfortunately, that doesn't automatically imply that it was a mistake.
However, it may very well have been a mistake in Chris's case. I'm not sure he realized how close he was (a few keystrokes by him or someone else, like me) to the kind of friendship he needed.
But it's that kind of miscalculation that would make it a mistake, and not the mere fact that other people are sad, or that "we must prevent suicide" is a widespread moral-sounding meme.
I myself am very sad about this, and become more so the more I read his writings. I hope he is not forgotten.