Shinjula

Thats a whole bunch of hot air, I reckon. I could be wrong but I seriusly doubt you believe that. There is tonnes of evidence that we are not solely creatures of conscious thought, that there are subconscious and unconscious parts to all our lives. Bear in mind in no way have I suggested that we dont have any free will, but it is not as you suggest the only part of us and I'm sure you know that. [i could easily argue against each individual part of the above but i see it as friutless and just turns the argument bitty again as it did above so I chose to argue against it as a whole ,I also think its losing focus on the whole point if the debate] I also noticed youve replaced what I've stated with a massively paraphrased version of your own, the statement I made which you said Anti suicide disagreed with was "But you are talking about the mind as though the conscious parts are the only thing thats is happening, that its all perfectly under our control all we have to do is to think about it and itll go away, and everything in psychology and neuroscience disagrees with you" which is very different to "There is no hope for people wanting suicide". Just because the subconscious exists doesnt mean that there is no hope, just less hope. You seem to be getting very bogged down in extreme cases, the world is not black and white.

The length of a coastline

The court doesnt disagree with me otherwise there would be no defence of insanity. Freewill doesnt disagree with me because its always constantly debated against determinacy. I would like to see your citation that Anti suicide organisations disargee with me.

Newtons first law is only a law inside the universe, it doesn't necessarily hold outside the universe, also quantum mechanics does actually specifically allow objects to move (or rather do stuff) by themselves - check out spontaneous particle/anti particle creation and hawking radiation

If that were the case then I'd agree. If your life truly is hopeless, such as not having food, water, family, shelter, good health, etc. then that means life really is a struggle and I think suicide is justifiable. But when we're talking about people with chronic depression - people who are sad even when good things happen - then all that is needed is a turnaround in their mentality. In other words, if life is a big struggle, suicide I think suicide is okay because it's just a means of speeding up the process. But if happiness is the struggle, then there is no need for suicide - there is a need for optimism. But you are talking about the mind as though the conscious parts are the only thing thats is happening, that its all perfectly under our control all we have to do is to think about it and itll go away, and everything in psychology and neuroscience disagrees with you

It's not an exact science, which is why people have discrepancies with psychology. You shouldn't be the one categorizing them because it's their rationalization, not yours (without reference to anyone). In any case many signs should appear obvious. For example, the man who just found out that his girlfriend was cheating on him. Is that, or should that bring up suicide? Most likely not, though again, that's not your rationalization. Rather, it's those who feel that their experience of life is a downturn which is something you cannot solve without death. This is usually caused by a series of misfortunes or experiences over a long period of time. Exactly, its up to them to categorise themselves, so my best choice is to ask them themselves

Then you agree that suicide is not the best outcome. I'm sorry this isnt a logic game, there are multiple possibilities were dealing with here it isnt just an on off state diagram. I cannot know what the best outcome for someone is. I will try and suggest that they might be happier off alive for the first half of a conversation, because its the default position to start from, but if someone tells me their life is unbearable and they want to end it I will have no problem with them for having done so. And if they are someone whom I'm very close to I will grieve, but I wont insist that they continue with a life they hate just for my own selfish ends. I said I would lie to people because its important in this sort of debate for you to know that I hold no particular value to the truth. I tend not to do it 99% of the time simply because it isnt neccessary. If you insist in looking it as a logic diagram then the flaw in your logic is that I am not implying that suicide is ALWAYS the BEST option, sometimes when I think it might not be a useful outcome I may choose to lie, that doesnt mean I would lie if I thought it was a decent option.

Generally I dont need to, but just because of the way you've asked the question, yes absolutely. I'll happily lie whenever it provides the best outcome. But generally most people who are actually in the situation I'm talking about would not be likely to talk to anyone about these things. On the rare times it does crop up I will usually spend the conversation getting them to talk about whatever they want to talk about however depressing without making any judgements at all, because as far as I'm aware that is the best thing for an untrained person to do in that situation.

