An alternative argument for not killing yourself yet: in the U.S., life insurance is required by law to cover deaths by suicide that occur at least two years after the policy was purchased, and the “return on investment” is ridiculously large; when I looked up insurance quotes a few years ago, an otherwise healthy young man can get a million dollar insurance policy for an annual premium of $600. Of course, money isn’t of much use to a dead man… or is it? You can designate a charity as the beneficiary of the policy, or simply make the charity the owner of the policy. And GiveWell gives some relatively low figures for the amount of money it takes to save a life in Africa—somewhere around $1000-$2000. If you kill yourself and didn’t buy health insurance first, the people the insurance money could have saved won’t be. So if the would-be suicide is also altruistic, you might be able to talk them into deciding to delay. And if you tell them this plan and they actually go and do it, well, at least you’ve saved more lives than were lost...
I love it! Precommitment saving lives! I know with budgeting, putting off spending is quite effective even though you might not think it is. I would be willing to bet in suicide prevention that putting off the suicide is also effective.
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.
An alternative argument for not killing yourself yet: in the U.S., life insurance is required by law to cover deaths by suicide that occur at least two years after the policy was purchased, and the “return on investment” is ridiculously large; when I looked up insurance quotes a few years ago, an otherwise healthy young man can get a million dollar insurance policy for an annual premium of $600. Of course, money isn’t of much use to a dead man… or is it? You can designate a charity as the beneficiary of the policy, or simply make the charity the owner of the policy. And GiveWell gives some relatively low figures for the amount of money it takes to save a life in Africa—somewhere around $1000-$2000. If you kill yourself and didn’t buy health insurance first, the people the insurance money could have saved won’t be. So if the would-be suicide is also altruistic, you might be able to talk them into deciding to delay. And if you tell them this plan and they actually go and do it, well, at least you’ve saved more lives than were lost...
I love it! Precommitment saving lives! I know with budgeting, putting off spending is quite effective even though you might not think it is. I would be willing to bet in suicide prevention that putting off the suicide is also effective.
That’s my impression as well.
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.