The trouble is, in a couple of years, they’ve got a million more reasons to kill themselves. I can hear Mr. Potter now: “Why, George… you’re worth more dead than alive.”
The trouble is, in a couple of years, they’ve got a million more reasons to kill themselves. I can hear Mr. Potter now: >”Why, George… you’re worth more dead than alive.”
I doubt that’s the case. As someone who has been there, it’s almost always a biased evaluation. (Rephrasal: The decision of suicide by an agent can be modeled by a Rational AI agent in 99.95 of the cases by adding some strong biased viewpoint. ). And spending two years will give you a very different set of reasons and more importantly perspective on your life. True there still is a chance you might not outgrow your bias, but anecdotal(personal) evidence suggests otherwise.
Or to quote from a movie “Suicide is always a permanent solution to a temporary problem”
It is a gamble, but I think I’d be fairly sanguine about the odds. None of the suicidal folks I’ve been close to (and there have been a few) have given me the impression that they were making an unbiased cost-benefit analysis of their futures, or indeed were capable of making such an analysis; extreme depression taints expectations badly, and so do most of the other problems that can lead to suicidal ideation. Get them to commit far enough in the future that their troubles are likely to ease, and I’d say it’d be more than likely that they’d drop the original plan. Especially if you can then get them to commit to therapy, exercise, or another of the common strategies for building emotional stability in the meantime as a palliative measure.
That’s a great way to get someone to temporize.
The trouble is, in a couple of years, they’ve got a million more reasons to kill themselves. I can hear Mr. Potter now: “Why, George… you’re worth more dead than alive.”
I don’t think I wanted to know this.
I doubt that’s the case. As someone who has been there, it’s almost always a biased evaluation. (Rephrasal: The decision of suicide by an agent can be modeled by a Rational AI agent in 99.95 of the cases by adding some strong biased viewpoint. ). And spending two years will give you a very different set of reasons and more importantly perspective on your life. True there still is a chance you might not outgrow your bias, but anecdotal(personal) evidence suggests otherwise.
Or to quote from a movie “Suicide is always a permanent solution to a temporary problem”
It is a gamble, but I think I’d be fairly sanguine about the odds. None of the suicidal folks I’ve been close to (and there have been a few) have given me the impression that they were making an unbiased cost-benefit analysis of their futures, or indeed were capable of making such an analysis; extreme depression taints expectations badly, and so do most of the other problems that can lead to suicidal ideation. Get them to commit far enough in the future that their troubles are likely to ease, and I’d say it’d be more than likely that they’d drop the original plan. Especially if you can then get them to commit to therapy, exercise, or another of the common strategies for building emotional stability in the meantime as a palliative measure.
And if they are making that cost-benefit analysis, perhaps the horse will learn to sing.