Dr. Kahneman’s suicide

 About a year ago, Daniel Kahneman, who won a Nobel for his work on how people make decisions, died at 90. We now learn that he went to Switzerland to end his own life with medical help.

So now it’s news: The expert on decision making decided to end his own life.

In notes to friends, Dr. Kahneman said he was declining cognitively and physically, but the decline was not catastrophic. He was enjoying life but wanted to go while it was still possible to experience joy. He did not want to descend into a spiral of pain, confusion and frailty. He decided that he’d had enough.

I don’t know anyone who could be trusted to make a more thoughtful decision.

But the news prompted handwringing. Some people who were not consulted think they should have been. The discussion about Dr. Kahneman’s decision strikes me as tribalism at its worst. Here are the most objectional parts:

• The presumption that I can make a better decision involving your future than you can. The Greeks called this kind of arrogance is hubris.

• The lack of respect for the decision maker, which shows a lack of respect for the specific person and of other persons in general.

This is a universal story — we all age and die — so something more than handwringing is required.

The handwringers are assuming that he made some kind of mistake. What’s required to demonstrate that a mistake was made? The critic would have to provide an account of the principles under which it would be appropriate for a person to end his or her own life.

I haven’t seen a shortage of such accounts. I’ve seen an absence of such accounts.

The only part of this story that angers me is that Dr. Kahneman had to go to Switzerland to do as he chose. He had to leave the country because we Americans skip the hard work for thinking and make laws based on the levels of collective handwringing.