
Why do so few humans kill themselves? - networked
https://theviewfromhellyes.wordpress.com/2016/06/07/patch-7-822-an-experimental-design-puzzle/
======
mikeash
While interesting, this article seems to ignore the possibility that most
people simply have a very strong desire to live. It assumes that if someone is
suffering, and death would end that suffering, then suicide makes sense, and
something weird must be going on to make people keep going.

But this really doesn't make sense. The entire concept of suffering exists
merely to keep us alive. We experience pain and despair and sadness not
because it's some inherent part of being conscious, but because those
sensations help us to avoid things which are detrimental to survival. When
push comes to shove, the drive to survive is what's fundamental, and that will
(usually) override the desire to avoid suffering.

As intelligent, conscious beings, we have the capability to understand when
survival is no longer possible, making suffering a waste. Thus we can,
sometimes, override our desire to live in the face of terminal illness. But
what's weird is not the fact that we don't constantly kill ourselves at the
first sign of trouble, what's weird is the fact that we _do_ sometimes kill
ourselves when things look completely hopeless. You might as well _try_ to
stay alive, after all.

~~~
Practicality
In addition to a desire to live, not everyone views suffering as the worst
possible thing.

If I had to be in serious pain every day but could keep doing many things I
would rather keep living with the pain. The loss in experience is worse than
any level of pain.

For the obvious counterpoint: I say that from experience not naivete. I've had
a nerve in my hand accidentally sliced lengthwise (for a significant length)
by a surgeon. The pain was so excruciating they had to put me under before I
had a heart attack (heart rate+blood pressure both went off the charts,
290bpm)

However, before that happened I was much more interested in what was going on
and how unique this level of pain was. It was fascinating. Prior to that I
didn't really know how much pain it was possible to feel.

Anyway the point is, not everyone is afraid of pain and suffering. Especially
not to the point that suicide would even be considered.

~~~
klibertp
> If I had to be in serious pain every day but could keep doing many things I
> would rather keep living with the pain.

Scratch that: ~~~No, you (most probably) wouldn't.~~~

EDIT: this post is about severe chronic pain. Think cancer, or a serious
toothache which lasts for years. And it's _not_ meant to discuss the specific
situation of the parent! I'm talking in general. I also agree that not 100%
patients with severe chronic pain will consider suicide, however the
percentage of people considering suicide in such group is much higher than in
the rest of the population.

You may believe so right now, but that's totally irrelevant: just as you were
unable to imagine "how much pain it was possible to feel" before your
experience, you are unable to imagine what a serious, chronic pain can do to
you.

Chronic pain is a lot like depression: there's no relief, no hope, nothing you
can do to ever feel any better. Assuming that you'd be able to do anything -
and that doing that would even make you happy - is... well, very improbable,
to say the least.

> Anyway the point is, not everyone is afraid of pain and suffering.
> Especially not to the point that suicide would even be considered.

Sure, it's easy to be brave in the face of the unknown. It's a lot harder to
be brave once you see what "chronic pain" really means. And there is no notion
of being brave (or not) once it actually happens to you - there's only despair
and suffering. Really, _only_ that. Nothing else, at all.

We have a lot of pain management methods at our disposal now and, in many
cases, it's possible to reduce the symptoms and make the patient feel "well
enough". Without such help, however, it's only a matter of time before (most
of) the patient considers suicide - no matter how brave and "suffering
accepting" he was before.

~~~
Practicality
I've torn the ligaments in my ankle and I've been in chronic pain every day
for the last 12 years. Honestly, it doesn't bother me. (I mean, it hurts a lot
and given the choice to be alive AND have it gone, I would prefer it gone,
but, meh)

It bothers people around me that I limp though. Oh well.

I gave the example of acute pain because that was more challenging to me than
the chronic.

~~~
abandonliberty
Interesting. This is a complex issue.

I have those types of issues too. Most of us do once we get old enough.

They don't really bother me. Like yours, I can overcome them. Almost everyone
does.

I suspect if either of us had trained all our lives to be, and wanted to be
professional runners, it would bother us greatly.

------
ucaetano
Maybe we should just add lithium to the water supply, although that would
drive conspiracy theorists crazy!

