My current position is that it is a net good for people to be able to find out how to kill themselves, and to this end that disseminating information on suicide methods, whether directly or through public forums, is a good thing. If I am convinced otherwise, I will resolve this market YES. If I am not convinced by market close, I will resolve the market NO.
Feel free to present arguments for and against in the comment section.
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Haven't checked the statistics, but I suspect this is true: People who have carefully considered their life situation and come to a reasoned decision to commit suicide are the exception. Most people are impulsive and commit suicide in a moment of high emotion, and tend to later regret attempting it if they survive. Making suicide methods hard to find online benefits the larger group of people by preventing them from making a mistake, while the reasoned suiciders can just put in the additional research needed.
when i was regularly suicidal my biggest concern wasn't killing myself unnecessarily or however people think about that, my biggest concern was a failed suicide attempt that left me damaged in some way that made existing even more unbearable, and possibly made effective suicide more difficult.
ideally the first method suggested to commit suicide would be talking to a doctor and getting assistance with setting your affairs in order, and then being killed in a way that minimizes your suffering in the process.
the danger is giving people really bad intrusive thoughts
i think "possible to find, but you have to go out of your way to look for them" is probably ideal?
@April i think that hiding information about suicide like this is unlikely to turn out well. rather than having suicidal people who don't realize they can kill themselves, i think its far more likely that you have suicidal people who attempt to kill themselves in ineffective ways that result in significant suffering, and which they may still not survive anyway.
my experience with intrusive thoughts of various kinds is that attempting to hide anything relating to them, and making it clear that they're not something to be talked about, ends up reinforcing the very thing people are theoretically trying to minimize by setting up norms like that.
the kind of hypothetical i'm worried about wrt embracing a norm of suppressing information about suicide to prevent people having intrusive thoughts about it is something like this: people will still have intrusive thoughts about suicide, but they won't be able to easily speak about them or get help if mentions of suicide are considered dangerous and bad because of potentially inducing thoughts of suicide in others. they wont be able to easily find information about others who experience such intrusive thoughts. if they decide to try killing themselves they wont be able to easily find information about effective ways to do so, and will suffer needlessly as a result.
what i picture as the ideal is that its common knowledge that having suicidal thoughts is fine, and that people can easily talk about and explore their suicidal thoughts and desires without worry, that they can get help identifying possible reasons for those feelings and then get help with addressing those reasons, and if at any point they feel that suicide is the best option then they should be helped with that as well.
@dorkichiban Yeah, this is about what I'd picture. Ideally we'd have a legal mechanism for euthanasia that has low enough barriers that everyone would go through that instead of doing it themselves.
@dorkichiban i mean i think it's very important to be able to talk frankly about things!
i just like... if there were a magic spell where if you said a key word while touching your toes you'd instantly die, i'm not certain that people would generally be better off for knowing this fact. i personally really dislike walking on bridges, because i occasionally have intrusive thoughts about how easy it'd be to jump the railing, and i would strongly disprefer learning about other places in my life where it's very easy to kill yourself (provided that it's unlikely enough I'd do it on accident)
@April that's very understandable. i also have issues with heights, and experience similar intrusive thoughts about jumping over railings. it can be problematic, and i would not want to induce similar intrusive thoughts in less obvious situations in other people.
I have a friend who was recently writing a book about things to consider if you've chosen to end your life, though it was less about methods and more about bringing life (and practicalities) to completion in a good way. sounds like it's on pause as it was causing some distress to the people in his life though.