I would suggest it could be infinite because of combinations. This isnt quite right but I think its a good starting place... Imagine each bit of knowledge is a statement e.g. the Sky is blue (Statement A) Each knowledge statement can be put next to any other statement to create a third different statement, e.g. Water is wet, rain is made of water, therefore Rain is wet. (Statements X, Y & Z) Even four statements can be arranged in an infinite amount of ways (A, AA, AAA.... X, XX, XXX, XXXX... ,... AX, XA, AXX, XAA, AAX, XAA... All the way up to AXYZXYZXYAXAXXYZ and onwards) Now obviously some of the combinations of statements are meaningless, but how much does that reduce our infinity by? (Responses to this need to take into account countable and uncountable infinities) Further you can mathematically prove that there are an infinite number of valid computer programs in (say) Java, wouldnt the knowledge of what each of them does, also be infinite?

Ok this is a getting a bit bitty so first I'll try and respond to the direct questions youve asked me rather than responses to my responses to your responses etc etc. Because the stats say it is so. A quick check on the net shows there are 10 million people in america with long term depression, 80-90% of them are successfully treated (which is great), that leaves a million people with long term depression who are not able to be treated medically. [http] Except that I am talking to you, not to them, this is not the way I would approach them. This is a debate about suicide, this is not a counselling session. And just a quick response, to say its not a strawman, i just didnt get what you meant, as comparing peoples feelings to those in Africa is a very common tactic when responding to suicide, so thats what I thought you were doing. Usually in these cases the bare necessities are not actually being met, because one of the bare necessities is socialisation. And when survival needs arent being met its almost impossible to examine any part of your life rationally.

Actually theres many different ways in which time travel could work, and since we havent successfully done it yet we dont know how it will work. All that physics says is that there is nothing inherent in the maths which proves it impossible.

The main gist of that seems to be a belief that because they got better for you they must be able to get better for everyone and thats just not true, particularly since you have just said you didnt actually have chronic depression, and chronic depression is precisely what we are talking about, only a tiny proportion of suicides are from people who dont have chronic depression. You're basing your evidence for your standpoint purely on the feeling of a single individual (i.e. yourself), just because you can do it, everybody else must subscribe to the same responsibility because as far as you are concerned they have the same ability. Well thats just bogus, we dont all have the same ability to cope with our lives. Its really obvious when you think about it. And again because its simply getting ignored, there are many many people who will end up depressed fro the whole of their life, I dont know why you find this difficult to believe, but it really is true. You may not be able to predict the future but can extrapolate, if you have had thirty years of depression it is very very likely that you will continue to have depression for the rest of your life. Second thing to back this up, in the cases where this is true your Doctor will tell you that you will have to deal with it for the rest of your life, and as for anti depressants, talking therapies they are not cure-alls and in many case do not help sufficiently. As for the argument that we arent living in Africa therefore haven't got any good reason to feel depressed, according to that logic, since I've seen Africans living in the most terrible conditions being happy and living their life to the full I must therefore be at least that happy and I should be happier. Any suffering any westerner might feel at the death of a spouse or a parent is miniscule in comparison to what they go through therefore is inconsequential and we should not allow anyone to feel any negative emotions at all and should look down on any who do so...? It ends up in nonsense, we all have feelings and our feelings are not comparable to anyone else's feelings, all feelings are subjective and cannot be weighed directly against the feelings of another, particularly when they are from such diverse cultures.

The problem is that there are so many different reasons and circumstances where suicide is contemplated. We can't hope to discuss them all but the way the conversation is going it is being implied that only certain sorts of circumstances exist, i.e. those where depression is contained in small doses due to single or multiple events and where the depressed person will get better. This is certainly not the case. There are a large number of people who have to deal with depression throughout their lives, not just for short periods of time. these are not people for whom it will eventually get better. These are the people we are talking about for whom we are suggesting suicide may be a rational option. If you focus only on people who are suffering from short term depression, sure you wont have any complaints from most of us for suggesting there are better alternatives. But when you suffer from it for 5 days out of every 7 and even your doctor tells you that you will almost certainly suffer it for the rest of your life and that you need to develop coping strategies to do so which you will have to use against your struggle every day, then I see no problem with someone who rationally decides that the benefits do not outweigh the negatives. Lumping every person with depression in the same category of short term depression and insisting that there are ways out for them is not a correct reading of the situation, neither are the people actually in that category the ones we are talking about, in terms of suicide being an option, especially since they are also much much less likely to be the ones commiting suicide. Suicide is rarely a factor in short term depression, so can we please include that piece of knowledge in our discussions.