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1699579](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1699579)

"Using data for 27 Texas counties from 1978-1987, it is shown that the
incidence rates of suicide, homicide, and rape are significantly higher in
counties whose drinking water supplies contain little or no lithium than in
counties with water lithium levels ranging from 70-170 micrograms/L; the
differences remain statistically significant (p less than 0.01) after
corrections for population density."

Edit: on a second thought, it wouldn't drive them crazy, it would literally
calm them!

Edit 2: I'm not proposing adding therapy-level doses of lithium to the water,
just equalizing it to the water in other regions.

~~~
nibs
I made that argument in a prior thread and people were really, really against
it. Despite the abundance of evidence, from that study and the Japanese one
[1]. I think Zinc would make a good addition too re: suicide [2]. There are
two other large scale studies like this for lithium, both confirming the
findings. One from Greece [3] and one from Argentina (can't find it...) [1]:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19407280](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19407280)
[2]: [http://www.jad-
journal.com/article/S0165-0327(13)00626-5/abs...](http://www.jad-
journal.com/article/S0165-0327\(13\)00626-5/abstract?cc=y=) [3]:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24072668](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24072668)

~~~
PragmaticPulp
It's fine if you want to medicate yourself with lithium, but it's not
acceptable to forcibly medicate everyone else.

The studies you linked to show an interesting correlation between lithium in
water supplies and reduced suicide levels, but you can't judge the net benefit
on a single metric alone. Lithium is not without side effects, and it's
unreasonable to suggest that the vast majority of the population that is
otherwise healthy be subjected to those side effects for the incremental
benefit of a select few. The magnitude of these side effects may be relatively
small in the levels we're talking about, but the net effect is likely not
negligible when applied to entire populations over the course of their
lifetimes.

~~~
nibs
Lithium is an element, not just a medication. The element is used to medicate
people with bipolar, in huge dosages. You and I both consume lithium every
day. We may consume slightly more or less than others. The ones who consume
slightly more kill themselves significantly less, with no side effects.
Lithium the medication is in 100-1000x the dosages, hence the side effects. If
it is bad in high (but naturally occurring, and much lower than the
medication) doses, we should filter it out.

~~~
PragmaticPulp
> Lithium is an element, not just a medication.

It doesn't matter if you call it an element or a medication, it has non-
negligible medical effects and side effects. If it had no relevant effects, we
wouldn't be discussing it here.

> The ones who consume slightly more kill themselves significantly less, with
> no side effects.

"No side effects" is an impossible claim to make. The studies we do have show
a _correlation_ between lithium in the water supply and suicidal frequency in
the population. The side effects have not been studied.

For some hard evidence: Lithium in drinking water is correlated with changes
of thyroid function:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3114818/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3114818/)

Lithium most certainly does have side effects that are dose- and time-
dependent. The side effects may be minimal at low concentrations, but when
applied to a population over the course of a lifetime, they would certainly
add up. Especially for those who are most susceptible to the negative effects.

It's also not hard to imagine that lithium's suicide rate reduction effects
(which are purely correlation at this point, FWIW) are due to it's tendency to
mellow people out. The cognitive dulling of even small amounts of lithium
orotate in healthy (non-bipolar and non-suicidal) people are palpable. Would
you still advocate for lithium in the water if it reduced the average
intelligence of the population by, say, 1%? I'm picking hypothetical numbers
here, but the reality is that there are certainly downsides to mass-medicating
people with small doses of lithium.

~~~
nibs
In that study, the water the people were drinking was up to 20x what was on
the high end of the other study. If you are drinking water that is 20-100x
higher in lithium, that is more like taking the lithium pills than it is like
getting it from water. Further to that, the study proved nothing statistically
significant... So if 20x higher lithium concentration causes no statistically
significant downsides, what could the harm of being on the upper bound of what
is typical in areas that are not lithium mines be?

------
Locke
> One of the most amazing things about suicide is that over the past 80 years
> or so in the United States, suicide rates have been extremely flat. The fact
> that suicide rates have not changed in response to changes in medical
> technology and other ways of life is astounding.

This may be true in the US, but in Greenland it seems like suicide rates have
changed in response to changing ways of life:

[http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/04/21/47484792...](http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/04/21/474847921/the-
arctic-suicides-its-not-the-dark-that-kills-you)

~~~
Bartweiss
An obvious question is whether suicide rates are _unchanged_ , or simply
_flat_ because we have opposed changes obscuring the data.

