4 ms·

Yes, risk can be fun. But everyone I encountered in risk sports knew the difference between "smart crazy" vs "dumb crazy". It is the difference between using

by toss1 4y ago

Yes, risk can be fun. But everyone I encountered in risk sports knew the difference between "smart crazy" vs "dumb crazy". It is the difference between using knowledge, skill, technology, and mental focus to reduce risk to manageable levels, vs "getting away with it". Getting away with it, riding on PDL — Pure Dumb Luck — can work for a long time. Until it doesn't, and you're dead. Like those YouTube idiots in the article. Getting away with it is just Russian Roulette with a different name and method. Yet by using knowledge, skill, technology, and mental focus, people can live entire careers in situations that would reliably kill us in seconds, everythign from mountaineering, deep underwater, aviation, space, racecar driving, and more. Understand the risks, the skills to avoid them, the technology to minimize them, and pay attention, and you'll likely be rewarded with a lifetime of risky and rewarding adventures. Read the books, take the lessons, get some good coaching and apprenticing, and don't cheap out on good gear (as they say, if you've got only a $10 head, then fine, get a $10 helmet, otherwise...). Also, listen to your body and the surroundings. If the conditions or your body is off, you don't have to TODAY climb that route, do that dive, whatever; you can do it or another one tomorrow. It is no less joy to be wise about it!

giantg2 4y ago
In my experience, some people operate on PDL because they never learned about risk in general, or are incapable of operating differently. If you get hurt as a kid in a lower stakes fashion, you start to learn that breaking the rules hurts. That opportunity for lower stakes learning might be shrinking as we legislate away some "risky" stuff. Some people simply can't handle the "constraints" of being responsible... like my wife. Her favorite quote is "I just want to live life". No thoughts to "what if?" or being prepared. If some stranger held the same beliefs and died, I still wouldn't feel bad - that's the way they chose to live thier life.
- toss1 4y ago
  >>operate on PDL because they never learned about risk in general Yup, humans are generally awful at understanding and managing risk, and it is in no small part because there is almost anti-training about risk outside of high-risk activities, and even some of those are very low on guidance and high on PDL. >> I still wouldn't feel bad - that's the way they chose to live thier life. True, 'tho I feel like it is my better to not die soon-ish doing what I love, but enjoy many decades of doing what I love; doing it a little smarter and sometimes not quite at Warp-9 every second, so I can do more Warp-9 seconds later. I used to be an alpine ski racer, downhill my best event. At one national championship, the lower half of the race course was pretty flat and the race organizers decided to spice up one of the drop-offs with a bigger jump, building an illegal ramp before the drop-off (the FIS rules for Downhill stated that features cannot be sloped up before the racers leave the ground, level or down-slope only). I decided I had the knowledge I needed without pushing it on that feature in training so shed some speed every training run. For the several days of training runs before the race, every afternoon we were visiting friends in the hospital with fairly serious injuries from that feature (one back injury never raced again and never fully recovered). By race day, they'd decided to make it legal and shaved off the ramp. I have never felt that I missed out on anything by being aggressive on the top and skipping the Warp-9 attitude there...
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    >Yup, humans are generally awful at understanding and managing risk, Normal humans are normal at understanding and managing risk because normal is defined by typical human behavior. It is your expectations that deviate from the norm. (the above applies to pretty much all "people suck" type gripes)
    - toss1 4y ago
      Interesting point; I'm not sure if we agree or not. While I've been very fortunate to have been able to pursue and get training in a variety of activities considered high-risk, I'm amazed at how often it applies to ordinary situations. Plus, an awful lot of ordinary life is much higher-risk than people think. We don't need extensive experience in sports or motorsports to understand that the difference between wearing a helmet or not in even a stupid little fall where your head hits something hard is the difference between "damn, I scratched my helmet" and your family organizing your funeral. This applies to everyone, and yet it is only this generation that is normalizing wearing helmets on bicycles, etc., and people still vociferously fight motorcycle helmet laws despite mountains of statistics of higher severe injury and death rates among non-helmeted motorcyclists vs. people who wear gear. While it is ordinary for most people to not only not understand epidemiology and statistics, a significant portion also willfully ignore the advice of those who do. Just because this significant portion exists, should we no longer expect people to either understand something or at least respect those who do? Most particularly, humans are obviously capable of understanding the difference between getting away with relying on Pure Dumb Luck vs applying knowledge, skill, technology, and attention to managing risk. Yet, just as obviously, MOST people haven't got a clue and consistently engage in foolish risks, and get injured or dead as a result, whether we're talking about YouTube idiots, people going to COVID parties, or in massive drinking binges, and nevermind understanding anything about engineering risk building bridges, aircraft, or whatever. It seems an obvious line to draw at understanding risk between using skill/knowledge/tech/attention vs using Pure Dumb Luck that the latter suck at risk management, and objectively most people are in the latter group. Moreover, I'd say more people are in this latter group, and the consequences are more serious, than in other fields, such as saying "most people suck at proper grammar". What am I missing?
antipotoad 4y ago
Thank you for this. Calculating risks and knowing when to turn back is what keeps my wingsuiting squirrel of a childhood best friend alive to this day, after more than 2000 flights.
- toss1 4y ago
  Wow, good for him/her! That is something I haven't yet gotten to do and would love to. May they live long and enjoyably!

