7 ms·

I'm going to go ahead and judge. 1 in 10. Your have a 10% chance of dying if you attempt a summit, right? How much pain is your untimely death going to cause

• jodrellblank 16y ago
  No, this is a hugely selfish act You say that like being selfish is automatically and unquestionably a bad thing.
  • webwright 16y ago
    No, I said that like there's a recklessly selfish spectrum and this is pegged near one end with driving while extremely intoxicated, habitually using heroin, etc. At the other end are mildly selfish acts. Playing an X-box is a mildly selfish act. It's fun, but probably isn't a real big win for family, friends, society, etc. Not too damaging to them, though, unless done in excess. Getting massively drunk and then driving your sports car around risks bystanders (sherpas), your life (causing sorrow and hardship for friends and family), and society (cleaning you and your victims off of the road cost money and time).
    • kyleslattery 16y ago
      Your analogy doesn't quite hold: a sherpa is not an innocent bystander--they know exactly what they're getting themselves into, and they've decided they're willing to accept the same risks that the hikers take on.
      • aaronblohowiak 16y ago
        They probably know more about what they are getting into than their employer.
        • pwhelan 16y ago
          They do. They are also paid extrememly well for that area.
• efalcao 16y ago
  I think the actual mortality rate is closer to 2%. I don't know if that changes your opinion at all. Frankly, I feel that even at 2% mortality, it's a pretty selfish act if anybody else depends on you.
  • alxp 16y ago
    You could say the same thing about driving a car.
    • khafra 16y ago
      You could, if you were willing to say something very silly. The death rate for car travel is around 1 per 100 million miles travelled. It's safer than just about anything besides riding in a commercial airliner; even lying in bed will kill you sooner. The other half is that in most of America and many parts of the rest of the world, most people can't support themselves financially or otherwise without driving a car at least 5 days per week. The same is not true of climbing Mt. Everest.
      • kscaldef 16y ago
        > The death rate for car travel is around 1 per 100 million miles travelled. It's safer than just about anything besides riding in a commercial airliner http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate Automobile travel is one of the most likely voluntary activities to kill you, and the most likely direct cause of death (as opposed to things like smoking which kill you indirectly over time).
        • khafra 16y ago
          > one of the most likely voluntary activities to kill you This is for values of "you" which != "mountain climber." Hell, I stay away from mountains and a car isn't going to be what gets me--I swim at midnight in the ocean here in Florida, and ride my motorcycle to work almost every day when the weather's cooperative.
  • 16y ago
• dasil003 16y ago
  It takes all kinds. People with the balls to summit Everest are rare, and they provide great stories to humanity, just the same as astronauts, deep sea divers or spelunkers. I can admire that because it's unusual and inspiring, something that can not be said for people playing it safe. I won't judge you for your judgement, and I might even share it for people mountaineers who have kids, etc, but I can not agree with your premise that risking death is automatically bad because of how others might feel about it. There's more to life than staying alive.
  • jhchen 16y ago
    I don't think the point is risking life is bad in all cases. It depends on the possible gain. A simple example is a lot of people consider freedom something worth dying for. But what is the gain here of climbing Everest after it has been climbed hundreds of times? Astronauts clearly benefit humanity with more than just great stories. I can't see much marginal benefit for society for each additional Everest climber. I'm not saying it's wrong or selfish to continue to climb Everest. For the climber him/herself I imagine the benefits are enormous and perhaps worth the risk of life. But I just can't see much benefit for anyone else.
    • Mz 16y ago
      But I just can't see much benefit for anyone else. I and my oldest son both have a form of cystic fibrosis. I have figured out how to get us well (we actually work together on it but I do most of the research). Reading up on altitude sickness was an Aha! moment for me. In some ways, medical science doesn't have much of value to offer me in terms of thinking through the problem and coming up with new solutions. Medical science is mostly about finding better drugs rather than a better understanding of the process involved in what is typically a slow torturous death where your lungs deteriorate until you qualify for a lung transplant (assuming you don't have bad habits that disqualify you). Reading this piece was personally meaningful to me in surprising ways that I probably can't adequately express. I belong to entire communities operating in their own medical equivalent of "The Dead Zone", where lack of oxygen, high doses of medication and so on create very emotional, inflammatory discussions and many people seem incapable of thinking logically. I wrestle continuously with both how and whether to offer assistance in the face of enormous hostility and long odds that it will really do any good. Even people who are interested in what I am doing sometimes write me and bluntly state up front "I will never make the extreme lifestyle changes you have made. But can you tell me more about ... (some food or supplement)?" Stories about mountain climbing, altitude sickness et al are the absolute best analogies I have tripped across for what I am dealing with. I don't care if mountain climbers are crazy or selfish or whatever. I am grateful for the information they provide. I have a medical condition that forces most people with it to basically gradually suffocate. So I find value in the stories and experiences of mountain climbers. Also, living at 3000 feet above sea level for about 2.5 years, thereby forcibly expanding my lung capacity, probably helped save my life when I spent a year at death's door and was bedridden for 3.5 months and finally got a diagnosis after a lifetime of being treated like a hypochondriac. Some people are facing things like this totally involuntarily and their situations are difficult to talk about in normal company because it is viewed pathetically rather than like a heroic struggle. I don't need any pity-parties. I am perfectly capable of wallowing in self-pity without any assistance. I need some kind of healthier, more useful feedback. Pieces like this one may be the best I can get given the kind of social responses my story tends to inspire.
