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Intrade CEO dies climbing Mt. Everest
- jameskilton 15y agoNew York Times article as the site is hammered: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/business/27delaney.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/business/27delaney.html
- jedc 15y agoThis happened about ten days ago. I knew John a little, and put up a post with a couple memories here: http://blog.mercury-rac.com/2011/05/29/in-memory-of-john-delaney-1969-2011/ http://blog.mercury-rac.com/2011/05/29/in-memory-of-john-del... And here's one from the Freakonomics blog: http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/05/24/r-i-p-john-delaney-prediction-market-entrepreneur/ http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/05/24/r-i-p-john-delaney-pr...
- tibbon 15y agoHoping the best for his family. I posted on HN 4 days ago (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2592958 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2592958) about it and it got no attention until today with this new submission. Really rather unfortunate.
- joshklein 15y agoCan't reach the page, but the submission title made me want to share an on-topic book recommendation - Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster, by Jon Krakauer. [1] It's a very sad, but thrilling, account of a catastrophic journey up Everest. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Into-Thin-Air-Personal-Disaster/dp/0679457526 http://www.amazon.com/Into-Thin-Air-Personal-Disaster/dp/067...
- bmj 15y agoThere is also a counterpoint book, by Anatoli Bourkreev, called The Climb[1]. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Climb-Tragic-Ambitions-Everest/dp/0312965338 http://www.amazon.com/Climb-Tragic-Ambitions-Everest/dp/0312...
- jpdoctor 15y agoThere was an IMAX crew on the mountain at the time, and the film they produced would have been good just as a film, let alone the IMAX format.
- gamble 15y agoIt is a great book. Sadly, the hostile reaction toward the Everest climbers expressed after the disaster seems to also be present in many of the comments on this thread.
- nbertram 15y agoAgreed, fantastic book.
- mrspeaker 15y agoThis article: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978295 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978295 has stuck with me since it was posted a while ago. I guess everyone who goes there knows the dangers, and would be prepared for the worst.
- michaeldhopkins 15y agoRest in peace. Ironically, the odds on an InTrade bet might have warned him that he was not expected to survive. The crowdsourced research about conditions and the likely physical ability of Mr. Delaney would have exceeded his own and might have led him to delay or reconsider the trip.
- knowtheory 15y agoI'm unconvinced that this is relevant unless the markets you're talking about have a history of accurately predicting random or chaotic systems like weather :P A lot of the decision points for whether to go on or turn back have to be made in the short term on the mountain.
- gamble 15y agoFrom what I've read of his death, it sounds like he was killed by high-altitude cerebral edema. (Swelling caused by altitude-induced blood leakage within the brain) HACE is essentially impossible to predict. Fit, healthy, experienced climbers die every year from HACE, often with almost no warning. It is unfortunately a risk you take when climbing extreme heights like Everest.
- golgo13 15y agoSo I am guessing his body will remain on Everest. Another sad addition to the Death Zone.
- pessimist 15y agoSad. But I have to say - climbing Everest when your wife is due to give birth - not cool. Overall death rate for Everest climbers is pretty close to 3% - pretty high (although its been falling). Edit: 3% is for climbers above base camp - for summit climbers its close to 10%! According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Mount_Everest_disaster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Mount_Everest_disaster
- pradocchia 15y agoBut I have to say - climbing Everest when your wife is due to give birth - not cool. Not to mention two sons, two and three years old respectively. There is a season of life for climbing mountains. This was not it.
- JabavuAdams 15y agoWell, maybe he had kids before he got to climb Everest. Does that mean that he should give up on his dreams, due to bad timing? There's really never a good time to climb Everest. It might be much better for the kids to have a dead father than a bitter, reluctant father.
- gwright 15y ago> Does that mean that he should give up on his dreams, due to bad timing? I don't know about giving up on dreams in the abstract, but yes, having kids should change the priorities in your life and that will most likely mean giving up some of your own wants, big and small, in order to care of your kids. If you aren't comfortable with that change, then you shouldn't make the choice to have kids.
- mst 15y agoHe believed in this. His wife presumably knew he did. I salute them. Now could we please get the hell out of their personal decisions? Seriously. I'm not comfortable with HN acting as if they're entitled to judge his and her choices. I doubt any of us would want our community to judge ours.
- benatkin 15y agoSad news. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrade#Death_of_CEO http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrade#Death_of_CEO
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- pizza_ 15y agoHe didn't predict that.
- raganwald 15y agoI am not sad for him personally. We all die, he chose his time and place. Attempting to summit Everest is meaningful in part because one out of every ten climbers making the final push doesn't make it home alive. Compare and contrast his death to Bob Parsons' cowardly choice of shooting an elephant. Bob was never in any meaningful danger, where is the courage in killing an animal that can't shoot back? I am sorry for his family's loss.
- johncollins 15y agoYes, I am sorry for the elephant family's loss also. What bob did was NOT cool
- VMG 15y ago> Attempting to summit Everest is meaningful in part because one out of every ten climbers making the final push doesn't make it home alive. How does that make it more meaningful? Does the fact that it can be deadly make playing russian roulette meaningful too then?
- danenania 15y agoI'd say so. It may not be meaningful in the life accomplishment sense, but I'd imagine that staring death in the face in those moments before the click is probably about as vivid and emotionally intense as life can get. An experience doesn't have to be virtuous or reasonable to be meaningful. I find this conversation pretty bizarre. Of course climbing Mount Everest is meaningful. It's used ubiquitously as a metaphor for the ultimate in human achievement! Just because it may be selfish or egotistically motivated in some circumstances doesn't mean it isn't a deeply meaningful and symbolic challenge to undertake.
