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Comment by Chris2048 | Hacker News Reader

Chris2048

> rather than never take any big risks

With kids at home? specifically?!

There are ways to enjoy life, or take "risks", that do not involve mortal danger.

> Do we need to look down upon astronauts who have children? What about pilots? .. Someone who commutes .. in a car that has a poor safety rating?

Are those as dangerous? If so, then yes, I think so.

> People who travel for work for days or weeks at a time?

People agonise about this all the time. But seeing the kids not very often is very different from dying and never seeing them again.

> The good news is that once you become a father, you'll get to decide (possibly with a partner) what the acceptable level of risk is for you and your family.

Oh, great. Does that mean we should also stop judging people about abuse and neglect too? I mean, fuck other peoples kids, right?

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> There are ways to enjoy life, or take "risks", that do not involve mortal danger.

Depends on how you look at it.

We are fragile creatures and the world is a fairly dangerous place. People die every day driving cars, riding bikes, going for walks—doing things far more mundane than cave-diving.

I meant taking a risk on a new vacation, or relationship.. But when it comes to mortality, it depends.

If taking a walk is as dangerous as cave diving - then yes, I'd consider moving.

If you want to reduce the risks in riding a motorcycle, you can drive slower, in dry conditions during the day. I'm not sure exploring uncharted underwater caves is the slow lane..

Yeah, except it's kinda hard to find jobs/stores/daily-places-that-you-need-to-go that don't require transportation on the road, but it's kind of easy to find jobs/stores that don't require going into underwater caves or jumping off cliffs/airplanes or the like. If only one out of thousands of people ever needed to drive on the road, we'd probably criticize them too. The entire argument is so ridiculous that I can't even believe I have to lay it out like this.

Order groceries delivered to your home, and work remotely?

Are you serious?

Just pointing out that it's feasible if you want to minimize transport related risk. Minimizing risk leads to a restricted life.

what are the actual measured chances of dying at these various activities?

Taken to the extreme, your suggestion would be to never drive a car (or indeed go anywhere near a public road), as that is one of the most dangerous things we do every day. Travelling for a holiday would be a definite no-no, as it's likely more dangerous than staying at home. And so on and so forth.

> Taken to the extreme

True, so let's not take to the extreme. Risk-adversion is a quantitative, not qualitative, practise.

I'm not saying minimising risk is the only goal in life, but avoiding very high risks is - do you think cave diving is no riskier than driving a car on the motorway?

In that case, we have to define "very high risks" - is it literally just anything more dangerous than driving? if so, why do we stop at driving, why couldn't we be safer? - and then compare "number of cave divers" vs "number of deaths", and then figure out the subcategories of cave divers who're most likely to die and figure out whether this theoretical person falls into them, and so on and so forth.

Taking a specific incident and combining it with "that sounds dangerous" is not likely to come up with anything meaningful.

Well, that was an example, not a proposal to an official risk limit.

But maybe - you'd need a proper analysis of the relative risk. Isn't that done with cars/driving? All sorts of vehicle legislation may be driven (npi) by driving incident data / risk analysis.

> Taking a specific incident and combining it with "that sounds dangerous"

I'm not. I think it sounds dangerous before this specific incident. But you are right - a meaningful, proper analysis would be appropriate. I'm not saying my suggestion is enough, I am saying, maybe something formal would be appropriate.

> a meaningful, proper analysis would be appropriate

Maybe you should just base it on what a given repetitive activity does to your life insurance premiums.

http://www.insuranceclarity.com/life/life-insurance-extreme-...

OP is between "extra premium" and "cannot get coverage"

This is a pet peeve as a climber. The article lists "free climbing" as something that an insurer might refuse to cover. This is most likely incorrect, as the immediately preceding section suggests it would cost you an extra $1500 a year if you engage in rock climbing.

The bit that's incorrect here is that "free climbing" encompasses many forms of rock climbing. "Free" in the context of "free climbing" means that vertical progress is made solely by climbing the rock itself.

This is as compared to "aid climbing", wherein vertical progress may be made by affixing some form of gear to the rock, and climbing said gear, or something attached to it.

The article most likely means that if you free solo, you're uninsurable. Solo in this case meaning, without a partner to catch your falls.

E.T.A. Note also the existence of "aid soloing", and "rope soloing", both of which are done without a partner, but with varying degrees of gear in place to catch you should you fall.

Also note that absent the qualification of "soloing", rock climbing is generally understood among climbers to mean the kind that is done with a partner and a rope. Among climbers, bouldering is understood to include climbing routes of low height ("problems") without the protection of a rope, but generally with the protection of a crash pad (big foam thing to land on).

Not driving a car is good advice for other reasons.

Anything taken to the extreme is stupid. What's the point exactly ?

The point is mostly to show that we consider a lot of things "safe" that are actually really dangerous. We then do those things with absolutely no regard to the people around us. But as soon as someone does something different that's dangerous to pretty much any degree, people start to care. It makes no sense.

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