Discussion Why does being lucid about chance lead us to suicide?

[thaelyana]

Hello, I'm sharing my reflection on chance and the choice of suicide. I took some time to make it clear and used a translator, so I'm not sure how understandable it will be in English. Anyway, I hope you find it interesting to read. Please feel free to share your thoughts on your own definition of chance or on the essay as a whole. Thank you.

Life begins with a deeply random event. Among millions of sperm cells, only one fertilizes the egg. This first act, which determines the existence of a human being, is pure chance. From the very start, life places us in a position of total unpredictability, a game of luck that escapes all logic. This realization unsettles us because it reveals that I am not the result of a choice or a necessity, but of a stroke of fate.

Faced with this apparent chaos, some choose to believe that nothing is left to chance. They imagine a perfectly ordered universe, where everything is predetermined by a higher force, like God. And this vision could explain why, despite diversity, there is a certain uniformity in the human species, as if everything had been designed in advance—a sort of perfect chance.

But how can we reconcile this idea with the infinite variety of faces, characters, destinies? Each individual is unique, and this uniqueness seems to defy any notion of a pre-established plan!

The philosopher Spinoza proposes another idea: every event is the necessary consequence of a prior event. We would not be free, but chained in a long chain of causes and effects, prisoners of time and space (a nod to Einstein and Newton!).

From this perspective, what I call "chance" is only an illusion due to my ignorance of the deeper causes. My choices would therefore be determined, even if I feel free. This deeply questions my place in the universe: am I really free, or just a cog in a mechanical system?

From a mathematical point of view, chance presents a paradox. Infinity, that idea that fascinates and surpasses my understanding, remains unreachable. Even with an infinite number of tries, no certainty of success can be guaranteed. Indeed, the Universe itself might be the result of a series of random trials that eventually stabilized. We thus return to the basic idea: behind this apparent instability lies a mechanism, where each cause produces an effect, in an invisible but STRICT order!

In short, the question of free will then enters this debate. If everything is determined, then chance doesn't really exist? But if I am truly free, my choices bring an element of unpredictability, uncertainty… This tension is even stronger for believers. On one side, God knows everything, from my birth to my death; my whole destiny is written. On the other, He lets me choose how to act. But if God already knows what I will do, is this choice real? LOL.

NOW, let's talk about suicide.
This is where the reflection takes a heavier, more serious turn. What pushes some people to suicide is not only pain or despair, but a deep and terrible lucidity.

This lucidity is the ability to see chance not as an ally, but as a blind tyrant governing every moment of our lives.

It is the brutal clarity of understanding that life is an infinite chain of unpredictable, often cruel events devoid of meaning, and that behind every hope, every decision, hides a merciless lottery…
This lucidity is not a light burden. It weighs on the soul like a truth, a kind of weight that crushes consoling illusions (hope).

Those who carry it see the world as it really is, without veil or lie. They know that chance does not deal its cards fairly, that it traps us within narrow limits: the body, social class, pain, personal history… especially that one.

In short, the better we understand, the more we see that the choices we can make become fewer and fewer. We also see all the invisible rules that force us to do certain things. This understanding, instead of helping us, traps us a little. It's like a cold wall that says "you must continue," but never tells us why.

Faced with this reality, some choose to end it all. Not in an explosion of despair, but in a terrible peace, a decision made with full awareness. This suicide is the ultimate form of lucidity, a controlled exit that disturbs, because it refuses comforting stories, because it breaks the illusion that life is always beautiful, full of meaning or justice.

For me, chance is neither an ally nor a benevolent partner. It is a cold wheel, a mechanism without purpose or pity, endlessly spinning and crushing lives in its wake! (Thanks technology class for those words)

Building a life on chance is building on air, on unstable ground where nothing can be guaranteed. And even if possibilities seemed infinite, they never really are… Because our bodies, our pain, our environment, our history already reduce the range. Chance, in its apparent freedom, is actually an invisible prison. (The diagram at the end sums this up)

This wall (prison) is the reality that imposes itself without appeal. A wall made of constraints, causes and effects, silent obligations. A wall that says: "You must continue" without ever offering meaning, without ever saying why.