- jemfinch 15y agoJohn Delaney left behind two sons and a pregnant wife pursuing a meaningless accomplishment. Bob Parsons killed an elephant who was destroying crops and fed an African village. I'm troubled by your use of "meaningful" in describing danger. Danger is not meaningful in itself. An act does not become meaningful because 10% of the people who attempt it die. Acts are meaningful based on their impact on the world around them. Ascending the summit of Everest is ultimately meaningless; killing an elephant who was destroying crops and feeding an African village is quite meaningful.
- grandalf 15y agoI think most would agree that climbing Everest (with a young kids) represents poor judgment. Sometimes I wonder if various acts of greatness are often made possible by the person having a "blind spot". Maybe starting Intrade was equally stupid. Generally I think of this mostly for entrepreneurs and fiction authors.
- codexon 15y agoAn error has occurred. For detailed error information, please see the HTML source code, and contact the forum Administrator. Lock wait timeout exceeded; try restarting transaction Query being executed when exception was thrown: UPDATE jforum_topics SET topic_views = topic_views + 1 WHERE topic_id = 492413
- tcdent 15y agoAside from possibility of interest in the exposed query, what's the point of copying as pasting the error you just got?
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- codexon 15y agoAs oxtopus said, this is something I never hope to see on a trading site. Especially just for counting views. And really? 5 downvotes for saying that the link does't work? This community has really declined.
- brk 15y agoI'm just guessing, but I'm thinking the code that runs their forum is vastly different from the code that runs their business.
- sorbus 15y ago> And really? 5 downvotes for saying that the link does't work? This community has really declined. Downvotes for an error message posted with no context[1] on the other hand, are entirely appropriate. [1] The error appears to have been fixed, so reading the article provides no context - I didn't even realize that that was where it had appeared until reading brk's comment.
- codexon 15y agoIsn't the context clear? Do I really need to say "This error message is the whole content of the story?" Aren't you guys a little smarter than that? I received those downvotes the entire time the website was down.
- ColinWright 15y agoThere is a time and place for everything, so we are told. personally, I believe that HN is not the place for this. And if HN is now the place for this, then perhaps HN's time has now passed. Other people's personal lives are their own. They make their choices, the people they share their lives with share their choices, by choice or otherwise. Leave them alone. Leave it alone. Go build something useful.
- localhost3000 15y agoThis is extraordinarily sad news. Shame on the posters here who seem to be taking delight in judgment. The guy is dead, grow up.
- watty 15y agoI don't think anyone here is taking delight in his judgement, where did you read that? It seems like many posters here can't comprehend why a human being would play Russian roulette knowing that they have two children and one in the womb.
- BasDirks 15y agoRIP.
- RockyMcNuts 15y agoWon't someone think of the children??? I have yet to meet anyone who started a company and is not a little crazy, and a little less risk-averse than most. Where do you draw the line for acceptable behavior? Is flying a plane OK? Riding a motorcycle? Skydiving? Having an extra helping of dessert? Hell, starting a company is a risk and takes a toll on a family. Whenever you read a tragic story like this, you try to think of all the reasons it couldn't happen to you. He spun the dice, maybe a little harder than most, and he lost. You could draw an unlucky card tomorrow driving in your car, or get cancer from your cell phone. If you don't want to spin the dice that hard, you don't have to, I know I wouldn't. Some people have the need to go to the limit. They shouldn't put others at risk. But if he was a CEO and reasonably prudent, the family is, I hope, well-provided for. If he loved them, and he did that and died doing something he loved, bad break and a life well lived.
- JabavuAdams 15y agoOne's life and ambitions don't end when one becomes a parent. For those whose greatest ambition (confirmed by their actions) is to be a responsible parent, great! The reality for actual parents is that parenting is a constant struggle between one's ambitions and one's responsibilites. Yes, this is an extreme case, but how is this much more selfish than parents who get divorced? One might argue that if a father cannot always and in all conditions put the children first, he should not be a father. I'd argue that this is overly simplistic. Honestly and strictly applied, it would mean that we'd almost never reproduce.
- cincinnatus 15y agoSad. Tragic. Selfish. Stupid. In that order.
- noonespecial 15y agoI can't judge. Everyone dies, but not many die awesome. The sad fact is that even though he died tragically young, he still probably provided far more both in money and example for his kids than I will be able to manage with a lifetime of cautious mediocrity.
- pier0 15y agoSomeone else mentioned Anatoli Boukreev in relation to the 1996 season on Everest. If you want to understand more how high-altitude climbers think, this makes for a perfect read: http://www.amazon.com/Above-Clouds-Diaries-High-Altitude-Mountaineer/dp/031229137X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1306968293&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Above-Clouds-Diaries-High-Altitude-Mou...
- ck2 15y agoWell he joined the crowd. Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978295 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978295 How about running a marathon instead. Or is that not expensive enough?
- moo 15y agoI think the drive in people who push boundaries between what is safe and what is dangerous is beneficial to overall human survival. It puts us more in control of the surrounding natural environments. We all take survival risks. I wouldn't climb Everest but I do ride a motorcycle and scuba dive. Both hobbies do add survival risks for only enjoying life more.