How would you chose to die?

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Blaggard
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Re: How would you chose to die?

Post by Blaggard »

The Voice of Time wrote:
Blaggard wrote:There's a difference between not wanting to watch someone suffer in their final days and murder believe it or not.
Yeah, in the former you do not end someone's life. You focus on something else.
Have you ever seen a patient rocking backwards and forwards screaming kill me it hurts at the top of their lungs?

Because I have and I thank the lord there is a better more dignified option that medical staff use.
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The Voice of Time
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Re: How would you chose to die?

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Blaggard wrote:In hospitals the management of pain and death is called palliative care, you'll find a lot of terminal patients are actually euthanised by Drs by issuing massive doses of di-morphine aka heroin that let the patient go out slowly and pain free rather than screaming and in agony, it's not something that is generally advertised, but the maxim do no harm, is clear here.
There's a very clear problem here with this sort of reasoning, which is that your exact argument also counts for murder as long as the murder "is done in happiness". Imagine the victim being given drugs that exceedingly make them happy about anything, including the fact that the drugs are gonna kill them or that they are gonna be killed otherwise (cocaine has been said to render some people indifferent to their own life and death, though cocaine doesn't give you happy feelings as far as I know).

If you kill a person nobody will miss and the person dies in happiness, you are not causing anyone harm, are you? You might in fact just get rid of a problem even... this is why the concept breaks down. A desire to die is an illness, caused by despair and/or delusions in some form or another, and is just the same as someone who has been drugged... compare it to how people taken away by their own emotions act contrary to who they are as people in general... the same things happens. In both cases you are "drugged". Fear is a drug. Anger is a drug, and so forth. It's all part of the endocrine system causing severe imbalance.
Last edited by The Voice of Time on Wed Mar 26, 2014 11:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: How would you chose to die?

Post by The Voice of Time »

Blaggard wrote:Have you ever seen a patient rocking backwards and forwards screaming kill me it hurts at the top of their lungs?

Because I have and I thank the lord there is a better more dignified option that medical staff use.
Nothing dignifying about either of it.
Blaggard
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Re: How would you chose to die?

Post by Blaggard »

The Voice of Time wrote:
Blaggard wrote:In hospitals the management of pain and death is called palliative care, you'll find a lot of terminal patients are actually euthanised by Drs by issuing massive doses of di-morphine aka heroin that let the patient go out slowly and pain free rather than screaming and in agony, it's not something that is generally advertised, but the maxim do no harm, is clear here.
There's a very clear problem here with this sort of reasoning, which is that your exact argument also counts for murder as long as the murder "is done in happiness". Imagine the victim being given drugs that exceedingly make them happy about anything, including the fact that the drugs are gonna kill them or that they are gonna be killed otherwise (cocaine has been said to render some people indifferent to their own life and death, though cocaine doesn't give you happy feelings as far as I know).

If you kill a person nobody will miss and the person dies in happiness, you are not causing anyone harm, are you? You might in fact just get rid of a problem even... this is why the concept breaks down. A desire to die is an illness, caused by despair and/or delusions in some form or another, and is just the same as someone who has been drugged... compare it to how people taken away by their own emotions act contrary to who they are as people in general... the same things happens. In both cases you are "drugged". Fear is a drug. Anger is a drug, and so forth. It's all part of the endocrine system causing severe imbalance.
I'm happy that the ease of suffering in those who have perhaps days to live is done in a humane way rather than leaving someone bellowing kill me, just kill me at the top of their lungs for a few days. Each to their own though.

When you are about to die and you have a choice to go out painlessly in a few days instead of screaming in pain, I think most rational people would chose the option of less agony.
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Re: How would you chose to die?

Post by Blaggard »

The Voice of Time wrote:
Blaggard wrote:Have you ever seen a patient rocking backwards and forwards screaming kill me it hurts at the top of their lungs?

Because I have and I thank the lord there is a better more dignified option that medical staff use.
Nothing dignifying about either of it.
Perhaps then you should have a long talk with all the palliative care nurses in the world about how their pain management is causing you problems?
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Re: How would you chose to die?

Post by The Voice of Time »

Blaggard wrote:Perhaps then you should have a long talk with all the palliative care nurses in the world about how their pain management is causing you problems?
Are you enforcing an end to the discussion or indicating that I should answer you what you mean for me to tell the palliative care nurse? Because obviously I'm not gonna look for a nurse, as I engage in discussion with you on the basis that you hold a belief I believe to be very wrong.
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Re: How would you chose to die?

