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Just this week I read a story about Henry Worsley who died trying the same thing: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/the-white-darkness https://www.n
by maxxxxx 8y ago
Just this week I read a story about Henry Worsley who died trying the same thing: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/the-white-darkness https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/the-white-dark.... After reading, I wonder if you have to a certain level of insanity for doing something like this.
- FPGAhacker 8y agoI don't know, but it's an interesting thought. What drives someone do to this? I'm in awe of it. It seems to me that it has to be tied to finding meaning in life one way or another. I have to wonder though, how long does it take for the afterglow of such a massive accomplishment to wear off and to start asking yourself "what now?"
- maxxxxx 8y agoI have the same thought when I see presidential campaigns. I don't think a balanced person would put themselves and their families through that. You have to be some kind of crazy to do this. Maybe we need these extreme people, but I am not sure we should take them as something to aspire to.
- samatman 8y agoI think about this a lot. We would have better leadership if it wasn’t such an objectively terrible job.
- arethuza 8y agoThat's an interesting point about Henry Worsley - he was clearly an excellent leader but he couldn't rise in the UK military (and I suspect this is the case with many organisations) because above a certain point the job is about politics rather than leadership.
- eismcc 8y agoHaving been part of the Ironman community for a while now, I can say endurance folks are definitely different than your average person. Often very humble, they like meaningful, big, challenging goals that redefine “normal.”
- maxxxxx 8y agoDo they get a kick out of overcoming suffering,.doing something really difficult or what drives them? In the end they don't achieve anything useful. I can relate to it somehow. When I did kickboxing I sometimes wondered why I let myself get beat up for no money, fame or any other reward. Never really understood my motivation other than that I had it.
- NikolaeVarius 8y agoBecause it's interesting.
- ForHackernews 8y agoIs it interesting? It sounds mind-numbingly dull trudging across 921 miles of ice.
- gameswithgo 8y agowell you go up and down some mountains, see strange ice formations that don't exist anywhere at all, get to tweet out sappy tweets every evening, go where no/few men/women have gone before and all.
- maxxxxx 8y agoYou make it sound like a nice stroll in the park, not something that exhausts you to and beyond and your limit and tries to.kill and harm you every day.
- deleted 8y ago
- avip 8y agoThere's an interview with Alex Honnold where he says he was already thinking about his next challenge during the last stretch of El Capitan. I personally can't understand these ongoing Bernoulli experiments, surely something in these people's mind differs profoundly from mine.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- weej 8y agoThey do - their amygdala. "fMRI testing at the Medical University of South Carolina tilted the scales toward precisely that explanation — an underactive amygdala, not a negligent mother — by confirming that Honnold’s fear circuitry really does fire with less vigor than most." https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/opinion/el-capitan-my-el-capitan.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/opinion/el-capitan-my-el-...
- ohazi 8y agoHonnold seemed pretty down to earth during his last few interviews. He seemed very willing to acknowledge that he doesn't have a good idea of what might be next for him, and that El Cap may end up being his last "big" challenge. Granted, his perspective may have changed with a little more time for reflection.
- wallflower 8y agoIf you have not yet seen "Free Solo", it is an interesting movie because it delves into the relationship between him and his "I just want to be happy" girlfriend which touches on some of his mindset to pursue perfection.
- barce 8y agoIf you look at the history of it, it puts him in the same league as the polar explorers of the "heroic age." I think the what now part is two parts: write a book about it; do the motivational speaker circuit.
- badrabbit 8y agoWhat now? Time for sun cost fallacy Thinking a lot does that. It's not just searching for meaning of life and a higher purpose but also realizing how this is the only life you get to have and it is very short. I'd compare people who do this to suiciders,they've both contemplated their current lives intolerable and found a way out: One way is through it,the other is around and both routes are one-way.
- justinator 8y agoWhat drives someone do to this? It's fun.
- tertius 8y agoIt's all about the process not the end goal.
- badideaprojects 8y agoLou Rudd is also currently making the same journey, partly in memory of Henry Worsley who he knew. https://m.facebook.com/louis.rudd.7 https://m.facebook.com/louis.rudd.7 Him and Colin set off on the same day, 1 mile apart on the ice.
