Correlation vs Causation

[Tintypographer]

Data is a powerful tool. In my day job I do math. Almost all of it is statistics to show whether things are proven from samples. Data can also be a waste of time. There are many, many logical fallacies that people use to make someone upset, grab their attention, make them join a cause, vote for something or support something that are not valid.

One example is a maxim that the plural of anecdote is not data. Having three single stories of people who "chew gum and don't catch COVID in the presence of people who had COVID" is not evidence of gum's effectiveness at preventing an airborne disease.

So stating as the @fixthe26 repeats over and over again that "I have dozens of family members who have contacted me that their loved ones committed suicide and logged into sanctioned suicide" does not show that there is a direct relationship between someone logging into sanctioned suicide and choosing suicide.

It is much more likely that of the millions of people who log into sanctioned suicide (a staggering number if you consider the mental health ramifications) are in fact depressed, have suicidal ideation and can't handle life. The results of coming to sanctioned suicide aren't that it causes suicide, more likely that when someone has suicidal ideation they are looking for an outlet. This is a testable hypothesis. Take 5000 (don't use that number, use a powered testable number with confidence interval) people without suicidal ideation or depression and have them log into sanctioned suicide and see how many commit suicide. Then take a group who have suicidal ideation and see the same results. Out of 4 million as the log in for the new York times article claimed, the statistics don't show evidence that the 40-50 US deaths reported until 2019 from a chemical of nitrite were expressly caused by logging into this website.

What evidence has not shown is that sanctioned suicide forum use causes people to commit suicide. I would state that sanctioned suicide attracts users who are suicidal. This is likely an assertion that does not require a sophisticated powered study to prove.

I also believe but do not have data to prove that a subset of the suicidal people on SS have had significant failures of treatment by medical and healthcare systems including hotlines, therapists, medication and institutionalization, and they are looking for something that can help them express and rationalize their difficult emotions outside of these other modalities.

I also know that there is statistical evidence that suicide is not occurring because of internet activity as my previous medical articles have shown. Depression can be caused by factors in online activity as detailed in many medical studies.

Suicide is a complex emotional and medical problem and is visceral and evokes strong feelings. The fact that the numbers have been increasing year over year since before sanctioned suicide was even available as a forum (a FACT) shows that something is wrong. Hating sanctioned suicide is an opinion which anyone is free to have. Repeating falsehoods, lies and logical fallacies because of hatred and vengeance as the @kelli and @fixthe26 group does is simply bullying. And there is tremendous medical evidence that bullying leads to the emotional depression that then is tied to suicide.

 

[puppet_nihilist]

Very coherent and interesting to read but who would listen other than the members here : (
We live in a world were people might even understand what you're saying but still tell you that you're wrong and insult you despite that.

 

[Tintypographer]

I do it to counter @fixthe26. Every time they post on their Twitter I make sure to refute ass best I can with details and to send notes to representatives on their list of people they are notifying. I feel that I may own effort constantly refuting with data helps me feel better and it also has let me dive down the rabbit hole of data associated with psychology and suicide.

 

[Al Cappella]

Unfortunately, facts are completely impotent in the face of moral outrage and emotional reasoning. Add to that the unassailable spectre of parents who've lost a child to suicide—and you get the hysterical BS we're seeing from these people. Social media only makes it worse…

 

[Ethereal Knight]

good point. but I don't even think they wanna just censor the peaceful methods, I think they wanna control the narrative. it's a form of thought control (please, make 1984 fiction again!). having just one narrative makes easier to manipulate everyone into buying it, as there are no alternative views to be found anywhere. it's the modern equivalent of burning the books.

this is not very different from covid-19. there's only one narrative allowed to be spoken. and any mainstream social media plataform will ban and deplataform you for saying anything else.

more and more, censorship are starting to be viewed as okay, especially if there's the excuse of "it's for their own good, for their own protection". states like China, that control their population on so many levels and take away their liberties in an authoritarian way, are being admired by many leaders around the world an seen as examples.
human beings are seen like cattle who not only can, but "should be manipulated".

the mainstream narrative arround suicide is quite obvious: it's something like "someone has to be out of their minds to want to die, if their sanity gets back they'll not want it anymore. almost all suicides have to do with mental illness who was not properly treated." which is not true, of course.

it's people's right to choose whatever fate they want to them for whatever reason. no need for explanations. if one wants to rest, that's their right. and some decide it in a very rational way, planning for years, journaling about it etc, but even if that's not the case, people have the right to do whatever they want to their bodies. be it tattoos, plastical surgeries, piercings, aborptions, heroin and even self-destruction. it's literally their rights.
this is about freedom.

like it was said a million times, the best they could achieve would be to remove most peaceful methods and leave only violent, painful and inhumane methods as an option to people, which will not decrease suicide, but will only make people suffer more (and increase the number of disabled people with life-long damage who will probably kill themselves later anyway).

they're anti-choice. they're dictatorships. they have an ideology.

Every time they post on their Twitter I make sure to refute ass best I can with details and to send notes to representatives on their list of people they are notifying. I feel that I may own effort constantly refuting with data helps me feel better and it also has let me dive down the rabbit hole of data associated with psychology and suicide.

I don't think this helps. at all. people are not rational. their reasons to opposite SS are probably more emotional or unconscious than anything.
human beings are rarely rational. most decisions are taken out of emotions and impulses. people are often driven by the unconscious, and then they call it "fate" or try to justify their decisions post-hoc with rationalizations.

trying to argue with them is like trying to administer medicine to the dead.

 

[Tintypographer]

True. Personally, the @fixthe26 engagement I had made me want to take my own life. When I told them why I was on this website they attacked me, said that I needed therapy and that "the only people on here are incels and death cult members".

So I began to investigate this site and data behind medicine and suicide. And I've learned a lot. And so I push back against them and I've learned to really dislike their hubris. I am a professor and have given them my name. I am more than willing to let them debate me at my college in a moderated fashion but they don't want to do that. My own daughter took her own life with a firearm that she purchased and she never logged into this site. Suicidal e ideation and depression run in my family. This site is not a recruiting site, it's not a "death cult", it's not a "incel group of pedophiles" and it's not a way for people to get excited by convincing others to kill themselves.

The community is a shared cry for help for the desperate for whom things aren't getting better.

It's a finger pointing at managed care that wishes mental health and chronic health conditions would simply go away because they are bad for the bottom line. It's a place for those persecuted by bullies find some sense of shared refuge from the alphas who insist that "You should toughen up".

Sometimes I imagine that the fear is that these self-spouted bootstrap care for yourself platitudes are not 100 percent true and that those who chose not to be the navy seals or choose not to be "happy just being themselves" are a sign that the systems in place are failing a growing number of people. Since all of th easy problems have been solved and this is a hard problem the general society wish is to shut down the ability to even discuss the problems outside of the framework that has been built.

 

[Oblivion Access]

When I told them why I was on this website they attacked me, said that I needed therapy and that "the only people on here are incels and death cult members"..

Everything else you mentioned notwithstanding, given the kind of takes I see propagated and defended here, I don't blame anyone for coming away with such ideas about this site. This makes all the more sense when you consider the narrative in their head, that people here are somehow responsible for their relative's death. I strongly recommend nobody here ever engages with such people in any fashion, every party involved benefits overall imo.