• neilc 16y ago
  Your have a 10% chance of dying if you attempt a summit, right? 10% of people who attempt a summit die, but that does not mean that attempting a summit necessarily has a 10% chance of death. That 10% figure is not conditioned on your individual preparation, your guides, and your fellow climbers. I would guess that with the right preparation, the chance of death is much less than 10%.
  • edanm 16y ago
    How many attempt a summit without proper preparation? (Or what they consider proper preparation, which amounts to the same thing)? I honestly don't know, but I would guess that people attempting to climb Everest are not just random climbers, but people who train specifically for this.
  • kyleslattery 16y ago
    This is a pretty good point. Russell Brice, the owner of one of the largest Everest companies and the main person in Discovery's Everest series, has never had a client die on one of his expeditions, and he's had something like 200 people climb with him. He's able to be so successful because he makes sure his climbers are adequately prepared, and he doesn't allow people to climb who he doesn't think are fit enough. It seems like (at least from the Discovery series) that many of the people who die are hiking on their own, without the help of one of the successful companies, so when something goes wrong, they don't have a support network to help them.
• BlazingFrog 16y ago
  As reasonable as your assessment is, humanity has not gotten so far in the fields of ideas, philosophy, technology in general or any other field you can think of by being purely altruistic. Inspiration is a powerful feeling that drives progress. An example that comes to mind is how Galileo chose to defy the powerful figures of his time and was, admittedly, willing to die for it. He had children.
• ianferrel 16y ago
  10% is the wrong statistic. According to the article, for every 10 people who reach the summit, 1 person dies in the attempt. So, already, that's somewhat less than 1/10, because not every person who dies does so after reaching the summit. But it also doesn't count the many people who start climbing the mountain but turn around before the summit and make it down alive. The true statistic is likely much less than 10%.
  • nostromo 16y ago
    This page (http://www.8000ers.com/cms/everest-general-info-185.html http://www.8000ers.com/cms/everest-general-info-185.html) shows 4102 attempts to reach the top with 216 deaths last year. That puts it at about 5% of climbs end in death. However, only about 2700 individuals climbed -- which puts the deaths / "uniques" back up to 8%. And if you assume that the sherpas die less frequently than do the tourists, 10% doesn't seem too far off. Interestingly, K2 seems to be much more difficult with a much higher fatality rate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-thousander http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-thousander
    • phjohnst 16y ago
      Yes, K2 is is much more technically demanding climb (See the Black Pyramid, and basically any of the other less popular routes) and more unpredictable (falling seracs above the Bottleneck killed several climbers in 2008). It's usually only attempted by very skilled mountaineers. You won't find the same sort of climbing tour groups like operate on Everest - which is part of the reason why Everest, though the tallest, doesn't seem to be the pinnacle of mountaineering.
      • joshfraser 16y ago
        I recently met one of the 9 Americans to ever summit K2 where for every four people who have reached the summit, one has died trying. He quit after his friend didn't make it home.
    • waterlesscloud 16y ago
      That death total is not last year, that's all time. 216 dead people in a year would be the end of mountaineering. The attempt numbers you quote, 4102 attempts by 2700 individuals, was for 2008. A year with one fatality. Those odds are quite different.
