Israeli-American psychologist and Nobel Prize winner in economics, Daniel Kahneman, who died over a year ago, used doctor-assisted suicide to end his life, a Wall Street Journal essay revealed on Friday.
Kahneman flew to Switzerland a year ago to end his life and only let close friends and family know about his decision when he was en route to Europe in an email. Some of his friends and family reportedly still struggle to come to terms with his decision.
He was 90 at the time of his death, and was in relatively good mental and physical health.
Some of Kahneman’s friends think what he did was consistent with his own research, according to the WSJ report. “Right to the end, he was a lot smarter than most of us,” Philip Tetlock, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, was quoted as saying.
“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.”
Tetlock added, “I have never seen a better-planned death than the one Danny designed.”
Kahneman’s email to loved ones
In Kahneman’s email, he 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,” he continued.
According to the WSJ essay by Jason Zweig, Kahneman was not on dialysis at the time. He had been working on several research papers that week.
“Not surprisingly, some of those who love me would have preferred for me to wait until it is obvious that my life is not worth extending. But I made my decision precisely because I wanted to avoid that state, so it had to appear premature. I am grateful to the few with whom I shared early, who all reluctantly came round to support me,” his email continued.
The email also explained why the cause of his death was not made known at the time. “I am not embarrassed by my choice, but I am also not interested in making it a public statement. The family will avoid details about the cause of death to the extent possible, because no one wants it to be the focus of the obits.” He requested that those who received the email not discuss his death for a few days.
“I discovered after making the decision that I am not afraid of not existing, and that I think of death as going to sleep and not waking up. The last period has truly not been hard, except for witnessing the pain I caused others. So if you were inclined to be sorry for me, don’t be,” the letter concluded, according to the WSJ.
Kahneman’s life
Kahneman lived in New York City’s Greenwich Village for several years, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported at the time of his death. His wife had died in 2018 of a stroke after suffering from vascular dementia for a number of years. His mother had also died of cognitive decline years earlier. His work largely focused on his dissection of how humans make decisions.
Kahneman’s work with his fellow Israeli research partner Amos Tversky (who died from cancer in 1996) focused on concepts such as cognitive biases and prospect theory. This effectively launched the field of behavioral economics — which in turn has influenced several other fields.
His 2011 book Thinking, Fast and Slow, which summarized much of his research, sold over a million copies around the world. He was sought out as a guru on everything from hiring decisions to insurance risk to the justice system.
Kahneman was born in Tel Aviv to Lithuanian Jewish parents, who made aliyah just after France was liberated.
In 2002, he won the Nobel Prize in economics for his groundbreaking research in integrating insights from psychological research into economics.
Former US President Barack Obama awarded Kahneman the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013. A White House statement at the time referred to Kahneman as a “pioneering scholar of psychology,” who “applied cognitive psychology to economic analysis, laying the foundation for a new field of research.”
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