Pondering the rationality behind suicide

@ TruthSeeker: if you seek for objective meaning for one’s life, until recently there was one; and depends on one’s estimate for human “sapiens” chances of survival in observable future, there still may be. It’s very simple: while every individual unevitably dies physically indeed, changes in mankind collective done by the person – remain. If during your life you manage to change mankind collective even a tiny bit towards becoming more efficient, resilient, hardy – and i talk survival of our species here, – then your life was meaningful. See, we humans are unique in our ability to shape matter and command energy. No other known species go kilometers down under water, kilometers down under land surface, kilometers up into the air and even into space; we, humans, do. In this regard we are unique creation on Earth, and it is logical to maintain our population above critically low number – in other words, it is logical for our species to survive. To this end, every individual life has a meaning as soon as the person did at least some few things to improve mankind collective knowledge and “zeitgeist” – if chances for mankind to survive through any observable future are indeed significant.

Problem is, those chaces are not significant; at the moment, i’d say our species’ chances to see year 2080 – are practically zero, and even year 2050 – are “very low”. See my own case on suicideproject, called “what for?”, for details, if you want.

So ironically, for reasons different than stated in your 1st message here, TruthSeeker, – i agree; there is no reason to keep going, and suicide is an excellent idea.

Now about having no willpower to jump from that bridge. This is our personal, very rational from evolution-of-species PoV, but completely irrational from your and mine personal PoV, thing. Luckily, we are intelligent creatures, and this oh-so-strong instinct of self-preservation is extremely very easy to circumvent. Here are some facts for you to consider:
1. due to limited speed of nerve signal transfer (which is based on chemical reactions in neurons) and some complexity of brain’s pain centers, our brain feels any pain good 50+ milliseconds after physical cause of pain was applied.
2. if our brain is mechanically destroyed in less than 50 milliseconds, the pain of it will never be felt: mechanically disconnected, brain cells are no more a structure which can develop any complex state, and “i am in pain” – or even half of it, “i am” – sense or thought – are complex states, requiring consiousness and many other things to be present.
3. assuming massive and hard enough object hitting human head has to travel only 10 centimeters inwards to cause nearly complete mechanical destruction of the brain (as a functional unit), and assuming the mass and/or speed of the object is enough to break the skull mehanically without losing most of its momentum to do so, let’s calculate the minimum speed of the massive object required to destroy human brain in under 50 milliseconds: 0.1m / 0.05s = 2m/s ~= 7 km/h. This means, any massive metal object dropped on one’s head at 7+ km/h – will cause painless death. Less massive or more easily deformable objects with proportionally higher speed will do the job just as painlessly, too.
4. gravity of Earth is excellent force to accelerate massive objects to speeds times higher than 7 km/h. For example, a piece of a good wide log weighing some 50 kg, lifted by one’s muscle force so some tree’s branch 5 meters above ground, when released, will touch down in 1 second under Earth’s gravity of ~10m/s*s, having exactly 10m/s ~= 36 km/h vertical velocity (speed) at the point of impact. Should this piece of log have to decelerate to a complete stop in a matter of less than 5 centimeters then (which would be required if we’d want human skull to stop this object without breaking), negative acceleration required for this would be 5m/0.05m = 100 times higher; since force = mass * acceleration, same force would be produced by 100 times higher mass while under normal -10m/s acceleration, – i.e. 5 tons of weight placed on top on one’s head. Since we definitely know that 5 tons of weight placed on top of human head are more than enough to crush the skull, we also definitely know that even this 50 kg piece of log, if it’d do direct hit on human head placed on firm enough based, – would do the same: crush the skull with no problem. Now, higher weight of the object as well as higher (than just 5m) initial lift height – both produce much faster than 50ms mechanical brain destruction, and are still easily achievable.
5. the instinct of self-preservation can only be activated if/when there is sensory input about some observed and/or understood danger. Should such sensory input and knowledge (certainty) be absent, self-preservation does not activate.
6. it is possible to set up deadly mechnical brain destruction which will take less than 50 milliseconds, and which will happen without any sensory output nor certain knowledge of the incoming event. Thus, it is doable to do suicide with self-preservation instinct never activating.

Tools needed are very basic, and the most primitive yet still reliable and testable device can be built in no time in any wood area.