by toss1 4y ago

giantg2 4y ago

In my experience, some people operate on PDL because they never learned about risk in general, or are incapable of operating differently. If you get hurt as a kid in a lower stakes fashion, you start to learn that breaking the rules hurts. That opportunity for lower stakes learning might be shrinking as we legislate away some "risky" stuff. Some people simply can't handle the "constraints" of being responsible... like my wife. Her favorite quote is "I just want to live life". No thoughts to "what if?" or being prepared. If some stranger held the same beliefs and died, I still wouldn't feel bad - that's the way they chose to live thier life.

toss1 4y ago
>>operate on PDL because they never learned about risk in general Yup, humans are generally awful at understanding and managing risk, and it is in no small part because there is almost anti-training about risk outside of high-risk activities, and even some of those are very low on guidance and high on PDL. >> I still wouldn't feel bad - that's the way they chose to live thier life. True, 'tho I feel like it is my better to not die soon-ish doing what I love, but enjoy many decades of doing what I love; doing it a little smarter and sometimes not quite at Warp-9 every second, so I can do more Warp-9 seconds later. I used to be an alpine ski racer, downhill my best event. At one national championship, the lower half of the race course was pretty flat and the race organizers decided to spice up one of the drop-offs with a bigger jump, building an illegal ramp before the drop-off (the FIS rules for Downhill stated that features cannot be sloped up before the racers leave the ground, level or down-slope only). I decided I had the knowledge I needed without pushing it on that feature in training so shed some speed every training run. For the several days of training runs before the race, every afternoon we were visiting friends in the hospital with fairly serious injuries from that feature (one back injury never raced again and never fully recovered). By race day, they'd decided to make it legal and shaved off the ramp. I have never felt that I missed out on anything by being aggressive on the top and skipping the Warp-9 attitude there...
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  >Yup, humans are generally awful at understanding and managing risk, Normal humans are normal at understanding and managing risk because normal is defined by typical human behavior. It is your expectations that deviate from the norm. (the above applies to pretty much all "people suck" type gripes)
  - toss1 4y ago
    Interesting point; I'm not sure if we agree or not. While I've been very fortunate to have been able to pursue and get training in a variety of activities considered high-risk, I'm amazed at how often it applies to ordinary situations. Plus, an awful lot of ordinary life is much higher-risk than people think. We don't need extensive experience in sports or motorsports to understand that the difference between wearing a helmet or not in even a stupid little fall where your head hits something hard is the difference between "damn, I scratched my helmet" and your family organizing your funeral. This applies to everyone, and yet it is only this generation that is normalizing wearing helmets on bicycles, etc., and people still vociferously fight motorcycle helmet laws despite mountains of statistics of higher severe injury and death rates among non-helmeted motorcyclists vs. people who wear gear. While it is ordinary for most people to not only not understand epidemiology and statistics, a significant portion also willfully ignore the advice of those who do. Just because this significant portion exists, should we no longer expect people to either understand something or at least respect those who do? Most particularly, humans are obviously capable of understanding the difference between getting away with relying on Pure Dumb Luck vs applying knowledge, skill, technology, and attention to managing risk. Yet, just as obviously, MOST people haven't got a clue and consistently engage in foolish risks, and get injured or dead as a result, whether we're talking about YouTube idiots, people going to COVID parties, or in massive drinking binges, and nevermind understanding anything about engineering risk building bridges, aircraft, or whatever. It seems an obvious line to draw at understanding risk between using skill/knowledge/tech/attention vs using Pure Dumb Luck that the latter suck at risk management, and objectively most people are in the latter group. Moreover, I'd say more people are in this latter group, and the consequences are more serious, than in other fields, such as saying "most people suck at proper grammar". What am I missing?

antipotoad 4y ago

Thank you for this. Calculating risks and knowing when to turn back is what keeps my wingsuiting squirrel of a childhood best friend alive to this day, after more than 2000 flights.

toss1 4y ago
Wow, good for him/her! That is something I haven't yet gotten to do and would love to. May they live long and enjoyably!