Suicide note of an LW user
It was User:pdf23ds. Here’s the note. Excerpt:
I wish I could have been cryonically preserved. But suicides aren’t treated well enough for that. We get sectioned. I tried asking the cryonics places about options, but they wouldn’t talk to me. Fuck you, Alcor. Fuck you, CI. I might have lived except for you.
- 's comment on Open Thread, February 1-14, 2013 by (Feb 10, 2013, 3:44 AM; 22 points)
- 's comment on Open Thread, February 1-14, 2013 by (Feb 10, 2013, 3:59 PM; 18 points)
- 's comment on How would you talk a stranger off the ledge? by (Jan 23, 2012, 7:44 PM; 14 points)
- 's comment on Ethics and rationality of suicide by (May 2, 2011, 3:14 PM; 12 points)
- 's comment on Ethics and rationality of suicide by (May 2, 2011, 4:38 PM; 0 points)
Does anyone have any way of getting in touch with this person offline, getting his address etc? It seems from his comments that he is intending to kill himself, and has that post queued, but just hasn’t done it yet...
I do not know how to use this blog...or post on it I am replying because a friend of mine has a son named Chris Capel who killed himself last night… can you send me a copy of the note so that I can give it to his mother please...we are all shocked and dismayed here… I just stumbled upon this this evening…
Thank you for any assistance...
a friend
That’s awful. I actually contacted Mr Capel’s local police dept with the information about this, in the hope that they could do something (I ran a Whois lookup on his domain name, got his address, and emailed the police contacts). I’m so sorry they couldn’t. I’m afraid, though, that I don’t have a copy of this blog post.
Thank you for trying to help. My heart is so heavy still. I do hope Chris has peace now. FAWS posted a link to a copy of the post which I have now saved along with his blog site. My words are so few now, I am still grieving.
This—the internet, the blogs—this was Chris’s world. He was at home here. He was a real believer in the singularity, even contributing a large sum of money.
I appreciate everyone here that was a part of his life. http://pdf23ds.net is a small snapshot of that life.
Chris’s Dad
Do we have any way to confirm if he successfully killed himself and is beyond help, rather than changing his mind at the last minute or making some technical error that left him alive? Does anyone know him in person?
I’m afraid that diffusion of responsibility may lead to no followup on the suicide issues since the “oops” post potentially reduced the urgency and then nothing happened and then a week passed. Has anyone heard anything since the “oops” post went up? Silas reports nothing back from Chris :-(
Only just saw this comment thanks to the horrible news from ‘a friend’ - I emailed Mr Capel’s local police department that day, but got no response...
The post appears to have been removed. I hope that means that he changed his mind, but have no information either way.
Edited to add:
hopefully this is good news:
The link does not work; does anybody still have the note he left behind?
Don’t know him, but he lives in Texas.
Awesome! Another LW Texan, who also lives in the middle of nowhere! I think we can finally have a Texas meetup, now that we know he’s alive!
You seem to be kidding, but that might actually be a good idea if you can arrange it. He seems to still be actively planning to kill himself.
Edit: Came off as unintentionally insulting to Silas. Reworded to not be.
Gah! Access to his site just got “cut off” here. Someone please link or pass on this message (or tell me his email):
Edit: I will also PM this to him on LW.
Good point. I do want to have a Texas meetup, but didn’t realize until afterward I was probably being too flippant about this matter.
I will do as you’ve suggested.
Its been a few days. Did you succeed?
Unfortunately, no. I haven’t gotten a reply from him in any of those venues, and he deleted the follow-up post and discussion thread :-(
“Flippant” was harsher than I intended, sorry. I edited the original.
Great that you’re doing this though!
Don’t be so hard on yourself—“flippant” was accurate, and you were right to call me on it.
http://pdf23ds.net/2011/03/16/oops/ seems to indicate that he is fine.
A friend of mine’s son named Chris Capel killed himself last night… he is from Tx...can you please send me a copy of the note he wrote? I would like to give it to his family...if it is possible. If not, I understand...
Thank you for any assistance you can provide.
A friend.
Sorry for your loss.
Here is a cached copy:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://pdf23ds.net/2011/03/15/bye/
The cached copy is no longer available. And the WayBackMachine cannot display the site due to robots.txt, unfortunately.
This post was from awhile ago and I don’t think anyone with access to the note is still around to supply it. You could try asking everyone here for a copy and see if anything comes of it.
Thanks. If anyone has a copy of the letter, please send me a private message.
I am so sorry you lost your friend. I was able to find the following Google Cache of the suicide note, which was deleted after being posted early by mistake.
And http://pdf23ds.net/2009/02/02/commit-suicide/ indicates its a idea on his mind for quite a while. Argh. No idea what to do about that.
That post is no longer there.
However if you go here there is a later request to ignore it.
http://pdf23ds.net/2011/03/16/oops/
What does “sectioned” mean?
It means committed to a mental hospital. E.g. in Massachusetts the relevant law is in Section 12 of the chapter, so to “section 12” someone or just “section” them is to commit them to a hospital against their will.
