Jason Zweig of the WSJ has written a mind-blowing bittersweet article about his friend and one-time collaborator, the Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman. (Jason helped Danny write the mega bestseller, ‘Thinking, Fast & Slow’.) The focus of the article is Danny’s decision, at the age of 90, to take his own life in mid-March 2024. It is a deep and sometimes unsettling read. So, if you are not in a positive frame of mind, we would suggest that you give this long read a pass.
Before Danny flew to an assisted suicide facility in Switzerland, he flew to Paris with his partner Barbara Tversky and they spent a few very happy days. Jason writes: “They spent days walking around the city, going to museums and the ballet, and savoring soufflés and chocolate mousse…
As Barbara Tversky, who is an emerita professor of psychology at Stanford University, wrote in an online essay shortly after his death, their last days in Paris had been magical. They had “walked and walked and walked in idyllic weather…laughed and cried and dined with family and friends.” Kahneman “took his family to his childhood home in Neuilly-sur-Seine and his playground across the river in…the Bois de Boulogne,” she recalled. “He wrote in the mornings; afternoons and evenings were for us in Paris.”
One afternoon, according to her online essay, she asked what he would like to do. “I want to learn something,” he said.
Kahneman knew the psychological importance of happy endings. In repeated experiments, he had demonstrated what he called the peak-end rule: Whether we remember an experience as pleasurable or painful doesn’t depend on how long it felt good or bad, but rather on the peak and ending intensity of those emotions.”
Then on 22nd March ’24, Danny sent his close friends and family members an email. Jason Zweig quotes some excerpts from that remarkable email in his article: “This is a goodbye letter I am sending friends to tell them that I am on my way to Switzerland, where my life will end on March 27…
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…
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….
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. Please avoid talking about it 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.”
Jason then debates with the reader whether Danny should have taken his own life. In favour of Danny’s decision are giants of modern day decision making like Philip Tetlock : “Some of Kahneman’s friends think what he did was consistent with his own research. “Right to the end, he was a lot smarter than most of us,” says Philip Tetlock, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. “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 adds, “I have never seen a better-planned death than the one Danny designed.””
Danny’s partner, Barbara Tversky, supported him in his decision. Barbara’s ex-husband Amos Tversky – the legend with whom Danny collaborated on most of his celebrated papers – also took his own life when the melanoma he was suffering from reached an unbearable stage. Danny’s wife, Anne Treisman, died of a stroke in 2018. Jason Zweig writes: “Her illness was acutely painful to Kahneman; as he emailed me in July 2015, “I am very preoccupied by Anne’s health and am not functioning altogether well.” He invited me to his memorial for her at their apartment in February 2018, although I wasn’t able to attend. Years earlier, his mother had also died after cognitive decline.”
Those who believe Danny should not have taken his own life seem to outnumber those who supported the decision. Amongst those is celebrated poker player and decision making guru Annie Duke: “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?””
As always, the master of decision making had the last word. Jason Zweig tries to stay rational as he mourns his friend: ““It was a matter of some consternation to Danny’s friends and family that he seemed to be enjoying life so much at the end,” says a friend. “‘Why stop now?’ we begged him. And though I still wish he had given us more time, it is the case that in following this carefully thought-out plan, Danny was able to create a happy ending to a 90-year life, in keeping with his peak-end rule. He could not have achieved this if he had let nature take its course.”
Did turning 90 play a role in his decision? Kahneman and Tversky’s early research showed that when people are uncertain, they will estimate numbers by “anchoring,” or seizing on any figure that happens to be handy, regardless of how relevant it is to the decision.
Another of Kahneman’s principles was the importance of taking what he called the outside view: Instead of regarding each decision as a special case, you should instead consider it as a member of a class of similar situations. Gather data on comparable examples from that reference class, then consider why your particular case might have better or worse prospects.
One possible approach: Kahneman could have gathered data to determine whether people who live to the age of 95 or beyond tend to regret not dying at the age of 90—adjusting for the difficulty of getting reliable reports from patients with dementia and other debilitating conditions. Perhaps he did something along those lines”
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