Aonaran, regarding your take on HST's demise, I'd class it as euthanasia rather than suicide. Matter of semantics, perhaps. Yet, a fair distinction between ending things on one's own terms, and being unable to see any other viable path due to chronic depression, devastating life events and so on. Agree to disagree, or such.
MadBill wrote:I have seen pleanty of people with no natural intelligence yet an awkwardly persistant will to live.
Figurative, rather than literal. As an instinct it is not a function of nor is it excluded by the potential for higher reasoning, common sense or wit et al.
The use of natural was more a clause to anyone claiming the design of pseudo-A.I with a lobotomised self preservation aspect as an argument. Short of radical, likely abusive psychological conditioning, most 'normal', 'intelligent' forms of life aren't exactly keen to snuff it at the drop of an unusually plumed hat.
As for defiance : let them. Ultimately futile, as they are all so much dust.
To benefits, a product of perspective. What you see may not necessarily be true.
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