Presumably he meant he can’t go to a cryonics org or a regular hospital and just ask to be cryopreserved, because that would be suicidal, and voicing suicidalality would get him sectioned to a psych hospital.
Hmm. Good alternate explanation. Thanks.
dissected edit: looks like I was wrong
I don’t think so. See above.
Thank you. Okay, so he’s saying here that people who kill themselves are dissected… which implies that people who die of some other cause are not usually dissected?
If people who kill themselves are dissected more frequently than others, then what is the reason for that? My guess is that they suspect foul play more often, but for all I know it has to do with looking for specific brain diseases that cause depression or it’s some vestigial behavior left over from the days when they used leeches.
Relatively few disease or old-age related deaths result in autopsy (even though they’re a good idea since they routinely reveal wrong diagnoses).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopsy#Forensic_autopsy The reason why suicides would be mandated to be autopsied in some states is pretty obvious: murders can look a lot like a suicide. As well, the close proximity of a suicide to preservation can raise questions about whether the cryonics people hurried it up and committed murder—ALCOR had a close call in the Dora Kent incident.
These requirements and dangers are why cryonics groups don’t handle suicidees except, AFAIK, in rare cases where there is no suspicion of foul play and autopsy can be avoided like Kim Suozzi avoiding food & drink while terminal. Some links: http://www.alcor.org/FAQs/faq06.html#death http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/casereport9304.html
Thanks for this. That’s really too bad. In my view, there really needs to be some sort of protocol that terminally ill patients can follow that guarantees they’ll be frozen in the event that they choose to exercise their right to die. Maybe there is one implied by “in rare cases” and I am not aware of it?
http://pdf23ds.net/2011/03/
“If you read a certain post today that is no longer on my site (and hopefully not in too many RSS readers) please ignore it.”
Maybe time to point out that suicide is a REALLY REALLY stupid idea. Or as someone called it. »A permanent solution to a temporary problem.« Whatever the problem is, it usually can be dealt with, waited out, ignored, treated or what ever. There is also a wide amount of support available to deal with hardships. (Maybe someone has the better ones on file and can post.)
I find it both odd and understandable how someone could be both into longevity and also contemplate suicide. If this comes up more often we might need a special support group for LW cluster people.
Regarding the idea of the OP to freeze himself he should be made aware that even the strong supporters work from odds of 5%. There is no guarantee that it works yet. Under most factors it is better to sit around on this side of the action and see to it that the technology gets better right away.
As someone who’s struggled with depression and suicidal ideation since childhood (not going to do it, don’t worry) -- the cliche “a permanent solution to a temporary problem” is the opposite of helpful. For many people, it’s not a temporary problem, it’s a lifelong one that you just have to learn to live with (or not). Hearing something like that, for a suicidal person, just reinforces how isolated and misunderstood they feel.
I didn’t know Chris but I think I understand what he was thinking. He was in too much pain to bear, so he looked for ways that he could stop having to bear it. Even at a 5% chance for that at getting a non-depressed version of life afterwards, cryonics would have been a win, since a completed suicide has a 0% chance for that. “Sitting around on this side of the action” would require continuing to bear the weight of existence, which he felt he could not do. If he felt he could, then taking the time to find the right combination of therapy/lifestyle changes/medication to alleviate his depression would probably have the greatest rate of success, better than waiting for cryonics to improve.
The initial post reminded me of these two cryo cases.
(Trigger warning for everyone who prefers not to read about dead and/or frozen people with severe real life problems.)
http://cryonics.org/reports/CI101.html
http://cryonics.org/reports/CI93.html
The first case is quite striking.
Very bright, perhaps: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_sulfide#Induced_hypothermia.2Fsuspended_animation
It seems pdf has not been on LW for a while, but I need to get this out of my system. Suicide is unbelievably stupid. I was friends with someone who committed suicide years ago, and my mom has been suicidally depressed before. Trying to kill yourself will do nothing but hurt people who know you. The probability of resurrection will never be one (even if you sign up for cyronics), and the probability of your life improving will never be zero even if your goals are apparently impossible. Its bad enough that people die without wanting to...
That’s quite a cruel thing to say to somebody that’s suicidally depressed. When you’re in that state, every single day is agony and there’s little hope for it ever to get better. From that perspective, you are the selfish one for forcing someone else to live in agony for your own pleasure. If you want your suicidal loved ones not to commit suicide, focus on helping reduce the agony, not hurling accusations at them.
I’ve known a number of people who suffer from suicidal depression, and talked a couple people down from suicide myself. Most of them are aware of the “suicide is stupid and selfish” interpretation, but find it extremely hard to buy that anyone will be meaningfully hurt by their deaths, or that their life has realistic prospects to get better, while in a suicidal state.
Yep, which is one reason why I would never choose to be a counselor. I am rather attached to my own existence, so trying to understand people who are not isn’t intuitive.
Also, it seems this post has been deleted from discussion. Why?