However, they cannot be overcome by holding your head in a bucket of water and trying to drown. You may be determined to kill yourself, but every time you try, as soon as you start breathing water you’re going to pull your head back out. Now, I can say that “I’m not certain” I can’t kill myself this way—but in reality, I know it’s not possible. My brain has a very real physical process that just won’t let me.
How do you know that? It doesn’t seem intuitively obvious to me that you can’t train to successfully drown this way. It’ll take more than intuition, and I can’t think of a way this could’ve been reliably studied, so I don’t believe you can have a good reason to have this belief.
Anecdotal evidence: When I swim for distance underwater, and really push myself, I will often experience a strong compulsion to surface, even when I believe I can hold out for a few more feet and reach my goal. I am not even afraid of drowning, yet I consistently follow the compulsion to surface.
I can’t think of a way to study this in an ethical controlled experiment, but data can be gathered from suicides and attempted suicides that would be relevant to the theory.
I have similar experiences when swimming underwater. I used to see if I could swim the length of the pool in one breath, and often would surface seemingly-prematurely out of a sudden strong desire to take a breath.
My old roommate reported having lots of trouble letting go of a handle when skydiving. He very much wanted to dive, and was not afraid of an unsafe landing, but instinct was very difficult to overcome.
Which reminds me that there are people who can hold their breath for insane amounts of time, so presumably they overcame this instinct, and start breathing only by intellectually deciding that they must do so to survive (and they likely know a lot about the properties of this danger).
I am with you in disagreeing with Eirenicon’s assertion that self drowning in a bucket is impossible with probability 1, though I believe with high probability that it is difficult beyond the ability of most people. I was mainly objecting to your assertion that this couldn’t be studied.
Also, merely holding your breath is not dangerous. You would pass out before suffering any permanent damage, and breathe normally while unconscious. It would be dangerous in an environment, such as under water, in which you could breathe normally after passing out.
It could be apocryphal, and it doesn’t help that it seems like something I heard about a long time ago, but as far as I know, when you start to drown the best of your intentions are overcome by your instinct for self preservation. However, Google turns up a result from the Telegraph about a recent case in which someone may indeed have drowned himself in a bucket of water, although there seems to be some confusion over the case. Thanks for calling me on it—I really am now, in fact, not certain I couldn’t.
I couldn’t think of a better example at the time, though, so the spirit of the argument will have to stand in for its questionable veracity.
When an inmate is found drowned in a bucket of water in a cell with three other inmates, my first theory is not suicide while the other inmates are sleeping.
You’re right, and I won’t argue it. The idea of not impossible is one I have difficulty with, though. In my original post, replace with , for lack of a better alternative. With anosognosia, that thing is “recognize left-arm paralysis”. The reason I didn’t stick with that is because I don’t know if I have anosognosia or not, which is another layer of uncertainty. Stripped down, though, this is what I’m saying: it seems I should be uncertain about things I know to be certain, and that seems dishonest. I understand the argument against infinite certainty, and that 0 And 1 Are Not Probabilities. Perhaps it’s because, as EY suggests, people often say “I can’t be certain” simply to establish themselves as rational rather than actually assessing probability. Perhaps it’s simply because I dislike an infinitely uncertain universe. Of course, the universe isn’t interested in what I like. The map, as ever, is not the territory.
You should say that something is impossible, without intending that to mean zero probability, if you can safely antipredict that event. Antiprediction means that you think of an event as if it can’t happen. Intuition resulting from thinking of a sufficiently low-probability event as impossible is more accurate than intuition resulting from thinking of it as still possible.
Antiprediction is a very interesting suggestion. Your aggressive reasoning in this thread has changed the way I think about a few things. Well done, and thanks!
How do you know that? It doesn’t seem intuitively obvious to me that you can’t train to successfully drown this way. It’ll take more than intuition, and I can’t think of a way this could’ve been reliably studied, so I don’t believe you can have a good reason to have this belief.
Anecdotal evidence: When I swim for distance underwater, and really push myself, I will often experience a strong compulsion to surface, even when I believe I can hold out for a few more feet and reach my goal. I am not even afraid of drowning, yet I consistently follow the compulsion to surface.
I can’t think of a way to study this in an ethical controlled experiment, but data can be gathered from suicides and attempted suicides that would be relevant to the theory.
I have similar experiences when swimming underwater. I used to see if I could swim the length of the pool in one breath, and often would surface seemingly-prematurely out of a sudden strong desire to take a breath.
My old roommate reported having lots of trouble letting go of a handle when skydiving. He very much wanted to dive, and was not afraid of an unsafe landing, but instinct was very difficult to overcome.
Which reminds me that there are people who can hold their breath for insane amounts of time, so presumably they overcame this instinct, and start breathing only by intellectually deciding that they must do so to survive (and they likely know a lot about the properties of this danger).
I am with you in disagreeing with Eirenicon’s assertion that self drowning in a bucket is impossible with probability 1, though I believe with high probability that it is difficult beyond the ability of most people. I was mainly objecting to your assertion that this couldn’t be studied.
Also, merely holding your breath is not dangerous. You would pass out before suffering any permanent damage, and breathe normally while unconscious. It would be dangerous in an environment, such as under water, in which you could breathe normally after passing out.
It could be apocryphal, and it doesn’t help that it seems like something I heard about a long time ago, but as far as I know, when you start to drown the best of your intentions are overcome by your instinct for self preservation. However, Google turns up a result from the Telegraph about a recent case in which someone may indeed have drowned himself in a bucket of water, although there seems to be some confusion over the case. Thanks for calling me on it—I really am now, in fact, not certain I couldn’t.
I couldn’t think of a better example at the time, though, so the spirit of the argument will have to stand in for its questionable veracity.
When an inmate is found drowned in a bucket of water in a cell with three other inmates, my first theory is not suicide while the other inmates are sleeping.
In a Macedonian jail, accused of raping and murdering four elderly women? I had the same reaction.
Even if no examples of this were available, it’s not the kind of evidence that is enough to claim that something is impossible.
You’re right, and I won’t argue it. The idea of not impossible is one I have difficulty with, though. In my original post, replace with , for lack of a better alternative. With anosognosia, that thing is “recognize left-arm paralysis”. The reason I didn’t stick with that is because I don’t know if I have anosognosia or not, which is another layer of uncertainty. Stripped down, though, this is what I’m saying: it seems I should be uncertain about things I know to be certain, and that seems dishonest. I understand the argument against infinite certainty, and that 0 And 1 Are Not Probabilities. Perhaps it’s because, as EY suggests, people often say “I can’t be certain” simply to establish themselves as rational rather than actually assessing probability. Perhaps it’s simply because I dislike an infinitely uncertain universe. Of course, the universe isn’t interested in what I like. The map, as ever, is not the territory.
You should say that something is impossible, without intending that to mean zero probability, if you can safely antipredict that event. Antiprediction means that you think of an event as if it can’t happen. Intuition resulting from thinking of a sufficiently low-probability event as impossible is more accurate than intuition resulting from thinking of it as still possible.
Antiprediction is a very interesting suggestion. Your aggressive reasoning in this thread has changed the way I think about a few things. Well done, and thanks!