The only difference between this and current methods of painless and quick suicide is how “easy” it is for such an intention and understanding to turn into an actual case of non-existence.
Building the rooms everywhere and recommending their use to anyone with such an intention (“providing” them) makes suicide maximally “easy” in this sense. On a surface level, this increases freedom, and allows people to better achieve their current goals.
But what causes such grounded intentions? Does providing such rooms make such conclusions easier to come to? If someone says they are analyzing the consequences and might intend to kill themselves soon, what do we do? Currently, we force people to stay alive, tell them how important their life is, how their family would suffer, that suicide is a sin, and so on, as a society, and we do this to everyone who is part of society.
None of these classic generic arguments will make sense anymore. As soon as you acknowledge that some people ought to push the button, that anyone might need to consider such a thing at any time, you have to explain specifically why this particular person shouldn’t right now, if you want to reduce their suicidal intentions. The fact that someone considering suicide happens to think of their family as a counter reason, is because of the universal societal meme, not its status as a rational reason (which it may very well happen to be).
We can designate certain groups (i.e. the terminally ill) as special, and restrict the rooms to them, creating new memes for everyone else to use based in their health, but the old memes remain broken, and the new ones may not be as strong.
I suspect that the main impact of providing the rooms will be socially encouraging suicide, regardless of what else we try to do, even if we tell ourselves we are only providing a choice for those who want it.
This is a thoughtful analysis of possible effects. Thank you for this. I do not want to have such rooms because I do not want to lose anybody ever. But sometimes there is a tendency in humans for quick decisions which would be supported by such an invention. I suppose this thought experiment shows me that blocking access to easy decision making has potential value.
The only difference between this and current methods of painless and quick suicide is how “easy” it is for such an intention and understanding to turn into an actual case of non-existence.
Building the rooms everywhere and recommending their use to anyone with such an intention (“providing” them) makes suicide maximally “easy” in this sense. On a surface level, this increases freedom, and allows people to better achieve their current goals.
But what causes such grounded intentions? Does providing such rooms make such conclusions easier to come to? If someone says they are analyzing the consequences and might intend to kill themselves soon, what do we do? Currently, we force people to stay alive, tell them how important their life is, how their family would suffer, that suicide is a sin, and so on, as a society, and we do this to everyone who is part of society.
None of these classic generic arguments will make sense anymore. As soon as you acknowledge that some people ought to push the button, that anyone might need to consider such a thing at any time, you have to explain specifically why this particular person shouldn’t right now, if you want to reduce their suicidal intentions. The fact that someone considering suicide happens to think of their family as a counter reason, is because of the universal societal meme, not its status as a rational reason (which it may very well happen to be).
We can designate certain groups (i.e. the terminally ill) as special, and restrict the rooms to them, creating new memes for everyone else to use based in their health, but the old memes remain broken, and the new ones may not be as strong.
I suspect that the main impact of providing the rooms will be socially encouraging suicide, regardless of what else we try to do, even if we tell ourselves we are only providing a choice for those who want it.
This is a thoughtful analysis of possible effects. Thank you for this. I do not want to have such rooms because I do not want to lose anybody ever. But sometimes there is a tendency in humans for quick decisions which would be supported by such an invention. I suppose this thought experiment shows me that blocking access to easy decision making has potential value.