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The philosophical underpinning is giving up of materialness. The practicality of the 5 instances that I witnessed over the past year - typical terminal individuals choose this. They pass away surrounded by loved ones (they typically medicate for any pain, and the body starts shutting down when food and water stops). This is observed with somberness, but celebrated as very positive act.

When someone starts this process, it's a unique experience speaking with them, as there's usually nothing that comes up, and the moment does not really lend itself to small talk :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sallekhana

> Kahneman used the services of Pegasos in the village of Roderis in Nunningen, Switzerland. In the death room with a view over green hills, wearing a suit and tie, he lay on the bed and turned on an infusion of sodium pentobarbital himself. A companion held his hand and told him they were holding it on behalf of his loved ones. Kahneman's last words were "I feel their love."

[1]: https://www.aargauerzeitung.ch/schweiz/suizidhilfe-weltstar-...

Great guy, very sociable, knew everyone in the little town he lived in. Kept in touch with a lot of students. Good neighbour, friendly guy who'd talk to everyone.

He got Alzheimers. He started forgetting stuff, and it frustrated him. He got caught driving dangerously, and cursed the doctor who took away his license.

He argued with me about the state of some chicken he wanted to cook. I told him "this is pink all over, you have to cook it more". He got angry. I understood he'd become like this to everyone.

He pissed off everyone on his street, and all police, medical and social workers sent to help him. The disease made him blow up every relationship he had with anyone that he didn't know well, like me and a couple of colleagues.

He got found in his house, having left the gas on, endangering the whole street. He ended up in a care home, not knowing who he was, or who I was.

If he'd been run over by a car, or died of a heart attack at the age of 80, people he knew would remember him as that nice old guy who had a dog and made a lot of art, and was friendly to everyone. Instead he was that 83 year old guy who pissed off everyone, nearly blew up the neighbourhood, and drove like a maniac.

You really don't want to end up with dementia and related illnesses, it totally sours everyone's view of you.

Some of its wording is weird, like mentioning his wife dying in the same context of two other partners with no explanation. The original is a much better read.

In particular, the physician must "be satisfied that the patient’s suffering is unbearable, with no prospect of improvement", which from this article sounds far from the case here.

[1] https://www.government.nl/topics/euthanasia/is-euthanasia-al...

Mentally she is still pretty clear and she often says it would be best if she doesn't wake up in the morning.

I think it would be better for everybody if we had a way to have a ceremony where we all say goodbye and then end it.

Should assisted dying be legalised?

Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine volume 9, Article number: 3 (2014)

Thomas D G Frost, Devan Sinha & Barnabas J Gilbert

https://peh-med.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1747-5341...

Abstract

When an individual facing intractable pain is given an estimate of a few months to live, does hastening death become a viable and legitimate alternative for willing patients? Has the time come for physicians to do away with the traditional notion of healthcare as maintaining or improving physical and mental health, and instead accept their own limitations by facilitating death when requested? The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge held the 2013 Varsity Medical Debate on the motion “This House Would Legalise Assisted Dying”. This article summarises the key arguments developed over the course of the debate. We will explore how assisted dying can affect both the patient and doctor; the nature of consent and limits of autonomy; the effects on society; the viability of a proposed model; and, perhaps most importantly, the potential need for the practice within our current medico-legal framework.

Don't have an exact word to describe how I feel after reading above. Find it beautiful that such an accomplished person wanted to learn something even towards the end of his life.

Sorry mate.

He said that alone made life worth living, for him and them, but once any deteriorating conditions rendered him permanently unable to participate in this weekly activity then he felt it was time to go.

Maybe having a pre-set condition like this is less arbitrary, and also allows everyone involved to understand as the time comes closer.

You will be missed! Sad to hear he passed, but glad he was able to go out on his own terms.

That said, there is a problem in at least some places where assisted suicide is available where it keeps getting recommended to disabled people who don't want to die. That needs to be solved. Seems like an easy solve. Just don't do it.

There is a cost reduction incentive, though, which is why it happens. Costs can be reduced for abled people by convincing them to exercise and eat more fiber, so the same pressure can do good instead of evil. At some point we have to decide to care about people.

I do not know if this was ever widely practiced, but I think the ancient Indian ritual of going to the forest and starving to death in your last days is basically fine. It gives a dignified, sacred end to a life, while the modern medical sciences constant battle against the inevitable ends up distorting and deforming the last days of your life and forces you to leave without dignity clinging to the last vestiges of your humanity that’s left.

Robin Williams had to hang himself.

There should be easy medical options in the US.

I'm often reminded about a case in my own country: a young person had decided it was time to end her life after struggling for many years, without a sign of improvement. She was denied the right to euthanasia. After multiple failed suicide attempts, she went for the nuclear option and jumped in front of a train.

Everyone deserves to die in a dignified and humane way, not in multiple pieces or with a mind deteriorated beyond recognition. Forcing prolonged suffering is unnecessarily cruel. I wish more countries were as progressive with euthenasia as Switzerland.

