Logically speaking, yes. Obviously given that it's not internally contradictory.

Whether or not suicide can be rational is a function of how you determine value and whether suicide can be evaluated as positive based on those criteria. Happiness and suffering (much different from pleasure and pain, incidentally) describe one such set of criteria, but certainly not the only one.

Okay.

You can, but the one doesn't follow from the other. First and foremost, I think you'd have to explain what you mean by "I" in this case.

I think the "master which operates my body" is clearly my brain. I don't know that the part of me that is aware is independent of my brain. But if it is, then I believe happiness and suffering are also independent of my brain.

Well, I think the problem is that if it's an illusion, it's a very convincing one. And if it isn't an illusion, there is no evidence to indicate that it isn't (and considerable evidence to indicate that it is). Either I have to go against something that is almost impossibly intuitive, or I have to go against evidence evaluation. I think the "safest" choice is the latter. Even if it's 99 times more likely that awareness is an illusion, I think the cost in the 1% of cases where it isn't is higher than the benefit in the 99% of cases where it is. In fact, even if awareness is an illusion, it may be most beneficial for me to believe it isn't (and if awareness is an illusion, then it's hard to justify a preference for self-righteous ideals of "truth").

I've thought about that too, and there are some crazy places you can go if you consider awareness to be independent of the "self." Of course, we have a natural tendency to assume a linear experience of awareness across time, and it's hard to do away with that assumption. What happens "after" you die may not even make sense. (Why should awareness be fundamentally dependent on time?)

I'll say it has a fascination, the way that watching a living person's intestines being eaten by a pack of wild dogs has a fascination.

i said:
madnak said:
yes. this is the stumbling block for me. i don't know what "I" is. I think it's just my physical body and brain. why should i matter to myself? i mean, i know i will be compelled to act in a certain way - but is anything really at stake?

madnak said:
this is interesting. so, basically, believing that consciousness is not an illusion is a freeroll.

though, for you, it follows from "consciousness is real" that suffering is potentially more important than life itself.

No idea. But if nothing is at stake, then it does no harm to assume something's at stake.

Perfect!

More that my awareness suggests to me that suffering is the basis of importance, and if my awareness is "real" then I consider that fairly trustworthy.

how does "realness"=trustworthiness? if you meet a guy on the street, and you are convinced that he is real, does that make him trustworthy?

my freeroll argument earlier was very similar to yours except that i was using it to justify acting as if survival/success has value, since that is what seems intuitively "right" to me. i gave up on the argument when i couldn't even hypothesize a real reason why it would ever be right.

My awareness seems more trustworthy than a guy on the street.

In terms of survival and success, obviously life is freeroll, that's true.

Sorry to bump this, but I think I answered my OP by discovering the work of Arthur Schopenhauer.

how about, it's a freeroll cash game. it's a freeroll in the sense that you are risking "nothing". you can only lose materials, time, health, or the well being of others imo, which are all nothing.
but not everyone buys in for the same amount (family, genetics), and the reward is more "playmoney" that also means nothing.
you have plenty of times to wager your chips with imperfect information, hoping that you put in your money in well, and also that you run well enough to have the result you want.
you could also sit out and not be a part of the game.

and at any point you could bust but you know that if you do, it didnt really matter anyway. so it's a freeroll cash game. at birth you are given a certain amount of money, and its all on the table for your entire life.
rich people have lots of this money, and so do happily married families. sick poor people and prisoners dont have so much. hermits in the mountains dont play much although they may have a roll.