- ryannevius 8y agoThere's a live map of his progress too: https://z6z.co/spirit-of-endurance https://z6z.co/spirit-of-endurance
- basementcat 8y agoThis level of insanity is not as foreign as you might think. The feeling of accomplishment I get from climbing a mountain, finishing a marathon or a long bike trip is comparable to the feeling I get after taping out a chip, shipping a major software release or delivering first-of-a-kind hardware to a customer. For some of us, getting Tetris to work in Conway's Game of Life is insanity. For other people, walking across a continent is insanity.
- tootie 8y agoExcept that guy literally died. Nobody dies playing on a computer and it's pretty rare to die from running or biking in civilization.
- gameshot911 8y agoOften higher risk goes hand-in-hand with higher reward. It's all on a spectrum.
- code_duck 8y agoPeople kind of do, since the lifestyle of sitting down 18 hours a day at a computer is very unhealthy.
- Someone 8y agoGoogle ”died playing on a computer”. I got many hits showing “Nobody dies playing on a computer“ isn’t true. Examples: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/tragic-teen-gamer-dies-after-6373887 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/tragic-teen-gamer-d... https://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/19/world/taiwan-gamer-death/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/19/world/taiwan-gamer-death/... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_addiction#Deaths https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_addiction#Deaths
- tootie 8y agoI read that and just thought this guy is a moron. There's no discovery, no profit, just vanity.
- sharkweek 8y agoYeah, maybe. But I also think it’s cool to see humans push the boundaries on physical and mental limitations in these types of ways.
- tootie 8y agoThat's why I watch pro football. Honestly I'll bet there's quite a few people who have the physical and mental stamina to cross the Antarctic, just nobody else wants to.
- dh5 8y agoThose are harsh words. Great feats don't necessarily involve discovery or profit.
- deepGem 8y agoThat's way too harsh to describe a man's personal quest for adventure. It's not just vanity. You have no idea how many young minds have been influenced by this adventure. How many potential new startups will come about because someone somewhere out there thinks 'well this guy just gave up his life trying to cross the Antartic, what stops me from doing something perhaps tiny in comparison, but monumental in value, or something that I can undertake'. This is true of all adventurers who seek to accomplish something beyond perceived abilities - free diving, climbing k2 or summitting Mt.Meru on the shark fin route. The indirect benefits of such expeditions have not been measured. If someone did, I'm quite certain, a ton of benefits will crop up.
- jpatokal 8y agoI'd agree but if you were talking about going to Mars or something, but for this particular quest, that seems a bit much. Just look at this list of "first person ever to do X from Y to Z" since 2000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Antarctic_expeditions#21st_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Antarctic_expeditions#... I'd liken this more to climbing Mt. Everest: challenging and personally rewarding, sure, but of ever-diminishing inspirational value to the rest of the world.
- beefield 8y ago> I wonder if you have to a certain level of insanity for doing something like this. My assumption is that people want and need some level of "excitement"[1] to feel like living a meaningful life. Say, in scale 1-10, if you only get exposure to level 1 excitement, you kill yourself to avoid a boring life, occasional level 5 keeps your life interesting, 7-8 starts to be so uncomfortable that you rather avoid and 10 is so much that you rather kill yourself than expose yourself to this level of excitement. Now, the problem is that same things give very different levels of excitement. There are people for whom game of Monopoly is level 5 excitement. And there are people for whom game of Monopoly is solid level 1 excitement. With this model you see why some people decide to take risks some other find outright stupid or insane. So next time you think someone is doing something insanely risky, you might want to think how fulfilling your life would be if the things you do to get emotions would be stripped from you before calling the persons with pejorative adjectives... [1]no, I have no good definition for this word
- msiyer 8y agoThis model is good. To me, the whole point of doing something like this is that there is no point. It matters, at the moment, to the guy doing it and that is all that matters. A couple of years back, I rode my motorcycle for 18 hours with only fuel breaks. 8 hours of the ride was in 40+ degree Celsius heat and the next 10 hours I had to endure the monsoons. I loved the whole experience. What did I gain from it? In the grand scheme of things, nothing. Will I do it again? Yes, already planning another trip. Life seems pointless to me. I just try to have some fun along the way.
- enraged_camel 8y ago>>To me, the whole point of doing something like this is that there is no point. It matters, at the moment, to the guy doing it and that is all that matters. Extreme adversity can be a opportunity for tremendous amounts of learning and personal growth. Some people value that.
- antisthenes 8y agoExactly. The only meaning in life is one that we create for ourselves. If crossing the Antarctic has meaning for you, by all means, go ahead! But just in case, be prepared ;)