In the cryonics community, it's a common complaint that they have to wait until the patient is legally dead in order to cryopreserve, which can make it difficult to cryopreserve under ideal circumstances.

I like the idea of allowing individuals to opt for cryopreservation over end-of-life care. End-of life care costs so much money, it could even be neutral from a financial perspective.

Since cryopreservation lacks the finality of other forms of death, it could also address some of the ethical dilemmas around assisted dying. After all, a lot of end-of-life care seems to be motivated by a futile attempt to somehow delay the inevitable. From my perspective, cryopreservation seems slightly less futile.

If medical technology continues to advance, maybe in the year 2500 there will be people walking around who were born in the 1900s and can give talks about their experiences. Wouldn't that be cool? It would help a lot if just a single country to made it possible to get cryopreserved before you're legally dead.

I don't think it's a link to an assisted suicide/dying with dignity center.

Society's relationship with intentional end of life decisions is fraught, to say the least.

Assisted suicide sounds like a fine option until you think of its impact on your loved ones. Imagining putting my wife and kids through my deciding to die, and the process of them bringing me to the place where it happens - or imagining one of them doing the same thing - just fills me with horror

We're opening up tremendous abuses of power by allowing the state to kill people for non-criminal behavior.

Sure the first iteration is presented as "voluntary", but the next edition will be for the greater good. And how about sinister / malevolent abuses of "voluntary" suicide -- similar to abuses over guardianship.

at least with guardianship the person can be set free, because they are still alive.

Now he could have been depressed after his wife died and was just lying to himself that this was his own, autonomous, decision. Depression can do that to you, it can make you think suicide is the most rational decision.

Seems like we should close this thread to honor these wishes

I guess we are all Dying, Fast and Slow.

So you could say it was more system 1 thinking rather than system 2.

I would've expected the opposite given our survival instincts.

If you’ve already made it to 90 with no major issues, you’re expected to make it to 95 and you could make easily live to 100. My wife’s grandad is 90 and he still lives alone, drives, plays golf nearly everyday, and regularly sees his 12 grandchildren and many great grandchildren. He even made the 9 hour trip to come see us last year.

I’m very wary of making it legal for doctors to euthanize an otherwise healthy person who just wants to avoid an eventual decline.

It’s relatively common for families to push people into nursing homes, but in this case there’s an even stronger direct financial incentive. I don’t trust the system to adequately prevent this.

I'd like to quote from the HN guidelines:

> Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative.

With that said I urge you those who disapprove to ask whether you are being "rigidly negative" about this.

1. Is this disapproval perhaps coming from your religious context? If so, please pause and consider why that may not apply to the rest of us. And also whether you really think that your religious beliefs must be forced on the rest of us.

2. Is this disapproval coming from a sense of deep unease that this post causes? If so, know that this unease is shared by most of us. But try and muster the fortitude to go past that unease and consider the decision from a place of compassion.

That said, I think the same, and there are some non-obvious second-order effects around it being the menu, especially regarding life extension incentives and if people started to feel guilt-tripped by it.

The first thing that comes to mind is a reduction in commitment to the elderly. As soon as health care costs ramp up, people will start to make more decisions based on the economic aspect of the people's support instead of thinking in life extension mechanisms as a natural first choice.

Second, it is related to the public health services. From my experience in some parts of EU/America, if you have a disease until your 50s, you will get treatment. However, after that, there are probably some parts of the public/private health system that throttle down the treatments.

The 2-week interval between a return if you are 30s/40s, will become 6 weeks if you are over 60s.

The next one, the "inheritance social contract," will be changed. As long as folks know that assisted suicide will be placed on the menu, I do not doubt that folks terrified with the possibility of loved ones "not doing enough to keep them alive" will dilute everyone who lifts the gas.

And as a second-order, I can see the securitization and life insurance industry will demand insane premiums to cover elderly persons, given that potentially people can lift and coast the treatment for their loved ones, and this can break part of their actuarial models, which, yes, expect people to exhaust resources to keep their elderly alive and not to choose together to pull the plug in a single-digit number of years before.

And maybe a third-order effect (in Germany there are some cases) where people with resources (single-digit million real estate + assets) exercise liquidity on it and live the best of their lives after 70 or in some cases, legally marry 30+ nurses to take care of them in the last 3 years and offer a chunk of inheritance, post-death pension, or insurance premium.

> οὐ δώσω δὲ οὐδὲ φάρμακον οὐδενὶ αἰτηθεὶς θανάσιμον, οὐδὲ ὑφηγήσομαι συμβουλίην τοιήνδε

In English:

> Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath

What is the point of living your last 10 years of life bed ridden? This is how I will go.

The guy who spent his life researching how to live rationally chooses suicide at age 90, upon seeing “increasing metal lapses”, presumably in order to not ever live irrationally.