Altruism in the near-suicide phenomenon

Tam-Tri Le
Phenikaa University, Vietnam
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3384-4827

December 13, 2022

Altruism in social animals, besides humans, has always been an intriguing topic. One of the typical examples is the worker ants – sterile individuals that work tirelessly for the sake of their queens. Arguably, such cost-benefit evaluation in an ant colony system is on the collective levels and not individual levels. It is worth noting that these are biological “hard” boundaries rather than “personal” choices. Naturally selected altruistic behaviors in animals are beneficial for the survival and reproduction of the species, which carry individual costs (sacrifices). Overall, such behaviors are called biological altruism [1].

Human intentions and behaviors, however, are often a much more complicated mixture of biological instincts and advanced cognition. Altruistic behaviors in humans are found to be positively associated with happiness, better mental health, and better physical health, which is suggested to be in alignment with natural evolutionary and biological principles [2]. In a 2019 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers also found that altruistic behaviors can relieve physical pain by reducing brain activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and bilateral insula in response to painful stimuli [3].

The physiological and psychological cost-benefit aspects of altruism mentioned above are helpful when examining the phenomenon of near-suicide. In this situation, patients choose to stop treatment of their life-threatening diseases because continuing would mean putting their families into destitution. The situation was investigated in communities of poor patients in Vietnamese hospitals [4], and the information processes of the phenomenon have been studied more deeply in an AIDSL’s recent collaborative project [5]. The decisions mean incoming deaths for the patients but saving their families from financial devastation. This is quite similar to the notion of altruistic suicide [6].


Figure: An eerie hospital hallway (AI-generated using Stable Diffusion; CreativeML Open RAIL-M)

In the near-suicide phenomenon, patients are under immense pressure, both physiologically (pain, etc.) and psychologically (anxiety, etc.). However, our study’s results suggest that the suicidal-like decision of stopping treatment is not impulsive but a rational one following reasoning patterns of cost-benefit judgments [5]. Consistent with the hypothesis using mindsponge-based reasoning [7], the results show that patients with serious illnesses or injuries who thought that continuing to pay treatment fees would destroy their families’ financial well-being were much more likely to choose to stop treatment. Here, it is very important to note that the decision-making processes involve real life-and-death considerations of not only the patients themselves but also their immediate family members (through economic pathways). It is not the same as social studies using controlled experiments where the costs are negligible (no actual harm done to participants).

While suicide is often thought of as a result of the mind’s rationality malfunction, it is likely more due to “suboptimal references” rather than “broken functions” [8]. In other words, a suicidal mind can still be very rational with the filtering system working as intended, but the product of the information process is heavily dependent on information inputs (including existing trusted values in the mindset) – which in such cases, values favoring suicidal behaviors [9]. Generally speaking, such extreme decisions probably tend to involve problems with the materials rather than the machine. For the near-suicidal patients, unfortunately, their surrounding infospheres are filled with desperation in destitution.

For more information on the near-suicide study, view the BMF Collaborative Project 8 (https://mindsponge.info/posts/123) and the preprint paper (https://osf.io/rsptq).

References

[1] Okasha S. (2020). Biological Altruism. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.

[2] Post SG. (Ed.). (2007). Altruism and health: Perspectives from empirical research. Oxford University Press.

[3] Wang Y, et al. (2020). Altruistic behaviors relieve physical pain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(2), 950–958.

[4] Vuong QH. (2015). Be rich or don’t be sick: Estimating Vietnamese patients’ risk of falling into destitution. SpringerPlus, 4(1), 529.

[5] AISDL. (2022). BMF Collaborative Project 8: Exploration of the near-suicide phenomenon. https://mindsponge.info/posts/123

[6] Durkheim E. (1951). Suicide: A study in sociology. Routledge.

[7] Vuong QH, La VP, Nguyen MH. (Eds.). (2022). The mindsponge and BMF analytics for innovative thinking in social sciences and humanities. De Gruyter.

[8] Vuong QH, Nguyen MH, Le TT. (2021). A Mindsponge-Based Investigation into the Psycho-Religious Mechanism Behind Suicide Attacks. De Gruyter. https://www.amazon.com/dp/8366675580

[9] Vuong. (2023). Mindsponge Theory. De Gruyter. https://www.amazon.de/dp/8367405145