brazzy comments on Rationality Quotes December 2011 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Jayson_Virissimo 02 December 2011 06:01AM

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Comment author: brazzy 05 December 2011 11:39:24AM 1 point [-]

The point is that whether and how much one wants to die tends to fluctuate a lot, and the willingness to commit suicide depends a lot on the availiability of means to easily and painlessly do so. A large percentage of suicide attempts are opportunistic rather than planned. The planned ones probably succeed more often, but that does not necessarily mean that those people really wanted to die more - just that their will to die was over a certain threshold for a certain time.

Comment author: NihilCredo 05 December 2011 04:59:26PM 3 points [-]

The so-called 'psychotically depressed' person who tries to kill herself doesn't do so out of quote 'hopelessness' or any abstract conviction that life's assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a cer­tain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise.

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