There's a bit of variance in the US numbers, and I wonder how means reduction,
a decline in chronic pain/terminal illness, and various way of life changes
compare. I'd be surprised if none of those things were relevant, but less
surprised if they didn't add up to a clear trend.

------
benten10
There's this AMAZING scifi story, which I read in 'Writers of The Future'
(great series, named after the eminent L Ron. H.). It imagines a future where
after a certain age, everyone has a chip planted in them, which makes it
possible to kill oneself 'on demand', painlessly, so to speak. It 'naturally
selects' away all those who are uhh, more instably minded, and selects for the
very very 'stable' minded. I believe the story was about how boring,
unimaginative the society had gotten because natural selection had optimized
for stability. Great read! You should read it if you haven't. The writer's of
the future series is a collection of amazing stories also, and what finally
tipped me into the Sciences, despite the somewhat uhh interesting Scientology
connection. Anyone remember the name of the story?

This was inspired by @antiquark's comment: >>Probably has something to do with
the theory of natural selection.

------
tribune
Remember that it's technically a valid evolutionary strategy to live to, say,
25, have a few kids, then off yourself. Suicide _before_ reproduction is all
that would be selected against.

~~~
hasenj
Depends on how much your children need you actually. I've read somewhere that
part of the reason women lose ability to bear children past around 40 is so
they can take care of their grand children because that is usually more
important at that point from an evolutionary point of view.

It might have been a mere speculation but it kind of makes sense.

Rather than take the time to bare and raise one child, that time is better
spent taking care of your 6 grand children.

~~~
StavrosK
I dislike these kinds of explanations because they seem like ex post facto
rationalizations. An explanation that could have gone both ways explains
nothing:

* Women stop having children after 40 because it's more important to raise the children you already have. * Women don't stop having children after 40 because bearing more offspring increases your chances of survival.

Your explanation barely makes sense even on its own merits. Surely, if nature
wanted us to have N children and then take care of them, it would have set a
cutoff on N, rather than on the time. What if someone has no children before
40? Is it to their evolutionary advantage to care for the children they didn't
have?

Or, if your explanation were true, why would women not spend ten years
gestating and given birth to a healthy 10-year old? It's illogical to design a
system that can pop out one baby every nine months and then say "okay now that
you've had anywhere from zero to thirty children, it would be best if you
stopped and took care of them.

~~~
sinxoveretothex
> It's illogical to design a system that can pop out one baby every nine
> months

To design? Are you a creationist?

Assuming you're just confused, evolution doesn't "design" life. It's just a
"whatever works" process.

For example, angler fish have a lure that resembles prey for their prey. This
has been selected by the eyes of their prey. It's not that the prey _wanted_
their predator to fool them, it's just that angler fish with bad lures starved
and died off.

In the case of humans, _if_ what your parent comment suggests is true, then it
would just be that some women had some sort of defect where they couldn't give
birth after some point and that turned out to give their grandchildren an
advantage over the grandchildren of women without the defect. Over a long
period of time, more and more descendants with defective reproduction genetics
would survive compared to those without and so it becomes prevalent.

That's how evolution works.

~~~
StavrosK
No, that's how you explain things after the fact. If women could bear children
until they died, we'd explain it by saying "well that's obviously because it's
more advantageous to have more children". Again, something that can equally
well explain why something happened and didn't happen doesn't have any
explanatory power.

