decot@cwruecmp.UUCP (Turmol the Intransitive) (02/29/84)
I don't commit suicide because I don't want to. I am not being cowardly,
I am being rational. Here is my line of reasoning:
Most evidence I have at present indicates to me that being dead means
the irreversible cessation of my brain activity. There is little
well-documented evidence that I will experience anything particularly
interesting after that happens; at least, any interesting experience would
be rather short. If there was overwhelming evidence that something
really exciting and interesting and long-lasting would occur when I die,
I might be willing to consider dying. But it would take some convincing,
since such a step is irrevocable.
I enjoy experiencing the wide variety of phenomena available to me
while my brain is active. If I didn't, perhaps I would be more willing
to experiment (although I'd probably only get one sample) with death.
Even if the circumstances of my life were much more painful to me,
I would rather thrash and gnash than quit altogether. But that's me.
Cowardice and courage are difficult to define objectively, since they are
most often applied to manipulate people into doing things they would not
otherwise. Since it is not generally known what sorts of actions are to be
classified as "cowardly" and which as "courageous", these terms are not
descriptive enough to be usefully applied in rational discussion.
People know what they want. If someone has carefully reasoned out that
se actually wants to die, that's hir business. But I will try to
stop hem if se hasn't reasoned carefully, because I don't like to see
an irreversible cessation of someone's brain activity. "A mind is a terrible
thing to waste," because it contains unique and perhaps generally useful
experiencial information.
Dave Decot "It's fun to live on the only fun planet for miles."
decvax!cwruecmp!decot (Decot.Case@rand-relay)