• boredguy8 16y ago
  10% failure rate is bad on a website about startups? Now, we're talking life instead of life savings, but I find it hard to say that their decision is wrong in any ethical or moral sense, and I'm curious what moral framework would justify your viewpoint. Additionally, burning through your life savings (and that of friends/family) can easily cause more long-term harm than having a mom or dad that died while climbing Everest. You just think that one risk is acceptable because it doesn't terminate in death. But there are greater things to fear than dying. Additionally, suppose there were some not-to-distant dystopia in which reading non-approved books were a capital offense, and the state/corporate/whatever apparatus caught 10% of all offenders and had a 100% conviction rate for that 10%. Would that suddenly make reading wrong? I think most people have the intuition that the law is wrong, not the reading. Similarly, I have a hard time seeing why 10% of people dying while doing something somehow makes it wrong per se.
  • benmathes 16y ago
    Failure rate alone isn't enough to compare climbing Everest and running a startup. The cost of failure on Everest is ultimate, but the cost of failure in a startup is temporary and economic.
    • mindcrime 16y ago
      The cost of failure on Everest is ultimate, but the cost of failure in a startup is temporary and economic. What about the folks who lose their life savings when their businesses fail, and decide to commit suicide? I have no stats on how often that actually happens, but it's something to consider.
    • boredguy8 16y ago
      It's only 'ultimate' if dying is the 'ultimate' bad thing that can happen. Most people at most times and most places don't think that's true, and I agree with them. Not living is the ultimate bad thing that can happen, and respiration and living aren't the same thing, in this context.
  • shin_lao 16y ago
    Failing a startup is part of the process of becoming a better entrepreneur. Failing a startup actually brings something to the community. Dying in a mountain may be part of the process of living your life and it's not less stupid than dying in a car accident, however climbing a mountain and have 10% chance of dying in the process is just plain reckless and selfish. Your life is your own, but don't expect to get approval and admiration from everybody else.
• david_shaw 16y ago
  How much pain is your untimely death going to cause if it happens? How many everest orphans and widows are there? Include in that the considerable cost and time investment to do this when you could be creating something, exploring something that has a conceivable chance of helping humanity, or just plain investing in helping others. No, this is a hugely selfish act. I was going to create a startup, but unfortunately I think it's just too selfish of an act. What if by giving up my cubicle I screw over my family and pets that depend on me? Can I be so selfish as to give up my livelihood, my life savings and dedicating every waking moment to making my startup succeed? I would argue that creating a startup--much like climbing Everest--is a risky endeavor with unspeakable rewards. I am not a mountaineer, and I would never risk my life on a mountain just for the pride. But you have to wonder, as we sit here talking about it on the Internet, do these people know how to really live in a way we haven't experienced? Maybe it's the physical exertion or the satisfaction of accomplishing one's dreams, but you can't chalk up every hardcore mountaineer (or any other deadly hobby, for that matter) as mere adrenaline junkies. The real debate here is whether or not it's worth it to risk your life in order to live it to the fullest.
  • jaxtapose 16y ago
    Yeah, because comparing something that, if it pays off, will put your family into the lap of luxury, and if it doesn't you can go back to your old life with something that offers no intrinsic value or reward if it pays off, and if it doesn't leaves you dead on the side of a mountain where people name the feature after the colour of your boots is an apples to apples comparison. Good one.
    • david_shaw 16y ago
      It's certainly not the same thing, and as I said before I would never risk my life in pursuit of what I perceive to be a meaningless goal. My point, however, was that I do not presume to judge others based on the risks that they take in their own lives. The juxtaposition I was trying to make is that people comfortable in their corporate lives might say it's selfish or crazy to persue one's dreams of creating a startup at significant financial risk, just like some people here are saying it's selfish or crazy to want to climb Everest. Is skydiving a suicidal activity? Are surfers that risk shark attacks or storm chasers that follow tornadoes nothing more than stupid, selfish, suicidal sacks of meat? I personally don't think so, but you are of course entitled to an opinion all of your own. By the way, I'm more than happy to converse different opinions in a civilized manner; bleeding sarcasm isn't necessary to get your point across.
• bradly 16y ago
  1 in 10 is the stat over the past 50 years or so. The past 10 years has seen major changes to Everest summits that make that number much, much lower. Fixed ropes are much more prevalent now which has made a huge difference in keeping people safe, as well as reducing bottle-necks so that climbers spend less time in the dead zone. Last year there were 330 summits and 5 deaths, so roughly 1.5%
• fishercs 16y ago
  It's the extraordinary who motivate others to excel in what they believe in, whether its the day to day of raising a family or tackling a summit nearly 30,000 feet from sea level. I have huge amounts of respect for anyone willing to even attempt this and it shows you just how far focus and determination can take a person. Thanks for the link O.P, it really made an impact on certain priorities and perspective.