We are not suicide experts, we know nothing about how to help, and our attempts to help can easily backfire.
This sounds to me like taking the precautionary principle too far. Shouldn’t we do an expected value calculation? I imagine the folks at Wikipedia had a few incidents of people being helped with their depression and killing themselves subsequently (possibly as a result of the help they received), then Wikipedia was like “What should we do? How about a don’t-talk-with-suicidal-people policy?” without looking at the other, much more obscure cases where someone asked for help and did not subsequently commit suicide (possibly as a result of the help they received).
I seem to have read that talking to a random smart, empathetic person is just as good as talking to a pro counselor, BTW.
I imagine the folks at Wikipedia had a few incidents of people being helped with their depression and killing themselves subsequently (possibly as a result of the help they received), then Wikipedia was like “What should we do? How about a don’t-talk-with-suicidal-people policy?” without looking at the other, much more obscure cases where someone asked for help and did not subsequently commit suicide (possibly as a result of the help they received).
I don’t know. Wikipedia spends a lot less time on socializing then LW does.
No one can stop them even if it’s a terrible idea, they have nothing to lose, and nevertheless, they list their list of suicide hotlines prominently in the sidebar.
This sounds to me like taking the precautionary principle too far. Shouldn’t we do an expected value calculation? I imagine the folks at Wikipedia had a few incidents of people being helped with their depression and killing themselves subsequently (possibly as a result of the help they received), then Wikipedia was like “What should we do? How about a don’t-talk-with-suicidal-people policy?” without looking at the other, much more obscure cases where someone asked for help and did not subsequently commit suicide (possibly as a result of the help they received).
I seem to have read that talking to a random smart, empathetic person is just as good as talking to a pro counselor, BTW.
ETA: gwern, what’s your take on http://www.reddit.com/r/suicidewatch?
I don’t know. Wikipedia spends a lot less time on socializing then LW does.
No one can stop them even if it’s a terrible idea, they have nothing to lose, and nevertheless, they list their list of suicide hotlines prominently in the sidebar.