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

The Voice of Time wrote:
Blaggard wrote:Perhaps then you should have a long talk with all the palliative care nurses in the world about how their pain management is causing you problems?
Are you enforcing an end to the discussion or indicating that I should answer you what you mean for me to tell the palliative care nurse? Because obviously I'm not gonna look for a nurse, as I engage in discussion with you on the basis that you hold a belief I believe to be very wrong.
I still don't know why you are against voluntary euthanasia (it's called that because that's what it is). Is it for religious reasons? As I said, if you are happy to suffer then feel free. Don't impose your beliefs on others who don't want to suffer. Some people have horrific deaths. To think some painkillers are going to work for everyone (I know they don't), is naive in the extreme. What's it to you if someone wants to end their own life? It's no-one's businesss but the person himself.
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Re: How would you chose to die?

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You can't seriously be asking me whether I'm religious if you've ever read anything I've written here on this forum, and I've been here for quite a while now. You should know I'm quite anti-religious.

I have given my reasons, which you seem to have neglected to read since you need to ask.

But if you want more personal reasons I believe we live for the sake of peace (I've written extensively about this across the forums using other more descriptive words and more complicated language), and I believe we all exist to complement each other's lives and bring peace to each other and happiness, but in order to experience peace and happiness we must first be alive to experience it. So, at every test I've ever done in trying to see if "voluntary euthanasia" could be justified according to these rules, at every single test it fails completely. And no, pain is not "negative happiness", so there's no way you can calculate a happy-sum with negative integer values supposedly "taking away happiness", that's a logical fallacy. Happiness only accumulates or does not accumulate per moment as an experience that is either true or false for each moment. All our emotions run in parallel and have no necessary identity relationship in the realm of value of such sorts.

Nothing can justify "voluntary euthanasia" without breaking the principles mentioned above, except when we risk our lives to fight for each other in which case we do a calculated risk to make our shared future a better place. But even in those situations it will rarely summarize to a better situation, which is why the 21st century is such anti-war century and why the anti-war sentiment around the world is so strong, because we are getting familiar with the extreme cost of a life and how this loss negatively affects our future and the quality and security of our future.
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Re: How would you chose to die?

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

The Voice of Time wrote:You can't seriously be asking me whether I'm religious if you've ever read anything I've written here on this forum, and I've been here for quite a while now. You should know I'm quite anti-religious.

I have given my reasons, which you seem to have neglected to read since you need to ask.

But if you want more personal reasons I believe we live for the sake of peace (I've written extensively about this across the forums using other more descriptive words and more complicated language), and I believe we all exist to complement each other's lives and bring peace to each other and happiness, but in order to experience peace and happiness we must first be alive to experience it. So, at every test I've ever done in trying to see if "voluntary euthanasia" could be justified according to these rules, at every single test it fails completely. And no, pain is not "negative happiness", so there's no way you can calculate a happy-sum with negative integer values supposedly "taking away happiness", that's a logical fallacy. Happiness only accumulates or does not accumulate per moment as an experience that is either true or false for each moment. All our emotions run in parallel and have no necessary identity relationship in the realm of value of such sorts.

Nothing can justify "voluntary euthanasia" without breaking the principles mentioned above, except when we risk our lives to fight for each other in which case we do a calculated risk to make our shared future a better place. But even in those situations it will rarely summarize to a better situation, which is why the 21st century is such anti-war century and why the anti-war sentiment around the world is so strong, because we are getting familiar with the extreme cost of a life and how this loss negatively affects our future and the quality and security of our future.
I don't see any connection between being anti-war and anti-euthanasia. You seem to be trying to sound very philosophical, but you only come across as incomprehensible. Philosophy doesn't have to be flowery and indecipherable. What it seems to boil down to is that you wish to impose your beliefs onto others, in the same way that religious nuts do. As you are happy to suck up the pain and watch porn, then everyone else should be too.
Where do you get the idea that the world is becoming more anti-war? I certainly don't find that to be the case.
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Re: How would you chose to die?

Post by The Voice of Time »

That was a side-note and not an essential part of my argument, why do you choose to pick on that part?

I assure you I'm not trying to sound incomprehensible and nothing I said there is very difficult to understand for anyone who has completed high school and read a bit of philosophy, so unless you don't know what an integer (and negative at that) is, and/or that you are not aware that too many people have what resembles a classical utilitarian view that things can easily be added and subtracted from a pool of utility, and unless you do not understand what I mean in the context what an "identity relationship" is (when I just there said "in the realm of value of such sorts" and since the only time I talked about values was in the relation to negative integers it should be clear I mean that any count of happiness cannot be counted with negative numerical values), then I should be very straight forward.