i posted this on a previous page and am curious about your perspective on it

Sure I can understand why you might think that but a lot of those are very relative measures, ok sure he has a roof over his head and food to eat at the moment but from his response hes not in a stable situation, and given the current climate the lack of stability of shelter is a large possibility and that is one of the most basic needs of any human Your response to B) doesn't match the original statement >>>B) The reality of the situation is that there are many good options and many more good reasons for you (and others like you) to continue living. Just because he's 17 that doesn't necessarily imply good options or good reasons to stay here As for this being a tolerant period of time, its not really, particularly towards people of a different sexuality, sure great work has been done regarding alternate lifestyles but we are a hell of a long way from being tolerant towards it, you've been active on the homosexuality thread so you've seen what people attitudes are still like - it only took me til page 2 before I found a post saying That ain't exactly the world of tolerance your implying, sure things are better now than they were ten years ago but that's because a lot of people like me spent twenty years of their lives fighting for our rights. Going back to part B) and options, being a gay man has two options 'in the closet' or out of it, neither of which are good options, 'in the closet' is full of fear and anxiety, out of the closet really does mean a life, fighting prejudice alot of the time, and sometimes from your own family. But most of all lives are different and psychologies are different, your view of the world can vary dramatically even if your external situations are very similar, two people can live next door to each other with very similar lives but have drastically different reactions to them and that shouldnt just be dismissed. You can look at someone and insist that they should be happy with their lives, but face it, if they are unhappy in their life you arent going to make the slightest difference to them or change their mind because you arent understanding one of the most basic things about them. On the other hand, killerbeer0 I can give you a couple of extra options which might help ease the burden a little bit. You say your at college, that should give you access to two resources which are worth trying - I cant guarantee they'll help but its worth giving them a shot. First you college probably has an LGB (Lesbian Gay Bisexual) group, go to it and talk to them. They wont require you to come out to anyone and you can do it in complete secrecy, if you wish to come out later, that'll be up to you. Second your college should also have a counselling service. USE IT. Dunno if those two things will help but absolutely push yourself to try them.

You are a youthful and healthy person living in extremely fortunate conditions and a very tolerant society (relatively speaking). The reality of the situation is that there are many good options and many more good reasons for you (and others like you) to continue living. Depression can make it difficult to see this, but it must be understood that you will get over it. How on earth can you know any of that?

I personally fully support suicide as a final option. None of us agreed to be born and we are given a way out should we choose to use it so I see nothing wrong with doing so. To those who believe it selfish consider this, grief from the death of a love one usually takes six months to over come, the average number of close friends a person has is around a dozen, thats a total of six years unhappiness caused by the suicide, compare that to the duration left for the suicidal person in their life. It is not selfish to commit suicide it is selfish to refuse suicide (when genuine), especially as most people are not even looking at the numbers and the cumulative effect, they are in fact only looking at themselves Its almost (in at least all the cases of people I have spoken to) always just a case of "Your going to make me upset for 6 months and no I dont care that you've been upset for over ten years and look like you will continue to be that way for the rest of your life" Now which one is really the selfish one?

My own take on it is that morals are strategies which societies use to survive and proliferate. Morals are simply rules put in place to ensure the survival of society. Obviously having a murderer in the midst of your society will damage it, so murder = bad becomes a very common moral. Likewise often in a lot of societies (I'm not talking about the more evolved first world societies like the US & UK but you can still see remnants of these memes) it is considered fine to war on another country (Patriotism = good), because the society then has less competition. Incest = bad because it has a detrimental effect on the gene pool. Sharing and caring for other members of society = good although its a bit less easy to see why, but the mathematics of game theory do show it to be a winning strategy. Selective forgiveness can also be shown to be a very good strategy. One thing to note is that one very useful strategy in a set of competing societies is Having Babies = good, is actually a terrible strategy once we move to a global society and that is something which we are increasingly coming up against these days. It is very hard to convince a lot of people that we need to be having less babies because having babies = good has been instilled in all societies from their very beginnings. Its also worth noting that whether a moral should be adopted should NOT then be chosen according to public support, but according to how successful it is for that society, and according to arguements about its actual effect, and though evidence showing what effect it has, for example homosexual marriage has not eroded countries adopting it and the promotion of the homosexual lifestyle as legitimate has improved the psychological health of the 5-10% of homosexuals in those societies thus increasing their productive returns to that society. Their lack of children isnt being a problem since producing children is relatively easy.

