A Woman Who Spent Five Hundred Days in a Cave | Hacker News Reader

A Woman Who Spent Five Hundred Days in a Cave

newyorker.com

35 pointsfortran7717 comments

This story made the rounds in Spain when it first happened and was most likely false and staged.

Do you have more info? I googled quickly with the "fake" and "staged" keywords and found nothing

This was the conclusion I reached after reading how it all developed back in the day. There was no independent monitoring/verification during the time this woman was supposedly in the cave, and it was confirmed afterwards by her own team that she went outside for for eight days "so technicians could repair a router". She also had a computer "without a clock", and was in great shape, did not even need sunglasses after all those days in a cave.

Here is a source in Spanish with some photos of her just after getting out of the cave: https://www.elmundo.es/deportes/mas-deporte/2023/04/15/64398...

Thank you!

Her quest for "self-sufficiency" certainly brought her into contact with some specialised and high-tech teams, eager to help!

As someone who's been in vaguely comparable situations a # of times, but much shorter & less extreme, I've learned this distinction:

Autonomy = bring supplies, and go without outside help for X (but limited) amount of time.

Self-sufficiency = provide for one's own needs, without outside help. Potentially indefinite.

Note that one can be self-sufficient for some (like water), while not for other things (like food or fuel).

Yes, this distinction is somewhat fuzzy. But it's pretty clear where this woman's adventure fits in.

That said: impressive feat!

Sounds like a lot of people were involved, there are video recordings, and she has a track record of off-the-grid living. What makes you think it's staged?

This is a pretty common practice with Tibetan Buddhists. There’s a traditional 3 year retreat that, depending on the practitioner, involves varying levels of contact with other humans. Often times it’s no contact, with an attendant dropping off supplies outside the cave every so often. Tenzin Palmo spent 3 years in full retreat in her cave [1], for instance, out of a total of 12 years in it.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenzin_Palmo

Also, relevant in this context is the artist Tehching Hsieh, who voluntarily lived in a cage for one year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehching_Hsieh

https://web.archive.org/web/20240121111311/https://www.newyo...

Reminds me of this performance artists work:

Thus, for a period of six hours, visitors were invited to use any of the objects on the table on the artist, who subjected herself to their treatment. The artist has stated, ‘the experience I drew from this work was that in your own performances you can go very far, but if you leave decisions to the public, you can be killed’ (quoted in Ward 2009, p.132).

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/abramovic-rhythm-0-t148...

Reminded me of Stefania Follini[0], who used to hold women’s world record for longest isolation

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefania_Follini

Some innocent men spend 50 years in prison cell, much smaller than a cave!

As a spanish I would not believe anything coming from spanish media.

Flagged, of course. Hacker News is weird. A nice hack profiled in a very respected magazine. But if the submitter is the wrong type of person….

You're the right type of person! I assume people were flagging the article because of the claims that the story was fake somehow.

I just happened to see this randomly now - had no idea it was posted at the time.

At least it was by choice.

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