Put it another way, if I asked you "would you think that evolution would
select for women bearing children until their 40s, or until they died?", you
wouldn't be able to answer, because there's no predictive power in the
explanation. Contrast this with "the sun rises every day because the earth
revolves around itself", which allows you to predict whether the sun will rise
or not tomorrow.

~~~
sinxoveretothex
> that's how you explain things after the fact

I agree, that's what I said "if what your parent comment suggests is true"

In fact, said parent comment said "It might have been a mere speculation but
it kind of makes sense"

I agree with you that there is no predictive power in explaining things that
way (indeed, what I said is speculation, hence why I worded it in the
conditional), but that was not what I was responding to. I was only responding
to the "design" part of your comment.

That being said, evolution _does_ make predictions which have been confirmed.
Notably Darwin's long-nosed moth. Here's a list of more predictions[1]

[1]
[http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/evo_science.html](http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/evo_science.html)

~~~
StavrosK
You seem to have fixated on one word in my comment and are arguing against
creationism. I'm not saying that evolution makes no predictions, I'm saying
that saying "oh yes, everything is the way it is because it confers an
evolutionary advantage" is a mostly wrong, largely useless answer.

~~~
sinxoveretothex
> You seem to have fixated on one word in my comment and are arguing against
> creationism.

Well, I would argue that the vibe of your whole comment was coherent in that
sense: you talked about what nature _wanted_ , about design and about what
kind of stuff would make sense while looking at it from a architect
perspective.

It's a very odd way to look at it if you have no creationist conception of it
all to be honest.

As for your point that not everything has an evolutionary advantage, I agree.
Deafness and blindness exist after all.

But I don't really see your point as far as proposing hypotheses to account
for certain prevalent traits, which, in my opinion, is what the original
content was about (the grandmother hypothesis).

------
drzaiusapelord
>The fact that suicide rates have not changed in response to changes in
medical technology and other ways of life is astounding.

Because depression is a disease, its not just feeling blue because something
happened to you and as such it probably has has the same distribution since
the early days of humanity. Its a disease with no good treatments so we can
expect the same mortality rate.

I think handwringing over people having easier lives but still killing
themselves is fairly meaningless, and frankly, more than a little shaming.
Depression affects people almost randomly. Wealthy people with easy lives kill
themselves just as readily as poor people with harder lives. You can't will
yourself out of depression because things are easy for you. The disease,
unfortunately, doesn't work that way.

I have major depression. Its not caused by some negative life events or my
parents not loving me or anything like that. Its clearly something I was born
with or rapidly developed when I was just a child. I think its dangerous to
talk about depression as not being a disease of the brain and as something
that emerges from negative life events. Those things can certainly make it
worse, but depression is a disease like any other, not a mood.

------
pducks32
I love how far philosophy has come. This is very science based and yet my
first reaction to the article's title was Cmd+F..."Camus". As Camus would say
it seems obvious that we realize life is stupid and we should just kill
ourselves but—something I didn't realize when I suffered with depression
was—that when you realize everything is stupid and meaningless you find this
deep appreciation or what I call "the game." You find a competition with
"meaninglessness" and even suffering. And I love that game. I think people
learn to love life; they find meaning in life and so they keep going.

------
return0
> virtually all adults have the intellectual wherewithal to take their own
> lives

Do they? It's one thing to say 'i dont want to live' or "i wish i was dead",
and another to actually go through the processes to do that. Suicide killers
for example, need a strong metaphysical motive and promise of reward to do
that.

I often wonder if a man stranded alone in an island , without any societal
pressures would ever consider suicide.

~~~
anexprogrammer
> Do they? It's one thing to say 'i dont want to live' or "i wish i was dead",
> and another to actually go through the processes to do that

I think everyone has the capability, just as they have to murder. That they
have not found circumstance such that they can conceive of it taking place
doesn't mean they can't. People discover surprising (for good and ill) things
about themselves when pushed to their limits and beyond.

> I often wonder if a man stranded alone in an island , without any societal
> pressures would ever consider suicide.

Whilst they'd be free of debt collectors, divorce, job loss, shame and the
various other factors that may increase suicide, they'd also have new factors.
For instance perhaps the island has no, or inadequate food and water. If you
had a revolver and the prospect of starving to death considering surely
suicide may be considered?

What of disease or serious injury?

------
cmurf
How do other primates behave in this regard? I'd expect various coping
mechanisms exist to reduce stress becoming so high that the individual
contemplates suicide as a solution, i.e. I'd expect it to be more common the
individual experiences cognitive dissonance, followed by denial, withdrawal,
misdirection, etc. to avoid having to directly deal with the stress inducing
information/situation. Suicide requires planning, so it's a very cognitive
process, where many of our coping mechanisms are more automated (even if
learned, typically that's at a very young age).

