Professor Kahneman signaled concern that if he did not end his life when he was clearly mentally competent, he could lose control over the remainder of it and live and die with needless “miseries and indignities.”
I can sympathize with that position. What I personally fear most about aging and dying isn't the dying, but rather the possibility of developing something like dementia or alzheimer's and experiencing the last portion of my life as a mental wreck, incapable of understanding what's going on, or taking any kind of coherent action. I would hope that if that ever happens, I'd find the courage in a final moment of lucidity to drive my car into a lake, or something along those lines.
If I knew that kind of end was in the cards, and I had the option to choose a nice, quiet, painless death by physician assisted suicide, I think I would very (very) seriously consider choosing the latter.
Professor Kahneman signaled concern that if he did not end his life when he was clearly mentally competent, he could lose control over the remainder of it and live and die with needless “miseries and indignities.”
I can sympathize with that position. What I personally fear most about aging and dying isn't the dying, but rather the possibility of developing something like dementia or alzheimer's and experiencing the last portion of my life as a mental wreck, incapable of understanding what's going on, or taking any kind of coherent action. I would hope that if that ever happens, I'd find the courage in a final moment of lucidity to drive my car into a lake, or something along those lines.
If I knew that kind of end was in the cards, and I had the option to choose a nice, quiet, painless death by physician assisted suicide, I think I would very (very) seriously consider choosing the latter.