Those who meet it know there is no escape. So, faced with this wall, some choose the exit. Not impulsively, nor in the pain of a scream, but in a deep calm, a silence that says everything.
This form of lucidity profoundly disturbs. It breaks the stories society tells itself to keep standing. If this lucidity could speak, it would say:
"LOL, you think you stay because life is beautiful? (hope) No. You stay because you haven't yet understood the cold and blind mechanism of chance."

Those who leave are often those who have seen everything, understood everything too early. And this truth, the world cannot accept.

Chance is impossible to define precisely. So how can we build a solid hope on something so unstable, and yet so often so predictable?



Simple very very very simple scheme:

Lucidity about chance-> Life is a chain of unpredictable and cruel events-> Hopes are unfair draws of the lottery -> After a while, this lucidity weighs heavily -> It destroys comforting illusions (hope) -> It reveals that chance doesn't distribute opportunities fairly (the body, social class, and pain already limit my choices) -> The more I understand, the fewer choices I see -> I discover invisible rules forcing me to move forward without knowing why (a wall of constraints and silence) -> Faced with this wall, some choose the exit -> Not an impulsive act, but a calm, deliberate decision -> Suicide as the ultimate form of control and lucidity

I hope my thoughts are understandable; I translated them from French. If any French speakers want to read the original, please feel free to DM me. Anyway. Thanks for reading.

 

[enjoytheride]

Hi!

Thank you very much for sharing your reflections and reasoning, and starting this discussion!

A few thoughts came to my mind while reading your thoughts. One of the first ones is that it's possible we don't have the concepts and cognitive capacity to truly understand reality and what underpins it. So we might easily get stuck in dichotomies such as determinism vs. chance. This includes the idea that we are faced with either ruthless chance or else with senseless determinism.

You seem to accept there is determinism and there is chance, somehow in a mix, because you point to the hard constraints we face, such as social class, body, personal histories. They are both a structure and something we seem to be able to structure. I am as layman as one can be, but this reminds me of quantum physics - there it seems that things can be perfectly deterministic and probabilistic at the same time. By the way, this is how it seems Nature is able to evolve and develop complex patterns and shapes:



To be honest, I don't know. I hope we don't have the conceptual framework, as a species, to understand things of higher order in the Universe. This leaves space for hope.

I also think that contemplating CTB can be a consequence of reaching an unusual level of lucidity. It is important to leave a disclaimer, though: perhaps few suicides are truly a consequence of such lucidity.

Chance is impossible to define precisely. So how can we build a solid hope on something so unstable, and yet so often so predictable?

Interesting thought. I would say that you build hope on chance the same way you plan with weather forecasts - "chances are..., so I will...". I cannot tell for sure, but our world seems to be quite "in love" with probability in the mathematical sense (not in the ordinary sense of good vs. bad luck). One can look at just how pervasive the Standard Normal Distribution in reality seems to be - from life cycles, to body height distribution, physical surfaces, etc. - waves (of probability or of other kind) seem to be everywhere. And this perhaps ties up with quantum physics, somehow.

Life and death apparently are part of this - "What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?" (and then zero legs - just as before it walks on four legs)

I think in a moment of lucidity one can realise that death is a given anyway - uncomfortable truth is that one doesn't need to CTB. Time will make sure we all CTB, sooner or later, even if we do nothing to get to the bus stop faster. I still sometimes contemplate CTB, but knowing I the bus will catch me anyway, whether I want it or not, helps me focus on what I can actually do while this hasn't happened.

