Stabilizer comments on Is suicide high-status? - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Stabilizer 12 February 2013 09:41AM

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Comment author: Stabilizer 13 February 2013 09:33:09PM 2 points [-]

I think one might want to make a distinction between society's proclaimed statement that suicide is immoral and how it is biologically wired. If biologically, we are wired to perceive suicide as high-status and it causes obvious negative effects, especially to the community, then it makes sense that as a society we have evolved to proclaim it as low-status.

For example, Japan has one of the world's highest suicide rate. My guess is that it as Japan's society proclaims less than others that suicide is low-status. This might be part of causation architecture behind the high suicide rate.

Comment author: Creutzer 14 February 2013 02:41:53PM 2 points [-]

If biologically, we are wired to perceive suicide as high-status and it causes obvious negative effects, especially to the community, then it makes sense that as a society we have evolved to proclaim it as low-status.

You're right. I didn't take into account that it may be possible for something to be high-status without people acknowledging it as such (even to themselves), depending on what exactly our internal status assessor is sensitive to.