678. Who Gets to Choose a “Good Death”?

**Stephen Dubner** (0:00)
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**Stephen Dubner** (1:35)
Daniel Kahneman was a celebrated and influential scholar, trained in psychology but with a seemingly limitless way of thinking about the world. In 2002, he won a Nobel Prize in Economics. In 2011, he published a popular book called Thinking Fast and Slow. His primary topic was human decision making, especially how we make decisions under uncertainty. His work has influenced people in government and policymaking, and medicine and finance, and the military, the criminal justice system, and more. And why were Kahneman's insights so valuable?
Maybe because uncertainty is a feature, not a bug of human existence. Whatever you do in your professional or personal life, you have to deal with uncertainty. As for certainties, well, there just aren't that many of them. Perhaps the most reliable certainty in life is death.
A couple years ago, as Kahneman approached his 90th birthday, that certainty must have felt particularly salient. He was still in relatively good health, and his mind was sharp. But he decided that his time had come. He traveled to France, where he had grown up, barely surviving the Nazis. He gathered with his family in Paris to celebrate his 90th birthday. Meals, museum visits, nice walks.
From there, Kahneman traveled on to Switzerland, where the laws on assisted suicide are more permissive than most other places, and he ended his life. In an email to friends, 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.

**Al Roth** (3:29)
Danny Kahneman made a very considered decision.

**Stephen Dubner** (3:31)
That is Al Roth. He is an economist at Stanford. He too has a Nobel Prize.

**Al Roth** (3:37)
He was not rushed. He wasn't being pressed by his family and friends. On the contrary, but he had himself witnessed some difficult deaths in his life, and he didn't want to experience one.
What he said to people over the course of his life was that he'd had that conviction for a long time, that he didn't want a long, lingering death.

**Stephen Dubner** (3:57)
There are people that you and I both know who were very close to Danny, who were pissed off at him. At least that's what one person in particular that I'm thinking of expressed to me. The way this person put it was, I know Danny was 90, but his physical health was decent, his mental health was very, very good, and he left the rest of us bereft because we lost a year or maybe two or three of Danny.
So this person found Danny's decision, I would call it repugnant maybe because it really didn't include the feelings of people who loved him. What's your view on that?

**Al Roth** (4:32)
I think these decisions are very personal. I've talked to Danny several times a year. I wasn't very close. If I had been closer to him and involved in the discussion, I probably would have argued against doing it. He seemed okay to me too, and he had a partner, he had a lot to live for.
But I wouldn't want to legislate my opinions about what he should do.