"But what if someone wants to kill themselves its against their rights for them to be restricted from doing so"
We dont need to make it easier for people to kill themselves we need it to be easier to live a fulfilling life so they don't want to
> Nearly all of those who requested assisted dying - around 96% - had a foreseeable natural death. The remaining 4% were granted euthanasia due to having a long-term chronic illness and where a natural death was not imminent.
The average age of those seeking assisted dying was around 77 years old, with cancer being the most frequent underlying medical condition.
It’s ridiculous to jump to a conclusion that these are simply people that aren’t “fulfilled” enough.
Im not jumping to conclusions. The state wants disabled people dead instead of helping us. "Natural death" does a lot of heavy lifting for healthcare systems that kill us by a million papercuts
Yes, you are. First, you insinuated that these people died for a lack of fulfilling lives that was somehow withheld from them. Who are you to say none of them were fulfilled, or that there is some magic cure for mortality and the uncertainties of life? Now you’re doubling down by suggest this is some ulterior motive by the government to kill disabled people. If that’s not a huge jump to a conclusion then I don’t know what is.
You’ll get no argument from me that “the system”–whether it’s private or public–has put expediency over the dignified lives of its denizens. After all, I live in the US with dwindling few social nets and a for-profit healthcare system that quite purposely and openly prioritizes profitability over health and wellbeing, and uses our suffering as profit streams. But I will not make the mistake of conflating this with the idea that assisted dying is purposeful state-sanctioned murder. In fact, that detestable point of view is one that wishes to deprive me of perhaps one of the few choices I might have when the time comes, that wants to force me to endure suffering, all because some other person doesn’t feel the same way as a result of personal, religious, or whatever other reasons.
I’ll stand with you if the state wants to kill anyone that wants to live, but against you if you wish to deprive me or any independent individual their autonomy.
> Good luck helping somebody paralyzed from the neck down live a fulfilling life.
Honestly, you seem to suffer from a lack of imagination. There are famous examples of people profoundly paralyzed who most likely lived fulfilling lives (e.g. Stephen Hawking), and I believe there's research the people's happiness tends to return to baseline after both very good and very bad events.
I read his comment as an attempt to add nuance; people paralyzed from the neck down have various experiences. For example, in this study [1], only 12% of those with tetraplegy rated their quality of life as poor or very poor
> Please don't trivialize peoples stuggles by offering pithy anecdotes.
I think you're mistaken, I didn't trivialize anything.
If anything's being trivialized, it was the value of quadriplegic people, who some internet rando blithely declared as all being incapable of having a "fulfilling life."
The majority is somewhere between overweight and vastly obese, which is a choice (even in HN's latest boondoggle of "you lose weight if and only if you are injected the right drugs", obesity remains a choice). Similarly, the vast majority of people don't even meet the basic WHO guidelines on physical activity, which is even more obviously a choice. It is well-known that making these choices precipitates virtually every common, serious disease. Therefore, most people are unhealthy by choice.
Do you mean written down code? I think that deciding whether that's software is debatable. Other than that I can't think of anything that doesn't run on a computer that can be called software. Unless you want to be pedantic and say 'this program doesn't run on a computer, it gets compiled down into machine code. The machine code runs on a computer.'
Yup, but I ain't telling y'all sh_t. You can figure that sh_t out for yourself. ;-)
I'm not really impressed with what y'all are building anyway. More FANG-sh_t? Microsoft-adeverywhere-2030? Salesforce? Better insurance software or real estate collusion? More Google artificial-ad-f_ckery? Better social media disinformation bots?
"Know your enemy." --RATM
[And, nothing personal, my friend. I'm addressing the industry via the "Royal You", representing by YC et al.]
I build lightweight communication interfaces that can run off cheap hardware without connection to the wider internet for off the grid setups with vanilla html/css. So not quite.
I'm someone who is naturally fat. I have spent my whole life trying to lose weight. Many of you here have excluded fat people from your lives so you won't hear this from someone else: you are the weight you are due to factors outside of your control. You can slightly change your weight temporarily but your body will always reset or give you stress signals to reset it yourself. I know, I have starved myself, done incremental weight loss, worked out almost year round as a football player, it doesn't stay off and it barely comes off (10-20 pounds total is insignificant). Fat people shouldn't have to starve themselves to meet societal standards and personally I won't.
PS. The reason fat people don't like going to the doctor is because they quite literally will not treat us for our issues in most cases. I've been trying to get treatment for my crippling back pain for years and have been told by physical therapists not to do physical therapy until I'm on pain medication but even with this info doctors just tell me to exercise. I'd love to, in fact I'd love to take walks often but I physically cant.
