If you just asked them, in all their ignorance, you're undoubtedly right. If you asked the children who chose the adventurous dad after he had died pursuing his passion, nearly 100% would trade the world to reverse that choice.
I think many kids, especially those with an adventurous mom/dad, would think "my mom/dad is strong and knows what he is doing, so (s)he won't be in that 5%"
> I think many kids, especially those with an adventurous mom/dad, would think "my mom/dad is strong and knows what he is doing, so (s)he won't be in that 5%"
Not this guy's:
> "My children don't like it much but they don't tell me not to do it," he says.
Put another way, would you say a father that chooses to drive a 2 hour commute (each way) per day is being reckless? No doubt you can find countless children who lost a parent in an auto accident who would tell you they would have wanted their father to have a shorter commute and still be with them. But since driving is a familiar activity, no one questions the risk that someone is incurring with that kind of decision. And yet that 2-hours to work and 2-hours back drive is, based on the stats that I've been able to find, around 1 micromort. Over the course of a year, that adds up to around 200 micromorts, or roughly 1/5000 chance of dying. I can't find the data on cave diving, which is no doubt higher than recreational diving, but SCUBA has a value of 5 micromorts per dive, so it's roughly equivalent to driving 1250 miles on a highway. Someone doing 40 dives per year is taking on roughly the same risk as that 50,000 mi/year driver.
Humans are really bad about estimating risk. We do it by equating risk to the ease in which we can imagine something happening. It's why so many people are afraid of statistically safe activities like air travel while underestimating much more serious dangers. We need a framework, like micromorts, for thinking about risk logically to better determine what amount of risk to take on and then "spend" that risk budget in whatever way helps us get the most out of life. Parents can say, "I'd like a 90% chance of being alive when my kids turn 10, a 75% chance of being alive when they turn 18 and a 50% chance of being alive when they turn 30." Once you've decided on a risk threshold, you can work backwards to determine how many micromorts you're allowed to take on each year.
Otherwise, you're just living your life based on irrational fears.
Today I learned this.
It doesn't mean that being risk averse is the right way to live. It's a fair point and a good thing to consider when you are a parent. That's all.
While I get the emotional impact of this, it really shouldn't be an argument either way once you begin using some framework to judge decisions.
Think of it this way, if I nearly died in a car wreck on the way to work, would it be fine for me to never get in a car again? I almost died doing that once!
It would make more sense to determine the risk. That he already nearly died doesn't really change the risk profile. Cave diving is extremely risky. That should be the important factor. Having nearly died should not.
This question appears rhetorical (with an intended answer of "no"), but I absolutely think such a risk should be considered, whether or not you're a parent. The higher-order bits here are probably the time you're wasting with 100% probability, perhaps the increased life satisfaction of a great job, etc, but the p% additional chance you die in a car crash, as you said, is non-trivial, and even though I know very people incorporate such thinking into their decision making, I think they should.
The same thing (but reverse) with asking children whose fathers didn't go on an adventure and see if they would've preferred a more adventurous father!
> The same thing (but reverse) with asking children whose fathers didn't go on an adventure and see if they would've preferred a more adventurous father!
Yes, each child only knows one half of the story, as it were. But the knowledge imbalance is not symmetrical. The child whose father has died understands boredom and dissatisfaction in other ways... perhaps his mother is boring, or sometimes nags him, and even his adventurous (now dead) father surely disappointed him sometimes, and so on.
The child who has not experienced death really has no idea what that suffering is like. It's just utterly callow to think his opinion has equal weight.