As to the cost, in Britain we started switching over in the 70s, with the whole decimalisation of money and then temperature a little later. Distances are still measured in miles and weights of food are usually given both scales. It doesnt have to be an enormous cost as is can be done in stages, and remnants of the old Imperial system can still be found when they are useful quantities, a pint of beer (as has been mentioned) is a convenient amount to drink. But more need to be said about the usefulness of the decimal system. Particularly when it comes to science. The SI units as a standard are great, you have nice easy logical comparisons, 1 litre of water weighs 1 kilogram. 1 Watt is 1 Joule per second, 1 Joule is 1 newton of force moving 1 meter etc etc Add to that the standardisation of prefixes to note size - milli is one thousandth, mega is one thousand times etc (and dont get me started on how annoying the computer version of mega is at 1024x - but there are understandable reason for it) I can understand the rationalisation of the imperial units as being useful for dividing, being able to divide 60 minutes in so many ways is great, but that standard is not STANDARD, there's 14 pounds in a stone, which is only divisible by 1,2,7 and 14 (the same number of divisors as 10 - 1,2,5 & 10) not exactly useful.

Depends precisely on what you mean by 'exists' I know that sounds a dumb thing to say, and it can make it a bit of a semantic argument but then in these debate language often has to become central. If you mean, exist specifically in this 3D(ish) universe that we find ourselves in then obviously no it cant, any objects in this universe have to have precisely the number of dimensions that this universe has - that's a specific limiting factor to the universe. So if it turns out there's 11 dimensions (as string theory suggests) then every object (including you and me) is an eleven dimensional object. If your definition extends 'existance' to include theoretical spaces then the answer is yes. In maths a one dimensional object can exist as easily as a 2D one or a 3D one. And this can be extended beyond the mathematical realm. We have no knowledge of anything which may be outside out own universe, there is no reason a one dimensional universe cant exist and be real and so in that sense a one dimensional object can really exist although its existance couldnt be proven by any current methods. Well thats my thoughts for the mo

You're massively over simplifying a hugely complex system so its not really surprising if it comes up gibberish. Bravery and cowardice are highly conceptualised things and would be unlikely to be represented in such simplistic gene processes, not to mention your proposal that only brave people go to war and only cowards stay at home.

I've worked out why IGoddessI was so worked up about me, its cos I mentioned those who say I'm paying the rent/food Well I hope you can understand its cos you said it in a public debate forum, and pretty much everything said here has to be up for deabte.

Unless I missed a post where IGoddessI said she was Dux's mother, if I missed that then sorry

No I'm not projecting, I never had any problems with my parents like that, they were very freeing. But this really does sound like complete control - its a tiny thing added to their face, it doesnt affect you in any way and yet you think you should have control over it? It can be removed and the hole will vanish within a month. In any case, your massively over exaggerating. You arent going to screw up your career with one nose piercing, simply cos no job youll get at sixteen is going to set you up for life, those days went out in the fifties. The most anyone's likely to get for a job at sixteen is working in a shop, hardly the be all and end all of a career. And if they fail to get a job because of the piercing, then it should teach them a bit about how people judge people by appearances which is worthwhile knowledge, they can then decide whether they wish to conform and remove the piercing and re apply for the job or whether they wish to take a stand against that sort of thing - its one of the fundamentals of being an adult in this world - totally worthwhile.

The only vows I have ever made were my marriage vows (I have kept them). I simply wouldn't make a vow over something trivial, such as New Years Resolutions. I wouldn't even make a vow on staying vegetarian or giving up smoking (which some people might consider less trivial) because I wouldn't want to limit myself. As I've grown up, the one thing about my life I have found, is that the future has never been what I expected it to be. Making a vow is also betting on what the future will be like - I could vow to give up smoking, but without knowing the future I dont know how stressed or horrible it is likely to be. Things change and maybe someday I might really need a cigarette and I would not want to be forced to break a vow. The only power which to me is more powerful than the future is my love for my husband. So that is the only vow I have made, to be with him forever.