QotD: Fischer Black's final days
Обещал выписать кусок биографии Фишера Блэка о том, как он приводил дела в порядок в конце процесса. Исполняю. Вот как помирать надобно.
[When] in March 1995 his cancer returned, and this time there was really no reasonable hope for recovery, … Fischer refused further treatment. On May 1, 1995, he sent his paper "Interest Rates as Options" to the Journal of Finance. "I would like to publish this, though I may not be around to make any changes that referee may suggest." And then, on May 3, he sent "Equilibrium Exchanges" to the Financial Analysis Journal. "Barring a miracle, this is my last submission. My association with the Journal has been long and satisfying. Keep up the good work." Having thus cleared the decks, the next few weeks he devoted to producing a plausible draft of "Neutral Technological Change," which he now knew would be his last paper.
After that, the last months of his life were spent putting his personal affairs in order. He arranged for his own hospice care, selected his own casket, and phoned up old friends. Meanwhile, two of his oldest friends kept him company on his bedside table: Van Quine's Quiddities: An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary, and Noam Chomsky's Knowledge Of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use. He was thinking back to 1962-63, when, free from both [his wife] and Harvard, he had begun to put in place the strategies of research and communication that had made possible his life's work. As the end approached, he stopped taking food and refused intravenous feeding in an effort to hasten the inevitable. He died on August 30, 1995.
Мы с вами конечно порицаем чтение Хомского и даже можем с некоторой натяжкой заметить, что титанический мозг Блэка так до конца жизни и не преодолел дурного лево-универсалистсткого влияния и не вышел за пределы равновесных эвристик в экономике. Но я не об этом, а чиста канкретна о достойном, в высокой степени стоическом способе ухода.