That I "wish to impose your beliefs onto others, in the same way that religious nuts do." is certainly not done in the way "religious nuts" do, and certainly has nothing to do with religion what so ever, an ungrounded comparison. Instead it has all to do with me not recognizing that stupid opinions should be allowed to guide action, and all actions are part of the same world, and the whatabouts of the goodness of the world rests as a burdensome question on everyone's shoulder, whether they like to admit it or not, they are part of the world and what they choose and do not choose affects the world they live in and the future their descendants will live in.

And I do not wish to live in a world that welcomes death with open arms.
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Re: How would you chose to die?

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

The Voice of Time wrote:
Blaggard wrote:In hospitals the management of pain and death is called palliative care, you'll find a lot of terminal patients are actually euthanised by Drs by issuing massive doses of di-morphine aka heroin that let the patient go out slowly and pain free rather than screaming and in agony, it's not something that is generally advertised, but the maxim do no harm, is clear here.
There's a very clear problem here with this sort of reasoning, which is that your exact argument also counts for murder as long as the murder "is done in happiness". Imagine the victim being given drugs that exceedingly make them happy about anything, including the fact that the drugs are gonna kill them or that they are gonna be killed otherwise (cocaine has been said to render some people indifferent to their own life and death, though cocaine doesn't give you happy feelings as far as I know).

If you kill a person nobody will miss and the person dies in happiness, you are not causing anyone harm, are you? You might in fact just get rid of a problem even... this is why the concept breaks down. A desire to die is an illness, caused by despair and/or delusions in some form or another, and is just the same as someone who has been drugged... compare it to how people taken away by their own emotions act contrary to who they are as people in general... the same things happens. In both cases you are "drugged". Fear is a drug. Anger is a drug, and so forth. It's all part of the endocrine system causing severe imbalance.
There is nothing wrong with my English comprehension, and what you wrote is definitely not clear and decipherable. As Einstein said, if you can't explain something so your grandmother can understand it, then you don't know your subject (or something like that).
Blaggard
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Re: How would you chose to die?

Post by Blaggard »

The Voice of Time wrote:You can't seriously be asking me whether I'm religious if you've ever read anything I've written here on this forum, and I've been here for quite a while now. You should know I'm quite anti-religious.

I have given my reasons, which you seem to have neglected to read since you need to ask.

But if you want more personal reasons I believe we live for the sake of peace (I've written extensively about this across the forums using other more descriptive words and more complicated language), and I believe we all exist to complement each other's lives and bring peace to each other and happiness, but in order to experience peace and happiness we must first be alive to experience it. So, at every test I've ever done in trying to see if "voluntary euthanasia" could be justified according to these rules, at every single test it fails completely. And no, pain is not "negative happiness", so there's no way you can calculate a happy-sum with negative integer values supposedly "taking away happiness", that's a logical fallacy. Happiness only accumulates or does not accumulate per moment as an experience that is either true or false for each moment. All our emotions run in parallel and have no necessary identity relationship in the realm of value of such sorts.

Nothing can justify "voluntary euthanasia" without breaking the principles mentioned above, except when we risk our lives to fight for each other in which case we do a calculated risk to make our shared future a better place. But even in those situations it will rarely summarize to a better situation, which is why the 21st century is such anti-war century and why the anti-war sentiment around the world is so strong, because we are getting familiar with the extreme cost of a life and how this loss negatively affects our future and the quality and security of our future.
Well I find your lack of sympathy for those in extreme agony about to die immoral, and ethically unsound, as does the legal power Drs and nurses have to ease suffering agree, now I am not saying that makes it right, but it is at least more humane than watching a person spend his last moments in such agonizing pain that he is gibbering and deranged.

Coup de grace, a blow meant to put someone who was about to die out of their misery and spare them the pain the last few minutes their life would be. Seems likewise much more moral, it strikes me as ghoulish and morbid to let people die in agony and stand by and watch for some misplaced sense that somehow they should experience death in all it's horrible pain; it seems actually quite cruel and malevolent, the sort of thing a torturer or sadist might enjoy, but meh, each to their own, as I said though your reasoning is immoral in my view.

Let's be clear here we're not talking about people who might recover we are talking about people in the terminal stage of incurable diseases. Likewise those who have been eviscerated and no amount of medical attention can save are best off not being left to die a death that is so agonizing their screams can be heard from a mile away.