That is it's own dose of good lucidity - many things stop being as huge as they look, especially knowing how close that final moment is (or is it truly final? I don't know). And it's much closer than we imagine. 35 seemed like an age far away 2 decades ago. Now I know that 55 is probably even closer to me than 35 was when I was 15. I too am fascinated by concepts of infinity. Time doesn't work for us as Cantor's continuum of numbers which allows you to split numbers between two integers (into rational numbers) ad infinitum, without ever reaching either of them integers.

You probably have watched videos of "Closer to Truth". I would recommend watching a few - they very often offer competing perspectives on physical/metaphysical phenomena and the possible nature of our reality.

I hope other people share their ideas here too.


Kind regards

 

[thaelyana]

@enjoytheride

You say that we don't have the words or the intelligence needed to truly understand the world, and I must say I completely agree with that point of view. What we call human intelligence is actually very limited, especially because it relies on a language made of words, and those words are often vague, ambiguous, and insufficient to describe the complexity of reality. We may be intelligent compared to other animals, but that doesn't fundamentally elevate us, because even a bee, living a life guided by instincts, acts according to a complex pattern that one could call free will in its own way. What sets us apart is our ability to communicate through language, but that very communication is also a cage.

Language, as Leibniz and other philosophers have analyzed, is limited because words lack absolute precision. The word "chance" is a good example: when we use it, we never quite know what definition we're applying. For one person, chance means the absence of cause; for another, it's the manifestation of a hidden cause or invisible determinism. This means our language doesn't allow us to fully progress in understanding, because each word carries multiple meanings, and communication ends up stuck in sterile oppositions.

To me, chance and destiny are not opposites but intertwined notions. I don't believe in chance in the strict sense, nor in destiny as a transcendent force that organizes our lives in a predefined way. What I call chance is rather the illusion linked to our sense of free will. We feel like we're moving freely, but our paths are always limited by our social, physical, and historical conditions — what I call "the wall." This wall is real, and it constrains us. For example, if you're born into a poor family, no amount of willpower alone will make you become a pilot without some enormous stroke of luck.

This doesn't mean everything is fixed, because there are always exceptions, fortunate "chances" that allow some people to radically change their lives, but these cases remain marginal and depend on very specific circumstances. This wall, this limit, is what one might call destiny — not a destiny written by a divine entity, but a social and material destiny.

You mentioned quantum physics and the idea that some phenomena are both predictable and unpredictable. On that point, I have an example that might help: the electron. An electron can have a defined position or a defined speed, but not both at the same time — this is what's known as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. For me, this isn't pure chance, it's just a limit in our ability to precisely measure these values. We don't have the words… It also means that the world, even in its apparently random aspects, is governed by rules — even if those rules still escape us! And if that's true, then there's no more hope, because everything is defined. But as long as we haven't found those rules, then we can still think that the world might change.

I believe the world is fundamentally logical. What we perceive as illogical, incomprehensible, or chaotic is simply what our limited intelligence fails to decode. The universe functions according to stable laws, universal laws, even if we haven't yet discovered them all. Nothing happens without a cause or reason.

Now, about your reflection on hope. I understand that you may feel that not knowing everything leaves room for hope. That's a valid point, and it's a real human strength to hold onto the idea that tomorrow might be different, better. But I personally don't believe in hope — or at least, not in the way people usually mean it. Again, for me, hope rests only on facts whose rules we do not yet understand. But once we do understand those rules, then there will be no more room for hope. Could this conversation still happen in a thousand years, between two people? Maybe yes, maybe no — it depends on whether all the laws of the universe have been discovered by then.

Let me be clear: I think lucidity is precisely about understanding that even if we can hope, that hope is often in vain, or even a form of self-deception. Hope is a kind of engine, sure, but also a trap. I believe one can be lucid — fully aware of realities and limitations — and still hold onto a small bit of hope, either because we want to believe despite everything, or because hope is necessary not to fall apart completely. But to me, that hope is never based on a real probability of radical change.

