A better comparison to this situation would be someone bringing up gang rape in the objective sense of a crime as defined by law, and you replying by using "rape" in the sense of "team A raped team B by winning easily" which would be about something subjective.

In the disucssion about suicide, he brought up North Korea and torture, and your reply was about "torture is relative" and "some cunts don't even realize how shit their life is". That's an objection which doesn't work since it doesn't adress his idea. Very simple.

Yeah, this seems to be Schopenhauer-influenced. But Schopenhauer wasn't talking necessarily about meaning, and meaningfulness isn't necessarily what's at issue between pessimism/optimism. Things are more subtle and interesting. Schopenhauer still thinks that life genuinely IS suffering. But he thinks that to commit suicide because of this is just to manifest once again the very same thing that causes suffering in the first place: Desire. So, suicide is mistaken... sort of in the way that it's mistaken to try to fix something that's broken by hitting it. It makes more sense with his metaphysics though: Suicide doesn't really kill you, because the WILL survives the act, and that will will go on to engender more suffering. But anyway.

The issue of cowardice: It can go either way. There are many motivations one might have for committing suicide. Someone might think that happiness is possible, but too hard to get to -- if they kill themselves, that may be cowardice. But if someone thinks life necessarily is suffering, and that suffering is bad, then suicide may just be rational (setting aside weird Schopenhauerian metaphysics). If someone thinks that life is meaningless, and wants to commit suicide as a result, they may just be confused, likely due to cowardice: If by "meaningless" you mean "nothing matters", then it also doesn't matter whether you live or not, whether you suffer or not; to commit suicide on that basis is just to confusedly think that it matters that nothing matters -- by definition, it doesn't.

Oh, and for what it's worth... Human beings are generally speaking extremely driven to go on living. It takes a LOT of depression before someone just stops eating or drinking water entirely. If one genuinely thinks that life is bad and to be avoided, for rigorous philosophical reasons (and not because they are a scared weakling), then overcoming the innate impulse to go on living may be a feat of heroic power.

Pretty sensitive topic for me here. I'm new here but post at the Brave Board and am a regular there, anyways:

My uncle hung himself in 2005 for reasons still unknown but I believe alcohol was a factor, as he drank every single day and missed days of work because of it. He was only 34. Selfish? I really can't answer that.

I, have suffered depression since about 2010 and I never attempted it but had many thoughts and checked myself into a hospital for a few days to get my shit together. I now am much better but still not "normal".

Mental illness just sucks and in America is in bad need of more awareness and treatment.

Right. Likewise, pain has a subjective aspect, too. You and I might have the same physical injury and one of us is bothered by it more. I fail to see how any of this changes anything, though.

I think when we're talking about things like terminal illness, torture, etc., what matters is whether or not the individual finds the situation bearable or not.

Semi related: I see a lot of online articles about assisted suicide on Facebook, and people always bring up the grieving of their loved ones. The loved ones will grieve no matter when the person dies, and, more importantly I think, people don't seem to be taking the [suicidal] individual's life into account. People seem to think the avoidance of suffering of the relatives is somehow more important than the individual's avoidance of continued suffering/some other situation they find unbearable, and I disagree with this.

If a person is suffering, thinks they can't handle it anymore, and sees no way out, I don't see why they should be made to continue to suffer just so their loved ones can avoid grief. That seems to me like selfishness on the part of the loved ones, coupled with a taboo against suicide.

Yes! I think there is a great deal of truth in this.

Suppose you and a friend move to a new part of the earth together, with a new climate and everything. You enjoy it, but something about the air causes your friend agony -- perhaps allergies, etc. If they want to leave because it is so agonizing, but you demand that they stay, because otherwise you'll be a little lonelier, who is the selfish one???