Daniel Kahneman Opted for Assisted Suicide in Switzerland

I probably won’t ever meet my grandchildren if there are any, because I am over fifty and single; I probably will never be a parent. So I will have to go a lot sooner if I am not to be a burden on society. But if you think you are going to be a grandparent, you can work on being an irreplaceable and useful one.

“It shouldn't be that way” is not an excuse to torture people through your moralizing indifference to the fact that it is that way.

That's a personal choice. Anyone not interested in that won't have to do anything and can just wait for the end.

You are shiftinf the topic. This is about self-euthanization, assisted suicide. Not others.

> Where do we draw the line?

As written elsewhere, having to draw a line does not mean that the only reasonable conclusion is to make it illegal in general. It's a hard topic without easy answers. "Don't allow it" is an easy answer that doesn't do justice to the topics complexity.

A good friend of mine passed away a year ago with an incurable disease, diagnosed 3 months before his death, and it was essentially guaranteed that he'd have to endure unbelievable suffering during the last weeks of those months. He didn't have the choice to end it early. It was heartbreaking.

I for my part hope that I can choose myself when the time has come.

I tell you this now in good faith, any human being can choose when to end it. That is without question. I can go get in my car and drive into the nearest body of water, if desired, and no law could stop me. Even under supervision 24/7, it is still possible to do it. We are a determined species.

The only thing in debate is if they can be ethically assisted in the task, with compassion. You say no, someone might pressure Nana into dying to pass her inheritance. Well, the same people might very well put a pillow over her face when no one is looking. A bad actor is a bad actor and murder is illegal but people do it anyways and moral hand-wringing doesn't exactly stop it from happening.

From where I stand you're just unknowingly advocating for extra pain and suffering. Perhaps you'd change your mind if you were in the shoes of someone losing their marbles or worse, someone who has to care for them.

Save your loved ones some grief, create a living will with a trusted lawyer, update it about once a year. It's worth it. There are so many insane snafus one can get into with estranged family members, the state/gov't, medical institutions, etc that make the situation even more difficult and stressful to deal with. Don't expect anyone coming out of the woodwork to act according to honor. They are vultures and know no such kindness.

I get it’s easy with other diseases such as cancer, though.

You can't express in advance that you want to have assisted suicide.

Your former self might express wishes, but what if your later self doesn't feel like this anymore? In a way, we can all get the same feeling when doing another round of "lose weight this year" new year's resolutions just to realize a couple weeks later that the former self wasn't that trustworthy to begin with (or was it the other way around, the future self can't be trusted?)

Point is: you can wish for whatever you want, but dementia is probably a tough case and it shifts your priorities, making everything before obsolete and I'm not sure that people beginning to suffer from dementia ever find the right point in time to end life early.

I wish to remain so lucid when the time comes, that I can go sit under a tree and let myself go like that old dog. Perhaps I should leave a note.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalaikoothal

It seems like DIY methods could be risky to your family if you're already impacted by the disease, and your own competency is called into question.

No cure for getting old and no cure for dementia on the useful horizon. Having made it to 90 intact, he had knocked living out of the park already. I completely understand his thinking here and support it. He likely could have gone a little longer, but he also might have had a stroke or some other nonfatal cataclysmic event that took away his options.

You should read the piece by Jason Zweig, if you haven't. The decision was deeply personal and was most certainly not an endorsement of euthanasia.

  ... Kahneman's final email said: "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."

  Kahneman's friend Annie Duke, a decision theorist and former professional poker player, published a book in 2022 titled "Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away." In it, she wrote, "Quitting on time will usually feel like quitting too early."

  She is frustrated by his decision. "There's a big difference between it feeling early and it actually being too early," she says. "You're not terminal, you're fine. Why aren't you taking the outside view? Why aren't you listening to people who will give you good objective advice? Why are you doing this?"

  Paul Slovic, a psychologist at the University of Oregon who befriended Kahneman more than 50 years ago, says, "Danny was the type of person who would think long and hard about things, so I figured he must have thought about it very slowly and deliberatively. Of course, those of us who spend our lives studying decisions, we think a lot about the reasons for those decisions. But often the reasons aren't reasons. They're feelings."

Like a more subtle form of Shakespeare's "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?".

By targeting their support networks, the "baddies" effectively end up making the new generations risk for impoverishment greater (can't let the kids at grandma's, have to pay for daycare, lose access to nutritious inexpensive meals, etc).

Sure, it is nice to be remembered well, if you deserve it, but I do not live for the opinions of others. This is slave mentality and pathetic. I care about being good, and if I am hated for that, then so be it. Sad, but better to be hated for being a good person than loved for being a mediocrity or a knave.

And to off yourself out of concern with how people remember you is a condemnation of our society, our lack of charity, our lack of magnanimity, and our selfish prioritization of convenience. Full throttle consumerism.