[David Gould]

Justaman,

Happy New Year.

One of my objections to your formulation is that if there is no logical difference between staying alive and suiciding then the only reason to choose one over the other has to be emotional. There is no other means open to us. (This includes your energy formulation. There is no logical reason to choose not to expend energy. After all, in the context of our lives we can always get more.)

So we have to make an emotional choice: live, or not live. Most people exist in the emotional state of enjoying life sufficiently to choose to live.