------
libeclipse
According to the link, around 1 in 100 people commit suicide. It could be
argued that this is a rather high number. Certainly any other diseases that
achieved this would receive significant attention.

What is interesting however, is how suicide rates haven't changed with other
things like medical improvements and improvements to quality of life.

~~~
paulcole
I think you're vastly overestimating how much people care.

[http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm)

Check out, Chronic lower respiratory diseases at nearly 4x suicide. Can't
remember hearing a thing about that in the news.

~~~
2607_hn
You probably have heard of campaigns to reduce smoking. These diseases (e.g.,
COPD and the related emphysema/chronic bronchitis) are strongly linked to
smoking.

In the mid 90s, I remember seeing some anti-smoking campaigns that used people
with tracheotomies (see ref 1); these folks almost definitely had lower
respiratory disease.

Your point is well-taken - we hardly spoke about addiction as a medical health
problem until recently.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7bHdo2DJHY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7bHdo2DJHY)
\- this is only part of one of the ads I recall

------
jokoon
Easy answer: because we want to believe life is precious and that you only
live once.

Mental health is taboo.

I'm not trying to say that we should let people die, but the living standard
has really skyrocketed, meanwhile we still have behaviors and systems that do
damage to mental health, and we still disregard those problems.

~~~
hasenj
I think actually it's because we fear death. Even if you're an atheist and
know that when you die nothing will happen besides you disappearing, you still
don't want to do it. Even people who commit suicide often would rather if they
didn't have to use that option.

The worst thing about war in my opinion is not just that people die, but that
people live in constant fear of death.

~~~
pluma
> Even if you're an atheist

I really don't understand this sentiment. Surely belief in an afterlife is a
far greater motivator to off yourself than not? It's only religions that
threaten you with eternal suffering if you do that would act as a special
deterrent (easily eliminating all religions that don't have a concept of
hell). Especially if you consider that some of those even go out of their way
to make exceptions for certain forms of murder-suicide ("suicide attacks").

------
onetwotree
A mistake and an insight.

The idea that white men have the highest suicide rate is misleading - they
have the highest rate of success, which is very likely because they are the
most likely to own guns, which are far and away the most effective and
effortless way to commit suicide. Effortlessness is important, because
depression makes planning so difficult. FWIW I'd really appreciate it if we
could not turn this into a debate about gun control.

The insight, of course, is that Elliot Smith didn't have a drug problem, he
was looking for a drug solution. This is an incredibly accurate description of
addiction. The saying in AA is "If alcohol didn't do anything _for_ me, I'd
never have let it do anything _to_ me". Drugs and alcohol are a solution to
the underlying problem, one in which we simply can't feel ok the way others
can. Of course, they are a solution with horrible side effects, and one that
eventually stops working. Many members of AA describe getting sober because
the drugs and alcohol weren't working anymore, only to become suicidal and
realize that the drugs and alcohol were only symptoms of a much deeper
problem.

~~~
intoverflow2
> which is very likely because they are the most likely to own guns

America is not the world

~~~
onetwotree
I think the data were taken among Americans (they included Native Americans).
You're right though, and looking at data from other countries with stronger
gun restrictions would be an interesting way to check this hypothesis.

~~~
DanBC
In England you can use the Office for National Statistics data sets. These are
good quality, and they're very clear about what is or isn't counted as a death
by suicide.

[http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdea...](http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/suicidesintheunitedkingdom/2014registrations)

You can also use the Public Health England "Fingertips" datasets which
breaksdown the data a bit more.

Here's the main Fingertips site:
[http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/](http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/)

And here's the Fingertips mental health stuff:
[http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental-
health](http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental-health)

And here's the Fingertips suicide stuff:
[http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental-
health/pro...](http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental-
health/profile/suicide)

Currently the ratio of deaths by suicide for men:women is something like 4:1
or 3:1, and we think that's because (as you've said) men tend to use more
lethal methods. (Although we've seen a really worrying increase in lethality
of method in women in the UK).

Go careful when comparing the UK stats with the US. I think we count different
things. For example: a death that would be counted as a suicide in someone
over the age of 15 is not counted as a suicide in someone under the age of 15.
I don't think the US does that.

------
ebbv
The relationship between depression and suicide with age is just correlation
not causation, so it's silly to draw a line there and assume they are
connected -- especially since we know depressed people have a higher suicide
rate than people without depression.

I think this post is an attempt to make an obvious question seem like it has
deep or non-obvious answers; but in reality I think the answers are pretty
obvious. Most people don't kill themselves because they don't want to. It's
that simple. It's like asking "Why don't more humans become ballet dancers?"
Some try and fail but most just don't want to.

If the question is really; why don't more people want to kill themselves, then
the answer is going to vary person by person and be difficult if not
impossible to answer globally. Bob might not have any thoughts of suicide at
all but Alice might think about it but want to see her nephew grow up and not
inflict that pain on her parents.

Truly answering that question would involve a really comprehensive study of a
lot of different groups to even attempt to answer it.

