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The 'right to die' bill got rejected

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Original post by Fango_Jett
Probably would. I mean if they reasonably suspect that you had a deliberate hand in helping.

I mean how believable is it that your terminally ill relative planned a trip to Switzerland, a country famous for its' assisted suicide clinics, out of the blue with absolutely no expectation that they were going there to end their lives and you had no clue or suspicion whatsoever.


True but thank god we live in a society where suspicion alone does not constitute a crime.
Original post by miser
If that were true then surveys would be useless, but they aren't, because if you achieve a good sample then you can be reasonably assured that the sample is representative of the whole.

Please see Simes' post that the poll of 5000 people gives a 1.4% margin of error with 95% confidence.

You can verify this for yourself using the following calculator:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/sample-size-calculator/


Ok but I don't see where you're making up the confidence and margin of error numbers from


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Reply 42
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miser
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Original post by Underscore__
Ok but I don't see where you're making up the confidence and margin of error numbers from


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Confidence levels are commonly 90%, 95% or 99%. Picking 95% is a middle-of-the-road value, and then by using that number, in conjunction with the sample size and the population size, you can calculate what margin-of-error you would have.

You could also say that the survey provides a margin of error of 1.825% with 99% confidence, or a margin of error of 1.16% with 90% confidence.
Reply 43
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Simes
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Original post by Underscore__
Ok but I don't see where you're making up the confidence and margin of error numbers from
Unfortunately, statistical sampling is not obvious, it does require some study to understand.

This might work for you. The chance of tossing heads ten times in a row is 1 in 1024 against. By the time you have tossed it 5000 times you have got a very accurate way of determining whether the coin comes up heads 50% of the time and tails 50% of the time. This is because the odds of getting a poor representation of the average view becomes vanishingly small. Likewise, randomly sampling 5000 people gives a very accurate idea of the %age of people with a certain opinion.

Basically, for each one person you ask, the likelihood that you have not got a reasonable sample falls off quite quickly.
Reply 44
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Simes
16
Anyway, leaving something illegal doesn't stop people doing it. When abortion was illegal, women died or were permanently injured by back-street abortions, or by trying to force a termination with alcohol or tablets, or by being beaten or kicked by their partner/father to kill the foetus. Abortion was legalised to stop that happening.

While assisted suicide is illegal, family and doctors will continue to murder dying people out of mercy, and people diagnosed with terminal illnesses will attempt to kill themselves by driving into walls, paracetamol overdose or other nasty - and frequently unsuccessful - means. The suicides will be done by frightened lonely people much earlier than an assisted suicide and with greater risk of failure and causing horrible anguish to their family.

Forcing people - strangers - to suffer in pain when they want to die and will die anyway, is horrific. With the exception of devout Catholics or others with a genuine religious conviction against suicide (which will be few), it was a selfish, spineless, cowardly and naïve act on the part of the politicians that voted against it.

Assisted suicide will continue regardless. But it will be done by discretely pulling out tubes or smothering or poisoning, rather than humanely, with those involved feeling fear of conviction and no ability to talk to anyone for solace in addition to grief they have anyway.
(edited 8 years ago)

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