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army1987 comments on How to avoid dying in a car crash - Less Wrong
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Suicide is almost as likely cause of your death as a traffic accident. People spend too little effort at preventing traffic accidents, no question about it (all statistics agree that we are getting better at it, just too slowly), but situation is many orders of magnitude worse when it comes to preventing risk of death by suicide. We don't even do routine screening for depression! This total lack of concern is pure madness!!!
Or maybe preventing risk of death by suicide is hard. (My roommate killed himself four years ago, so I'd better tap out now.)
The point is not to prevent every single suicide, just reduce its rate. Since nobody is doing anything at the moment, it's pretty reasonable to assume modest effort could have major impact. By comparison we're throwing tons of money on cancer without much success, so throwing more money and effort at it probably won't change much at this point.
Or maybe if you care about reduction of the risk of your death (and risk of your death by suicide), your expected suicide rate is already extremely low.
If you asked people "how likely are you to die by suicide in the next 5 years" I'd expect results order of magnitude below real expected death rate.
It's difficult to imagine what would make you commit suicide, but some thing make people do it all the time.
But the reference class is not the people who said they are unlikely to die by suicide, it's the people who want to reduce their risk of death, by means such as taking driving exams. I'd say strong self preservation prevents suicide.
Do we actually have any statistical basis whatsoever to infer that?
For obvious counterpoint, if depressive realism hypothesis is true, people who are most likely aware of risks are also most likely to be depressed, and most likely to commit suicide at some point in the future. (I have no idea how strong effect this way is).
I'm just suggesting that because the suicides are major risk, doesn't mean that survivalists can do a lot about that risk. Besides, if one is to trust own reasoning in the future one shouldn't try to prevent suicide.
Not so, when I was speculating on all the most effective actions for preventing their own suicide almost none of them were about simply preventing the implementation of a suicide preference. Most involved improving your life in such a way that suicide is not desirable. This allows for trust in your own reasoning. (Enter Buffy, "Give me something to sing about!").
... then one is horribly wrong already. People make wrong decisions all the time for variety of reasons. People do not have utility functions or anything remotely like that. (see Alicorn's Luminosity for entertaining fictional evidence of that, Gianna's transformation in particular)
How do you do about protecting the altered yourself from altered yourself, in the future, though? I sure would try to prevent myself going depressed, and i'd try to keep my cognition working correctly, but that's about it. It is already partial death if you changed too much.
edit: btw i live in the country with #1 suicide rate in the world (lithuania). I knew some guy who was suicidal (edit: he actually ended up in hospital at some occasion, idk if he's still alive even), he was outright weird in general, e.g. cutting himself to show some ultra bitchy gf that he loves her. Single anekdote, I know, but that's how many of the suicides are.