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by blowski 4330 days ago
As somebody who was affected by the suicide of a close friend, it would be wonderful if something existed that could help others with suicidal feelings.

But there is something sad about the idea that an algorithm would be better at detecting suicidal feelings than your closest friends.
1 comments
phfez 4330 days ago
You think it would be wonderful because of the way that you felt, not the way your friend felt.

And there is no algorithm that can detect suicidal feelings. I can't help but think of Alan Turing in this scenario.

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fleitz 4330 days ago
Yes, if only this existed for turing, we could have thrown him in jail for not wanting to live in our bigoted society.

You hit the nail on the head, most people want a tool like this so every now and then they can stop being a shitty person for a few days before they go back to the navel gazing: "No one had talked to him in months, we had no idea he was depressed."

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blowski 4329 days ago
We should be aiming to make the world a place people want to live in, not encouraging people to want to get out of it.
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lewispollard 4329 days ago
> And there is no algorithm that can detect suicidal feelings.

Not so certain about that. I suffer from major depressive disorder and tweeted a while back speculating about this - I'd just come out of a depressive episode and noticed that my patterns of using social media were different than when I wasn't depressed - generally negative mood, lower interaction in general, mentions of drug abuse in chat, etc. I wondered if something monitoring my IM and Twitter could detect an incoming depressive episode before it fully hit, allowing me to 'prepare' a little more.

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blowski 4330 days ago
> And there is no algorithm that can detect suicidal feelings.

I get what you're saying, but given the miracles that do exist in modern medicine, I'm not prepared to say it's impossible. I suspect better availability of mental healthcare, preferring counselling over drugs, and less stigmatising would all be better 'solutions' than an algorithm, but if an algorithm did exist that could genuinely help then it would be a good thing.

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mkal_tsr 4330 days ago
You did not address the first part of his comment,

> You think it would be wonderful because of the way that you felt, not the way your friend felt.

Why not?

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blowski 4329 days ago
Not a conversation that I think is particularly relevant to HN, nor possible to have effectively online.

But, in short, I genuinely believe that, though my friend's despair at the moment she took her life was very real, she could and would have got through that despair. Her suicide had a huge impact on those around her, especially her parents, and it would have been better both for her and those around her if she had been helped through the despair instead of just ending it.

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