Hari Kiri ritual suicide aka as Sepuka sure those sorts of senseless honour derived suicides seem pointless. But then even when they ritually killed themselves because of dishonour their was a deeply altruistic reason, they wanted to spare their familly the reflected shame of the dishonour they had accrued by disloyalty and or treason. For example a well known story is a Samurai fell off a cliff and was knocked unconcious and about to drown as the tide came in, a loyal soldier threw himself off the cliff to wake the Samurai to save his life, a life for a life; he earned his family great honour and they were raised to the noble class as Samurai, one simple act of nobility begat several peoples lives to be lived more amicably. People make such large assumptions about even cultural suicides that ones done to assuage suffering are seen in a misguided light. You don't have to be religious to get that, on the contrary I find the morality of the Atheist more humane than the inane idea that suicide rather than face unendurable suffering is somehow immoral. Don't get me wrong the Japanese system of honour seems to outsiders to be quite immoral, but at its core is a deep respect for life, and a deep appreciation for honesty and integrity and honour.

That does not mean I think Kamikaze pilots lit. divine wind were right to do what they did or that Samurai should have been so concerned with shame that they should end their life, it is pretty irrational at least by Western standards, but it is culturally at least logical. Likewise the maxim do no harm, is rightly employed in our culture if it is to ease the suffering of those who are in such pain they cannot face the last few days of their life in such a state.

Let me make this clear the admission of palliative care to ease pain is not euthenasia, although it is a fine line, patients are given control over their pain management by means of equipment called syring drivers, which can increase or decrease the amount of di-morphine as they see fit by pressing a button that delivers a bolus of heroin as and when they feel it most necessary, often those in the most pain are given two and allowed to chose when they want to administer pain relief, sometimes the doses can be fatal but the patient is carefully monitored at all times to ensure that he is not just committing suicide through depression or whatever, it frees the patient to hence decide how he wants to end his life and at what time, to some extent within carefully monitored guide lines, I think that is ethically sound more so than watching some scream kill me at the top of their lungs for several days. I am sure you can see the fine line that is being walked but I find that to be more moral than the alternative.
Last edited by Blaggard on Wed Mar 26, 2014 7:58 pm, edited 13 times in total.
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Re: How would you chose to die?

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vegetariantaxidermy

Or you simply don't have what should not be a very big requirement for a brain to understand what I say. I should not have to resort to baby language for you, and neither to grandma talk.
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Re: How would you chose to die?

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

The Voice of Time wrote:vegetariantaxidermy

Or you simply don't have what should not be a very big requirement for a brain to understand what I say. I should not have to resort to baby language for you, and neither to grandma talk.
Language is supposed to be understood. That's the point of it. I don't see why I should have to translate what you say. That would put you at the mercy of whatever I chose to interpret you as saying. I would hazard to say that the reason you aren't making a lot of sense on this topic is because you aren't arguing from a logical, rational, and reasonable standpoint. There is no rational reason I can think of to allow people to suffer when their desire is to be put out of their misery.
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Re: How would you chose to die?

Post by The Voice of Time »

Blaggard wrote:Seems much more moral, it strikes me as ghoulish and morbid to let people die in agony and stand by and watch for some misplaced sense that somehow they should experience death in all it's horrible pain; it seems actually quite cruel and malevolent, the sort of thing a torturer or sadist might enjoy, but meh, each to their own, as I said though your reasoning is immoral in my view.
The variable that decides the outcome is not whether they experience pain or not. Pain is "irrelevant" to whether a person should live or die, we don't "die for pain" in the same we don't "live for pain". I don't see why you expect somebody to want to watch, except to be there for the person who is experiencing the moment, as that person would likely enjoy that more than being alone. In my view your reasoning is immoral, and I've proven myself right if you took the time to read, and proven you wrong.
Blaggard wrote:Let's be clear here we're not talking about people who might recover we are talking about people in the terminal stage of incurable diseases. Likewise those who have been eviscerated and no amount of medical attention can save are best off not being left to die a death that is so agonizing their screams can be heard from a mile away.
Why are you presuming the person cannot be treated with sedatives? Which century are you living in exactly? For modern well-equipped hospitals, this depiction is irrelevant. I also find it troublesome, that you talk about evisceration when obviously a person can not survive very long without its entrails, unless we are talking about some less important part of the body. In that time left, I would try to establish contact with the person first of all, so as to make the most out of the moment, perhaps try and get some final words for instance? I'd still prefer to heavily sedate the person than outright killing it, especially since the person is gonna die so soon anyways. There's really not any incentive to kill the person even faster when it already happens so quickly. Not that a prolonging of the person's death would really make a better case for killing it. Pain is no fun, but the person still wouldn't be able to experience relief when in death the person would not exist to experience relief, like sowing seeds without reaping a harvest.
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