I used to have arguments with one of my old roommates about space exploration. He would argue that if we found a planet several thousand light years away that could support human life, we'd never get there because nobody would volunteer to go. I could never get through to him that there are people who will take any risk to get to do something like that, even if it meant only being memorialized in the memories of their distant descendants or being frozen for a few thousand years and never again seeing everything they'd ever known.
However, human history supports the idea that there will always be those few who are willing to do things for reasons which evade the rest of the human race. That's just the way we're wired.
My opinion is that this "wiring" is crucial in what makes us human. It makes us grow and discover our full potential. So you will still have people wanting to dive in apnea for 5+ mn or crazy programmers experimenting stuff with twitter. And that happens even if those people are extremely logical/intelligent people.
I'd go to friggin Mars, just to step on its red soil. I'd go there on a one way trip to stay there and die and I'd sign up tomorrow. If I only could.
But sadly modern world is too worried about my well-being to let me do something like that.
Not really. Many of the people actually working towards going to Mars probably feel as you do. The problem is it's actually hard (technologically and politically).
Mallory is famously quoted as having replied to the question "Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?" with the retort: "Because it's there", which has been called "the most famous three words in mountaineering".
There's a reason we don't see more pictures of our dead heros.
"Mountains are the means, the man is the end. The goal is not to reach the tops of mountains, but to improve the man." - Walter Bonatti
"When I rest I feel utterly lifeless except that my throat burns when I draw breath...I can scarcely go on. No despair, no happiness, no anxiety. I have not lost the mastery of my feelings, there are actually no more feelings. I consist only of will." - Messner on the first solo ascent of Everest
I have never been to Everest (would like to one day), but I climb 14ers in CO all the time. Climbing at high altitude is simply the hardest thing I've ever done from a mental, physical, and emotional standpoint. Once I started climbing everything else in life just seemed easier.
One of my hobbies used to be brutal enduro-hiking, and my little trip up Rainier years ago still stands out in my memory as the hardest thing I've ever done.
If HN readers really need that entrepreneur spin on this, then I'd suggest that there are a lot of parallels between summiting (and knowing when not to summit) and entrepreneurship.
Everest specifically is probably more because it's a trophy; there are a lot of mountains out there that would afford a pretty similar challenge.
Everest is a trophy, for sure, and it is hardly a purely difficult climb (that's not to underscore the objective dangers, however). Stevie Haston, a famous and accomplished British alpinist, has compared Everest to doing push-ups with a plastic bag over your head.
Also -- risk of accidental death aside -- climbing and mountaineering are probably the two singularly best ways to maintain great physical conditioning.
Anyway, that's enough HN for me for a while.
I remember the John Krakauer Book _Into Thin Air_, about an Everest disaster, made me want to climb it -- I haven't.
It's the whole "yeah people die, but it won't be me" attitude.
I remember coming out of Saving Private Ryan thinking "that looks like fun", despite what I know intellectually.
Going through live fire infiltration training cured me of any such sentiment.