Now now, this is my friend. If they screamed really loud for help, I’d turn around and help them kill themself.
For people who are not my friend, I carefully put the knife just out of reach. Bwahahahaha!
No. Who knows when help may come?
Again, who knows when help may come? If time is of the essence - say the helicopter is going to blow up imminently - then I rescue one.
It’s your choice, to determine which scenario exists. Personally, I believe that paralysis is a much worse fate than death, and I’d do anything to prevent a friend from having to live without motion in his/her limbs – up to and including killing him, if he/she wished me to do so.
Naturally, this is an entirely hypothetical exercise. And to make it even more wicked, let’s assume that your “friend” in each scenario is unable to communicate what they want you to do, since they’re delirious & screaming in pain and all that. All you have to go on is what you think your friend would want you to do. How 'bout that? 
Then I don’t kill him. If he wants to die, he can always kill himself or have me kill him later - he can even have me roll his wheelchair back to the woods and slit his throat there then, after discussing it rationally.
That’s in the paralysis scenario, that is. In the “death” scenario, the options are “kill him quick” or “let him die slowly”, correct? In which case he’s not going to scream wildly forever - eventually he’s going to get tired out. Then I can lay out the options to him, and have him communicate his desires to me then.
In essence, yes. However, the dilemma presumes that your friend is either unconscious, delirious, or in so much pain that he/she cannot communicate their desire to you, and you have to act without knowing what they want you to do, if anything. If you weren’t certain of what they wanted, would you still draw the blade?
(Probably a bit too hypothetical, now that I think about it…in such an extreme crisis, the “friends” would probably be able to communicate somehow, if only at the most basic and rudimentary level…never been in a situation like this, so how would I know?)
So if he’s got two broken arms, how does he hold the knife?
Or is that your point?
Posted by pravnik in the other thread:
This quote still makes me giggle.
That is indeed the point. Handing someone with broken or pinned arms a knife so he can kill himself is more of a way to screw with him than to give him a choice.
I’d get my Jigsaw puppet ready. He may die horribly, but I’d want him to learn a valuable lesson about the preciousness of life, first.
Okay, maybe it’s the fact that I was just working on a really big glue project, but this one made me giggle even more than pravnik’s quote.
Then as I said in the bit you didn’t quote, I don’t kill him.
You might have better luck if you smashed my child under a tree (if I had a child, anyway) - then at least I’m the kid’s guardian. I have no semblance of a right to make the decision of life or death for my friend.
If you kill a man who asks for it, you’re doing it for his own good. If you kill a man who doesn’t ask for it, you’re killing him for your benefit - you will feel better to know he’s not suffering. It’s got nothing to do with what he wants at that point - it’s completely selfish.
Hmm? I don’t get it…how is it selfish to save someone you love from unnecessary pain?
How do you know it’s unnecessary? You have no way of knowing whether or not he could survive.
Is it a given here that regardless of the choice we make, there are no later legal repercussions? Because I certainly don’t think saving a friend a few hours of pain is worth giving up years of my life for.
Yes.
Because you are making this decision without taking into consideration whether they think it’s a necessary pain. It’s entirely possible that they fear death enough, and are hopeful enough for rescue and eventual recovery regardless of their suffering now, that they’d much rather suffer than die. This could be the case - you don’t know otherwise, in this hypothetical you set forth.
So, given that, why exactly are you killing him again? It’s not because he’d rather die. It’s because you feel bad about his suffering. It’s because you -perhaps incorrectly!- think that he’d be better off dead, and you would feel better knowing that he’s not suffering anymore.
In short, the decision can’t be about his own good, because you don’t know what he’d consider good. The only person that you actually know you’re helping is you, and you alone. Thus: selfish. (The situation is, as noted, entirely different if they’re coherent and begging for death - at least if you’re reasonably certain that they’re in their right mind at the time.)
No I wouldn’t,you never know whats going to happen next.
How would you feel if you killed your friend and then twenty minutes later you became aware of an armed forces casevac excercise in the remote area you’re in with helicopters,para medics and heavy lifting equipment?