There's a biological phenomenon called "apoptosis," which may give us hints into the cause and behavior of suicides.
Apoptosis, simply put, is a cell-level suicide (or programmed cell death), which happens from multiple causes, but generally for the beneficial effects to the entire body, which happens to be a tragic outcome for the cell itself. This helps to increase the overall efficiency of the body or to prevent any possible damages.
But, as you can presume, this 'suicide' sometimes happens to a perfectly healthy, normal cell -- when it's isolated, lacking interactions with other cells. Of course, as with most living things, this is not a binary state, where a cell immediately performs the suicide on a trigger, but more of a gradual, transient process, which when pushed beyond a threshold or when the cell-death process wasn't halted for some reasons, may conclude in the death itself.
This brings important insight into the behavior of human suicide as well. What role does interactions play part in making a healthy (or a depressed) human being to commit suicide, and what process can we learn from cells to prevent this from happening? Life forms, no matter how complicated they seem, in general are fractal in nature with some degree of complexity layered by emergent behaviors, so there, we can learn something from our roots, or cells in this case.
Even more disturbing thought might be: Are suicides sometimes beneficial to the society? I'd hate to ponder on this idea, but if we can assume a perspective of an alien scientist observing human colonies from far far away, this might an interesting area to explore.
I've been suicidal on two occasions, and you're perfectly describing my thought process in those moments.
I'm sorry that your comment's being downvoted (probably because it's so direct); stepping back and thinking of the progress as biological programming helped me realize I could hack my way out of it to save my life.
> Are suicides sometimes beneficial to the society?
i attempted to commit suicide a number of times, and it never worked. someone or something always came along at the last minute.
after a while of that, i started to get suspicious and suspected perhaps i'd already died. i then later stumbled into believing in something i thought was even more crazy - that death was impossible - but found out that there are perfectly rational people who believe in quantum immortality.
believing i could never die helped me stop thinking seriously about suicide - i figured my life would just get worse as i'd lose any progress i'd made and end up in the mental hopsital again. so i instead focused on trying to live better, not because i felt like i wanted to live instead of dying, but because i felt like i had no choice.
i still don't know whether this is possible, but i can imagine huge societal benefit from an experiment confirming the many worlds hypothesis: a room full of people build a device that has an infinitesimally small probability of letting them all walk out alive. If they all walk out of the room, they'll all know they survived against extreme numeric odds, which means the many worlds hypothesis holds true.
If observers see them die in the room, it doesn't really tell us anything. I can imagine a group of elderly scientists, convinced that the many worlds hypothesis is true, willing to engage in this experiment - but you'd also need a bunch of observers willing to watch them die.
Apoptosis, simply put, is a cell-level suicide (or programmed cell death), which happens from multiple causes, but generally for the beneficial effects to the entire body, which happens to be a tragic outcome for the cell itself. This helps to increase the overall efficiency of the body or to prevent any possible damages.
But, as you can presume, this 'suicide' sometimes happens to a perfectly healthy, normal cell -- when it's isolated, lacking interactions with other cells. Of course, as with most living things, this is not a binary state, where a cell immediately performs the suicide on a trigger, but more of a gradual, transient process, which when pushed beyond a threshold or when the cell-death process wasn't halted for some reasons, may conclude in the death itself.
This brings important insight into the behavior of human suicide as well. What role does interactions play part in making a healthy (or a depressed) human being to commit suicide, and what process can we learn from cells to prevent this from happening? Life forms, no matter how complicated they seem, in general are fractal in nature with some degree of complexity layered by emergent behaviors, so there, we can learn something from our roots, or cells in this case.
Even more disturbing thought might be: Are suicides sometimes beneficial to the society? I'd hate to ponder on this idea, but if we can assume a perspective of an alien scientist observing human colonies from far far away, this might an interesting area to explore.