In other words, we can mix lucidity and hope, but not in equal parts. Lucidity must come first, because hope without lucidity is dangerous — it leads to false expectations or disappointment. I believe lucidity is about accepting the wall, the limits, the finitude — even if it hurts.

When I talk about lucidity in the context of suicide, I'm referring to a kind of long-term lucidity. Many people take their own lives in an impulsive moment, when the pain is too great and they see no other option. I don't deny that — it is also a form of lucidity, even if it's a very painful one. But I'm mostly talking about those who have built their thinking over time, who have reflected and observed all the possibilities over the long term, and who have still concluded that their options were closed.

It's important to point this out, because very few people actually manage to bounce back and build an extraordinary life after a deep depression. It's a hard truth, but it's a fact.

Coming back to your view, I want to thank you for your honesty and depth. I really appreciate this exchange. I'll watch your video as soon as I can, especially with French subtitles, because my English is very weak. It's truly a pleasure to be able to talk like this.


(I just saw that you put more things in your answer, I'll answer it right away)

I think in a moment of lucidity one can realise that death is a given anyway - uncomfortable truth is that one doesn't need to CTB

Yes, thank you for your text, sincerely. It's calm, grounded, and thought-provoking — it's rare to read something that dares to go that far without falling into either moralizing or despair :)

But maybe I'd add something to your thoughts on the idea that "in the end, we're all going to die anyway." Yes, that's true. But what you're saying doesn't always bring comfort. Because what hurts is not so much death itself, but the duration. The weight of waiting. The crossing. And time isn't experienced equally: for some people, even one hour is unbearable. One hour alone can be enough to make everything collapse. So saying "death will come one day" to those people can sometimes — unintentionally — sound like: "just wait a little longer," when every single minute already burns them alive.

I think we need to make real space for reflection on the weight of each moment — not just on the finish line. Because lucidity isn't just recognizing that we'll die, it's also feeling what it means to live, concretely, right now — with everything heavy, absurd, suffocating, or fragile that comes with it. Being lucid means being able to admit that sometimes there is nothing to hope for, and yet you still have to keep breathing.

And actually, I think we should agree on what we both mean when we use that word: lucidity. To me, being lucid doesn't necessarily mean surviving. Sometimes, being lucid is also wanting to leave. Because you see clearly — maybe too clearly. Because you no longer deceive yourself. But being lucid can also mean staying — precisely because you know the end will come eventually, and until then, you can hold on a bit longer. Both realities coexist. You can be lucid and resigned. Lucid and empty. Lucid and still here, without really knowing why.

To me, being lucid means being aware that I'm going to stay in the shit until the end of my life. And once you know that — once you know that nothing will fundamentally change, that everything will just keep going as it is, slowly, mechanically — what's holding you back? What still justifies waiting? When you know you're just going to be here, dumbly, for a long time — waiting for what? There's not even "waiting" anymore, really, because waiting implies hope. And I don't believe in hope. Or rather, I think hope is a necessary lie for some. A kind of engine, yes — but an engine that runs on empty once you've realized nothing's going to move. That too is a kind of lucidity.

And maybe in what you call lucidity, there's something I'd call free will. You know you can keep going — or not. You know you could stop — or not. But that choice, that awareness, that weight of the decision — that's part of the problem. Because in reality, you're not freely choosing anything: you're just doing whatever you can to survive what you feel, what's moving through you. We think we're making decisions, but most of the time, we're just enduring.

So yeah, I think our reflections cross, clash, respond to each other. And truly, thank you for writing what you wrote. It speaks to me, it shakes me, and it makes me want to keep thinking.

Even without hope. :)
@enjoytheride I added the rest of the answer :)

 

[enjoytheride]

Coming back to your view, I want to thank you for your honesty and depth. I really appreciate this exchange. I'll watch your video as soon as I can, especially with French subtitles, because my English is very weak. It's truly a pleasure to be able to talk like this.

