In my experience, it's axiomatic in high-risk sports to understand the difference between "smart crazy" vs "dumb crazy"; everyone knows what it is, but it is ra

In my experience, it's axiomatic in high-risk sports to understand the difference between "smart crazy" vs "dumb crazy"; everyone knows what it is, but it is rarely described. One friend best described it as the difference between using knowledge, technology, and/or skill to reliably perform ordinarily dangerous activities, vs. getting away with something by pure dumb luck. Here the technology is lean (nose clips, lights, fins, cable, alarms) and the knowledge, technique, and skill is extensive, but clearly many can make a career of it. What you are doing is like staring at the crash statistics for cars, or even racecars, and minimizing the very real and large body of safety knowledge, equipment, and process that reduces the risk to tolerable levels. And to scoff at how this knowledge makes one "more effective, conscious, skillful, and thoughtful as human beings" is pure ignorance. I can tell you personally (having a healthy dose of this mental training, and great respect for the much further extents achieved by these freedivers) that it makes all the difference in the world - but of course if you have not done it, you literally do not know what you are missing. (edit: clarity, punctuation)