2 weeks Ago By Moneycontrol
Daniel Kahneman, the Israeli-American psychologist and Nobel laureate, passed away on March 27, 2024, at an assisted suicide facility in Switzerland, as revealed in an essay by columnist Jason Zweig for The Wall Street Journal. The psychologist and author of the well-known book 'Thinking Fast and Slow' had kept his decision private, sharing it only with close friends and family. On March 26, 2024, Daniel Kahneman sent a goodbye email to his family before traveling to Switzerland to end his life.
In the essay, Zweig writes, “I think Danny wanted, above all, to avoid a long decline, to go out on his terms, to own his own death.” According to The Wall Street Journal, Kahneman's friends and family clarified that the author neither supported nor encouraged assisted suicide for others. Phillip Tetlock, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania and a close friend of Kahneman, said, “Right to the end, he was a lot smarter than most of us.
But I am no mind reader. My best guess is he felt he was falling apart, cognitively and physically. And he really wanted to enjoy life and expected life to become decreasingly enjoyable.
I suspect he worked out a hedonic calculus of when the burdens of life would begin to outweigh the benefits—and he probably foresaw a very steep decline in his early 90s.” He also said, “I have never seen a better-planned death than the one Danny designed.” In his final email, quoted by The Wall Street Journal, Kahneman wrote, “I have believed since I was a teenager that the miseries and indignities of the last years of life are superfluous, and I am acting on that belief.
I am still active, enjoying many things in life (except the daily news) and will die a happy man. But my kidneys are on their last legs, the frequency of mental lapses is increasing, and I am ninety years old. It is time to go.
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