~~~
pritambaral
The paper does not draw a causation, nor does the article. The paper asks a
question, and the article tries to think along the lines of the question and
asks some more.

\----

> I think the answers are pretty obvious. Most people don't kill themselves
> because they don't want to.

That is a simple conclusion, indeed; and it's not wrong either. The article
tries to reason how that conclusion came to be. People who have had suicidal
thoughts but didn't go through with it did _ultimately_ not want to do it, but
before that decision they did want to, by definition of 'suicidal people'.

The article – inspired by the paper – opens with the premise that 'pain' and
'human cognition' alone should make a human want to 'give up' upon the
slightest inconvenience, and then goes on to try and come up with other
factors — like your Alice wanting to see her nephew grow up or not wanting to
inflict pain on her parents — that prevent 'pain and brain' from having their
way uncontested.

~~~
Jedd
> The paper does not draw a causation, nor does the article.

It does draw a conclusion:

    
    
      > Indeed, there appears to be a slight elevated risk
      > of suicide in people taking some antidepressants,
      > especially young people. But the effect is tiny. 
      > And some people do think antidepressants relieve 
      > suffering. If depression caused suicide, treating
      > depression should reduce suicide rates, but of
      > course it hasn’t. This could be due to the
      > ineffectiveness of treatment, however.
    

If depression caused suicide, treating depressing should reduce suicide rates
... BUT ... that assumes we identify and 'rectify' all depression, and that
the only cause of suicide is depression, and that the only metric of success
for treatment of depression is a reduction in suicide (across the board) ...
and if you adopt those three positions then the numbers start to make sense.

'But of course' this isn't the whole story.

~~~
patall
Exactly. Treating the symptoms does not mean treating the cause and might even
enhance it.

------
tim333
tl;dr, the article mostly discusses Soper’s hypothesis that "mental illnesses"
such as depression evolved as defences against suicide rather than being the
cause.

So I guess rather than thinking the job's crap, I'll just have a jolly
skydiving trip with no chute you get depressed instead. There might be
something there - I've always been a bit puzzled by the evolutionary function
of depression.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
I'm not sure there needs to be an evolutionary function for everything. Some
things are just "dewclaws".

------
sixhobbits
Martin Hart: So... what's the point of getting' outta bed in the morning?

Rustin Cohle: I tell myself I bear witness. But the real answer is that it's
obviously my programming. And I lack the constitution for suicide.

\--True Detective

~~~
Shengbo
Time is a flat circle.

 _rolls up a booger between his thumb and index finger_

------
tmcpro
the highest suicide rate is among people 85 years or older. With the
advancement of healthcare people are living longer. So the rate of suicide
amongst younger demographics most likely has declined slightly

~~~
hasenj
Interesting. I've often contemplated about it. I don't think I want to live
past 80. I mean unless there would be a medical revolution where you can
retain youth or slow down aging significantly.

~~~
a3n
Get back to us when you turn 80. :)

People's experience change their perspective. What's important to you now will
change. What you're able to appreciate changes.