Thank you very much, thaelyana! It's indeed a pleasure. I also appreciate this exchange, in such a respectful tone.

You raise very good points that are thought-provoking and even not easy to approach.

But maybe I'd add something to your thoughts on the idea that "in the end, we're all going to die anyway." Yes, that's true. But what you're saying doesn't always bring comfort. Because what hurts is not so much death itself, but the duration. The weight of waiting. The crossing. And time isn't experienced equally: for some people, even one hour is unbearable. One hour alone can be enough to make everything collapse. So saying "death will come one day" to those people can sometimes — unintentionally — sound like: "just wait a little longer," when every single minute already burns them alive.

You are right. It's not correct to assume that all people contemplating ending their own life can actually, even physically, bear to wait for a natural end. That's an important point indeed.

And actually, I think we should agree on what we both mean when we use that word: lucidity. To me, being lucid doesn't necessarily mean surviving. Sometimes, being lucid is also wanting to leave. Because you see clearly — maybe too clearly. Because you no longer deceive yourself. But being lucid can also mean staying — precisely because you know the end will come eventually, and until then, you can hold on a bit longer. Both realities coexist. You can be lucid and resigned. Lucid and empty. Lucid and still here, without really knowing why.

This makes sense, I agree. So being lucid can mean understanding that chances are nothing good will come to be, so why stay... And being lucid at times can mean accepting that perhaps sticking around for a while could be a good "experiment" to see whether permutations in reality can open up new possibilities, and also being aware that our comprehension and knowledge are limited - so is the validity of our forecasts for our own future - whether good or bad.

I believe the world is fundamentally logical. What we perceive as illogical, incomprehensible, or chaotic is simply what our limited intelligence fails to decode. The universe functions according to stable laws, universal laws, even if we haven't yet discovered them all. Nothing happens without a cause or reason.

It is possible, yes. That would then lead to Spinoza's idea of absolute determinism that you shared - or perhaps not, because everything being ordered and consequential maybe doesn't imply absence of free will and some ability to have an effect on outcomes, and I think conscience has a role to play here (perhaps in the way observation affects a measurement in quantum physics, or perhaps in a completely different way). I am glad you find the video interesting - the chaos theory part in it will support your hypothesis, I think. :)

Thank you for explaining these quantum physics principles. It may well be that we are just currently unable to measure both position and momentum of the electron at the same time. But then we have irrational numbers. What kind of measurement can get hold of irrational numbers? Take Pi, for example. Isn't it amazing, mysteriously beautiful how Pi is both given and hidden, unfathomable? And yet, despite us not being able to know or be able to predict the whole series of digits after the decimal point, we can use approximations in everyday activities and they work well enough.

Now, about your reflection on hope. I understand that you may feel that not knowing everything leaves room for hope. That's a valid point, and it's a real human strength to hold onto the idea that tomorrow might be different, better. But I personally don't believe in hope — or at least, not in the way people usually mean it. Again, for me, hope rests only on facts whose rules we do not yet understand. But once we do understand those rules, then there will be no more room for hope. Could this conversation still happen in a thousand years, between two people? Maybe yes, maybe no — it depends on whether all the laws of the universe have been discovered by then.

Here we are falling in kind of a serpent biting it's own tail. It doesn't follow from discovering/understanding the rules and facts of the Universe (and deeper yet, of existence), that we will reach a point where there is no more room for hope. And what if such knowledge changes us, makes us whole different beings? Plato is credited with saying - "You change and everything changes". On the other hand, we are not even sure that such understanding is possible, and that would leave us in a state of eternal search and inquiry - which, again, doesn't have to be seen as something negative and contrary to hope.

In any case, I think you correctly point out that the way we understand hope currently, in a more mundane way, can really mean just blissful ignorance.

I hope this conversation can continue. I will go to bed now. Maybe I will be dreaming fractals. :)

Good night!