[gregjor]

> To believe that the loss of a limb is so severe that death is preferable is absurd and insensitive.

No. Denigrating someone expressing their personal opinion seems absurd. Since the commenter did not impose their opinions on other people you had to put those words in their mouth to call them insensitive.

I prefer to die with autonomy and dignity as well, meaning I would like to pull my own plug. That other people might have a different threshold, or want to die differently than I might, seems neither absurd nor insensitive. The commenter just described their threshold, they didn't judge other people.

[latexr]

> Denigrating someone expressing their personal opinion seems absurd. (…) The commenter just described their threshold, they didn't judge other people.

My sentence does not judge the person, it criticises the belief. Learn to differentiate or you’ll be doomed to a life of ad hominem attacks and taking things personally.

If person A says they love spiders and person B replies they find spiders repulsive, there’s no value judgement passed on person A.

My remark was not a commentary on yourself, your world view, the author, or your approval of them. I don’t know you.

> I prefer to die with autonomy and dignity as well

Who wouldn’t? By itself that statement is meaningless. What’s in question is how one defines the terms.

I invite you to take a closer look at that quote and understand what it means to the people who live those situations. Let’s exaggerate to make a point: If someone said they refused to be treated by a black doctor even if their life depended on it, and followed up with the remark they would make sure to die with dignity, do you not see how that would be insensitive to black people? A writer, especially an ostensibly good one, would understand that basic sentence structure.

Again, that is a purposeful exaggeration to make a point. I’m not making a remark on yourself or the author, I am disagreeing with the belief.

[kbelder]

I'll judge the person. Someone wanting to die because they lose an arm is nuts.

[gregjor]

> My sentence does not judge the person, it criticises the belief.

An opinion or belief can't "be" insensitive. A person may intend to say something insensitive, another person may interpret an opinion as insensitive (as you did when dragging in amputees and people suffering from other conditions and injuries). "Insensitive" can only refer to a person's intention or another person's reaction. So calling someone insensitive for their expressed opinion does indeed judge the person.

> Learn to differentiate or you’ll be doomed to a life of ad hominem attacks and taking things personally.

Surely someone as skilled in rhetoric as yourself can see the irony of you warning me about "a life of ad hominem attacks" embedded in an ad hominem attack. Then you followed up with the implication that I don't understand "basic sentence structure." Address my actual comment rather than telling me what I need to learn and how I will get doomed for not thinking like you.

As for spiders and racists, those have nothing to do with anything in this thread. If someone says they don't want to live if they lose a limb or face chemotherapy, whether you agree with their stated choice or not, no other person or race got mentioned or implicated in the comment you replied to. Setting up a false and deliberately inflammatory analogy to make your point, equating an opinion about perceived quality of life with racism, doesn't help your argument. Try sticking with countering the arguments the commenter (and I) expressed.

Personal opinions about end-of-life care, personal autonomy, dignity have the same flavor as religious beliefs: you can't counter them with logic. Just calling someone wrong or "insensitive" or "nuts" as some other commenters have misses the mark, because the subject involves beliefs, not facts that we can argue. One can express their own different opinion, but going beyond that starts to verge into attacks on personal beliefs, which requires making assumptions about another person's faculties, judgment, and ad hominem, all of which you have deployed in your comments.

[latexr]

Urk, clearly continuing this conversation is fruitless. Even after mentioning twice and with emphasis that I’d use a purposefully exaggerated example, you decide to latch on to it as if it were the central thesis, calling it “false and deliberately inflammatory”. Do you understand the meaning of “purposefully exaggerated”, of analogies and hyperbole as a means to explain a point? Stop assuming bad faith, and please go fresh up on what an ad hominem is, as you keep mischaracterising it. My original comment had nothing to do with you, unless you’re Al Ewing and pretending not to be. Stop taking it personally, this isn’t even about you. You’re also conflating what other people said with my points, which is unproductive.

[kelnos]

If someone else is free to decide that they'd rather die than lose an eye, or rather die than have to experience a few months of chemotherapy in order to be cancer-free, then I am also free to decide that those views are absurd and extreme, and reflect a deep misunderstanding of medical outcomes.

> Denigrating someone expressing their personal opinion seems absurd.

There's a difference between saying someone is foolish and saying their beliefs/opinions are foolish. The former is not what the GP did.

[gregjor]

> then I am also free to decide that those views are absurd and extreme, and reflect a deep misunderstanding of medical outcomes.

I don't agree. You can decide that another person's expressed opinions don't align with yours, according to what you believe and think you understand about medical outcomes. The original comment didn't mention medical outcomes so I hesitate to judge how much the commenter knows about that. And I hesitate to call someone's personal views absurd. They have opinions I may or may not share. I can't make a rational argument to prove them wrong.

A person's beliefs can't "be" foolish or even wrong. Belief by definition does not come from an objective and rational evaluation of facts and probabilities. I can say I hold different beliefs, but no more.

We most often encounter this kind of argument around religion. Someone can sincerely hold religious beliefs that don't submit to rational and objective argument. We can have different beliefs but we can't prove someone else's beliefs wrong. To call a belief that you can't argue against with reason "foolish" or wrong equals calling the person holding the belief foolish and wrong. You can show that chemo can work and people with cancer can recover. You can't say how any individual should feel about that, or how they should choose to deal with a cancer diagnosis. The original comment didn't make any statement about whether chemo works or not, or whether some people can thrive with dignity after losing a limb. Rather the original comment expressed one person's belief about how they feel about those possibilities, for their own definitions of autonomy, dignity, and quality of life.