~~~
hasenj
I actually used to have that limit set to 60, but then when I thought about
it, I probably would still have some physical strength at 60 and still
wouldn't want to die. But at 80 I can't imagine myself being other than a
total wreck.

~~~
vkou
My grandfather is 89. He can't walk very far, he gets tired very easily, and
he has arrhythmia - yet he is still very strong, and very active. Most days,
he gets up at 5, works in the garden, or the woodworking shop, or on property
maintenance, finishes up by noon, and watches television until evening. This
has been more or less his routine for the past 13 years.

If you remain active through your life, I think you're much more likely to
stay active as you're older. I intend to retire by 40, but I don't intend to
be idle.

------
slantaclaus
OK, now that I see the stat he's calling "low", 1.4%. I actually disagree.
That's a pretty high number that we could probably get to go down further.
Assuming that one person out of every graduating high school class is going to
kill his/her-self would seem to me to be a fairly morbid assumption. But this
appears to be the case.

I think the responsibility for the weight (or perhaps, levity) of the
philosophical observations made in this article fall back only on the writer
himself, and his own attitude(s) towards suicide.

~~~
tezzer
He did the math wrong. The source he links shows about 10 deaths per 100,000
which is .01%. He's high by 2 orders of magnitude.

Edited to add: The highest by-country rate using the statistics he cites is
Guyana at 44 per 100,000, which is .044%:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate)

------
rdslw
This question is much more interesting when you realize that modern
neuroscience is (slowly) going more and more into area that there is no free
will in humans.

What is a reason to live if they are not your decisions driving it? Skipping
over all (judical etc) consequences, if this is true, then life has no sense
and it's more/less ok to end it - what's funny, suicide would also not be your
(as in free will) decision... Meaning this is a time bomb programmed into any
thinking brain (and any AI as, what's double funny, this logic also applies to
any AI).

Dodge that homo sapiens :)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will)

[https://www.amazon.com/Free-Will-Sam-
Harris/dp/1451683405](https://www.amazon.com/Free-Will-Sam-
Harris/dp/1451683405)

~~~
dragonwriter
> This question is much more interesting where you realize that modern
> neuroscience is (slowly) going more and more into area that there is no free
> will in humans.

Science _inherently_ approaches the universe in a way which leaves no room for
materially meaningful "free will"; only strict material determination and
_randomness_.

~~~
idanoeman
I don't think the scientific method is inherently materialistic - it's just
that our most validated theories about how the world work are materialist.

------
11thEarlOfMar
DNA is a self-optimizing program for its own survival. After millions of years
of optimization, ones will to live is quite powerful.

The twist is that the optimization mechanism relies on mistakes in copying
itself. One outcome of a copy mistake could be a weakened will to live in
certain negative life circumstances.

------
sebringj
Evolution goes deeper than your rationalizations. Our brains descended from a
long line of successful matings that obviously waited long enough to fuck
before checking out. Possibly the fucking potential keeps us keepin' on in the
lower level of our subconscious. It may also be hard wired preservation (the
fear of pain), basic pleasure, caring of others, the illusion of god(s) or
some imagined purpose of life, but I would guess mostly the fucking potential
drives it all, at least for the younger. There's just a lot of good things to
distract us from wanting death. But again, it goes deeper than our
rationalizations so its going to be hard to say exactly without in depth
scientific studies on the matter.

------
rrod
I had a strange mental illness period a few years ago. In my opinion, Dr Peter
Breggin and others with similar believes are right. To some people, like slow
metabolizers, these psychiatric drugs, are the cause of suicide and other
irrational behavior. The author says "Indeed, there appears to be a slight
elevated risk of suicide in people taking some antidepressants, especially
young people. But the effect is tiny". I think the word "tiny" is the problem
here. The effect is not "tiny". It is simply misunderstood or ignored.

------
ComodoHacker

      >Close to 100% of humans could suicide, and yet ‘only’ about 1.4% do
    

Very bad and misleading wording. 1.4% here is of total number of deaths, not
total number of people. Also, both numbers seem untrue. Wiki says[1]
"approximately 0.5% to 1.4% of people die by suicide".

