HungryHobo comments on Why people want to die - Less Wrong Discussion
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You're kidding right? There are a great many scenarios which would make death preferable to life and we see them happening to people all around us regularly.
You're making the exact illogical claims that I was talking about.
Many elderly people, faced with a slow decline pre-commit to some Schelling fence or set of conditions for when they want to stop living. It may be when they can't remember their childrens names or similar. They know with absolute certainty that it is coming but may not want to die today.
Believe it or not "How about June? " genuinely is the kind of thing that people sometimes say about dying.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/magazine/the-last-day-of-her-life.html?_r=0
http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay/
Even without alzheimer's given enough time I can certainly see myself picking some arbitrary time to die. I'd quite like that to be far more than 100 years after my birth but lots of people have no problem imagining wanting to die eventually even without extreme or horrible events.
I don't know about you, but I wasn't talking about those. I was talking about the same kind of people PhilGoetz was talking about:
By switching the topic of discussion away from retirees and to ill people, you've effectively pulled a bait-and-switch. Let's try to stay on topic, neh?
Nope, I don't think so. You said:
and this is plainly false -- it's false not just for ill people. Retirees are quite aware that their health and mental abilities will continue to worsen with age.