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Comment by weezy | Hacker News Reader

Eesh, the person who went up to give her supplies died on the way down too.

Also her husband died a few year ago.

These people want to do things that they know are extremely dangerous, and some times die. I don't empathize. Compare to those people who die by no fault of their own. Drunk driver, war, etc. Am I callous to believe that the two are not equally deserving of our empathy?

I think making a point broadcasting that one doesn’t care if other people who weren’t harming anyone die is callous, yes. Doubly so when one does it on a news story about people dying.

Hmm. I don't know. I am glad they're not harming anyone else, but also -- like, I have kids. And if they were to get into this sort of thing, I'd at the least be like "Well, that's STUPID. Why put yourselves in harm's way deliberately like this. Stressing me and mom out. Do something that helps someone else instead."

That’s fair, but there’s a way to say that without bringing “deserving” into it. As you did.

For my part, there’s a big part of me that still is moved by Tennyson: “As tho’ to breathe were life!”

My uncle promised his kid $10k if he did not buy a motorcycle he was planning to buy

Gos bless your uncle. Smart man. Did it work?

It did. The kid went on to spend the $10k on a new motorcycle.

The thing is, they can and do harm others. Not just family and friends when they perish, but rescue workers who risk their own lives to save people who get into trouble. The article talks of 2 people who delivered her supplies, one died, the other has gone to Germany for frostbite treatment - as fellow climbers maybe they don't count in quite the same way, but rescue workers do die or get injured as well.

Rescue workers do their job willingly. No one really forces them to (usual exceptions for North Korea et al. apply here). I know an old emergency doctor who once survived a helicopter crash. He still walks with a limp and still flies missions with a helo, even though he is pushing sixty.

It is a specific sort of mentality on their part and frankly my experience with them is that they neither need nor appreciate any white-knighting for their safety. If they wanted a safe job, they could easily switch to pushing papers around, there is no shortage of such jobs in the modern world.

According to the article, the person who died bringing her supplies was a member of her original expedition group, not an unrelated rescue worker.

TBH daily, about 150 000 humans die, and I don't have the capacity to mourn them all.

That said, as you say, broadcasting that one does not care without even being asked is already an attitude and I wouldn't like to be in any sort of relationship with a person which spontaneously emits such messages.

Drunk driver, war, etc. Am I callous to believe that the two are not equally deserving of our empathy?

I've always thought that a good comparison was drug addiction. Ultimately, what's the difference between someone who engages in high-risk extreme sports and someone who just sits at home doing meth in the basement?

They are both doing dangerous, unnecessary things to manipulate their brain chemistry, without creating or learning anything useful or affecting anything in the larger world around them. Why is one considered heroic and adventurous, and the other criminal or at best pathetic?

I'm not saying that pleasure-seeking for its own sake is inherently bad or wrong, but how would you compare and contrast the behavior of a drug addict and a high-risk climber, if you were explaining it to an alien anthropologist?

>I'm not saying that pleasure-seeking for its own sake is inherently bad or wrong, but how would you compare and contrast the behavior of a drug addict and a high-risk climber, if you were explaining it to an alien anthropologist?

the argument is probably that today's extreme sports risk takers were last epoch's explorers who helped humanity conquer the planet.

I'd be willing to buy that if she had died while diving in an unexplored cave system, for instance, working to bring us knowledge and insights about nature that we didn't already have.

But there was nothing left to discover on that mountain peak, except how much frostbite sucks.

I find the analogy quite apt. I have known drug addicts who I thought were recovered, but who could not fathom simply going to work and then going home to their families every night. They thought that was an incredibly boring life. Predictably, they relapsed. They could’ve caused significantly less stress to their families and loved ones by having more socially acceptable thrillseeking methods.

In general I agree with you, but a counterexample to our rejection of their supposed heroism (and ascription of it to brain-chemistry-seeking identical to heroin addiction) is Alex Honnold [0], famous for his free solo of El Capitan in Yosemite. There's an excellent documentary on him, Free Solo [1], where it's very clear that he's neuro-diverse and that extreme climbing efforts put him into the zone, calming and focussing him. There's zero machismo to it. For him, it's an act of supreme, extended concentration.

I suppose in some sense it's still just manipulating one's own brain chemistry, but it seems a very distinct kind from adrenaline junkies.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Honnold [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Solo

I do tend to agree that Honnold is an exception to the "why don't they just do drugs" argument. He's teaching us that we can do things we didn't think we could do, and I have to believe there's real value there. He's genuinely inspirational.

Climbing some random mountain in Russia, though... that's not "Holy fuck, what's this guy made of?!" but "Yeah, a bunch of other people already did that, and it was cool, I guess, except for the ones that died."

You didn't say it outright so this is not me correcting you specifically, but there's this semi-myth that "Honnold doesn't feel fear because that region of his brain is smaller than everyone else's". He, at least, disputes this. He feels fear but he knows how to focus it, and it's a combination of some kind of innate talent and conditioning as he's put himself in scary situations before

Not quite the same, but Youtuber Ally Law (known for climbing cranes and tall structures) started doing it specifically because he used to be terrified of heights and now seems to not have a problem with it

Life is for living silly bear. I cannot imagine anything worse than getting to the end of your life and finally realizing you never lived it. That you wasted this once in a live time experience. But that is just me.

are you planning to try meth before you die?

Right before.

I suspect high risk extreme sports are in fact worse, as they seem to require a constant ramp-up of the risk, and there does not seem to be any detox mechanism (other than old age) that would allow one to reset the required risk.

There is an appalling number of people in these sports who die young, e.g. Ueli Steck (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ueli_Steck), recently Felix Baumgartner (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Baumgartner). Many of them had already see friends and family die in these sports (as had Natalia Nagovitsyna), so it's not like they were not aware of the dangers.

That is a path towards a more boring humanity.

Did you mean sympathy rather than empathy?

There is not caring about an unknown person which is default stance. And then there is going out of your way to make everyone know other people do not deserve empathy or whatever and how worthless they are to you. The two are not the same.

Why do you want us all to compare them to other people who died? You are not callous. You are angry and emotional over others having interest in the story.

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