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide#Epidemiology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide#Epidemiology)

~~~
tezzer
As I mentioned elsewhere, this math is wrong. it's 10 to 44 people per
100,000, which is .01 to .04%, 2 orders of magnitude lower than 1%.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate)

------
shanacarp
I find this a bit over the top/strange to contemplate

Maybe because I have known people who successfully committed suicide - it
turns out people who survive almost always are thankful/happy they did. In
fact, it turns out if you interview people who jump from building and manage
to survive, as they fall, they are thinking they wish they hadn't done that...

------
razorunreal
What if not being depressed is the beneficial adaptation? It would not
surprise me if many depressed people have a more accurate view of the world
and their place in it. When someone's expectations do not match reality it's
not normally considered intelligent, but positivity seems unrealistic, common
and beneficial to survival.

~~~
justratsinacoat
>What if not being depressed is the beneficial adaptation? It would not
surprise me if many depressed people have a more accurate view of the world
and their place in it

It's funny that you should mention that...

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism)

------
Joof
I got really scared for a while because I was both suicidal (the idea itself
gave me an endorphin rush to think about) and my energy levels were fairly
normal / I wasn't showing other symptoms of being depressed. Depression as a
mechanism for preventing suicide sounds plausible.

------
amelius
Reminds me of this quote:

> If there wasn't the possibility of killing myself, I would have killed
> myself!

------
pasbesoin
Altruism. You believe in the human race -- perhaps despite being majorly
screwed by some individuals. You just no longer believe in yourself.

I'm about there, myself.

P.S. When I wrote this, I missed the "few" in the title.

------
leakybit
pain, suffering, happiness, evil, good are all synthetic constructs developed
by evolution that optimize the feedback loop in which a system of molecules is
suck in.

------
cwmma
I guess it might make sense to compare to suicide rates in non-human animals
(e.g. dolphins which can just stop breathing to kill themselves)

------
andrewfromx
i think the author misses the data point of actuall doing it, is not easy. He
keeps repeating, everyone has the ability to kill themselves, but is this
true? I think most people, even if pain is at 100% and desire to do it is at
100% the knife/gun/etc just won't go. So re-think the whole thing from the
point that VERY FEW humans have the ability to do it.

------
adynatos
this is overly simplistic. melancholic depression is roughly 3/4 of all cases,
the rest is from bipolar disorder, which makes it more likely to for people to
kill themselves. how does this theory explain postpartum depression in
females?

------
kingkawn
When its over its over forever. No point rushing.

------
jdimov9
You don't seem to understand much about evolution, or life. Claiming that
evolution is a random, unguided "whatever works" process is mere ignorance. To
everyone who has ever looked around (or listened around, or sensed around)
even for one moment, it is beyond obvious that not only evolution works "by
design", but that this design is supremely personal and the ultimate in
creativity. So the implied negative connotations in your "creationist" label
are misplaced.

~~~
sctb
We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12165775](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12165775)
and marked it off-topic.

------
antiquark
Probably has something to do with the theory of natural selection.

~~~
jokoon
Well in society artificial selection seems to have much more influence on us.

~~~
allendoerfer
Society is natural.

~~~
jokoon
Government, laws, science, technology, management? Do all those things appear
in nature without our initiative? They seem to be made by humans.

I don't really know. Ultimately you can argue that everything happening in the
universe is natural, but I would make a difference between things created by
intelligent creatures and the things that appears with natural selection. That
doesn't involve intelligent design.

~~~
allendoerfer
Many other species have different forms of complex societies.

------
VSerge
It's always strange to see someone wondering whether skin pigmentation has
something to do with something completely unrelated like mental health or
suicide rate, when so many other factors with demonstrably more impact come
into play (social, economic, etc).

~~~
Houshalter
Yes it's not like skin pigmentation correlates with anything at all. The
author is surely suggesting that skin color is _the cause_ and that's just
silly.

------
scardine
The relevant question is "Why so many humans kill themselves?". Because asking
the other way around implies suicide is natural, which is a ratter
extraordinary claim.

~~~
eximius
Perhaps. But it is also pedagogically valuable to ask "Why don't more people
commit suicide?" We might learn something about the mental defence mechanism
the brain employs.

~~~
uuiiyyokthis
Pedagogy /can/ go off the rails if it places other goals above the elimination
of human killing. I know this is self-evident, however there are many hidden
killers out there so consider this a billboard.

~~~
sevenless
There's no ethical reason to oppose suicide, in general. Many cultures
valorized it in certain situations.

