Not this again... flawed ideas built on an an extremely narrow and false premise.
Previous discussion regarding the blogpost referred to in this article:
Rock climbing and the economics of innovation
11–20 of 95 posts
Re: Rock climbing and the economics of innovation
#12"And to return to Alex Honnold, perhaps the most important lesson a free-market loving economist should draw is that sometimes people will do extraordinary things without the motivation of money." My dad likes to visit the same coffee shop every morning, where he sees more or less the same people. He likes to show his friends pictures of his son on big routes in Yosemite or the Andes, preferring the ones with danglin…
> sometimes people will do extraordinary things without the motivation of money
Spending money and doing things will always be more fun than earning money. People earn money to spend it on pursuits like rock climbing, even if climbing the rock itself is free, buying the equipment and taking time off to climb it costs money, so those extraordinary things were done thanks to an earlier motivation to make money.
Re: Rock climbing and the economics of innovation
#13Has anyone else found that people who are really into rock climbing always feel the need to bring climbing up?
Re: Rock climbing and the economics of innovation
#14Scale, scale, scale. There are FAR more rock climbers, and FAR more people climbing El Cap than in the past. With ALL of those rolls of the dice, you're bound to find a prodigy like Honnold (or Beethoven or whoever, pick your field+prodigy).
More people, more scale, more chances at finding prodigious talent.
Re: Rock climbing and the economics of innovation
#15A lesser known free solo in El Potero Chico, Mexico done by Alex many years back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Phl82D57P58
Another great one is this documentary of the Fitz Roy Traverse by Honnold and Caldwell. It’s a high alpine adventure rather than a free solo, but it’s a different sort of amazing achievement to watch unfold.
Re: Rock climbing and the economics of innovation
#16I loved this article.
One other aspect I think it omitted, likely to balance brevity with scope, is about standard deviations.
When you only have the most rich and privileged doing a sport (e.g. travelling to summit mountains) the "best" will be selected from a relatively small pool of candidates. As an activity gains popularity, and as more people have the means to pursue it, the pool of people for "best" grows and it's no surprise that the max of the distribution increases.
There world's population has grown 2x since 1957 when El Capitan was first submitted. The number of people doing fitness in their free time, I'd suspect is up 10x or 100x. This is double true for activities like Chess or Olympic sports where nation states have started searching for talent in wider and wider ways.
Re: Rock climbing and the economics of innovation
#17Has anyone else found that people who are really into rock climbing always feel the need to bring climbing up?
I used to have this tendency — initially I wasn’t aware of it — I was just passionate and talked about what I wanted to talk about. Eventually became aware of it and lived a period where I still talked about rock climbing all the time/overly much — but I was passionate and it was what I wanted to talk about.
At the time Rock climbing was also a pretty social experience for me. I derived joy from talking about it with others — and some people can talk about their passions in a way that helps others feel inspired. That’s a good thing I think.
Now I don’t do it anymore — but a part of me is sad that I don’t because it reflects a decrease in my motivation and “psyche” for rock climbing and decrease in my desire to share that “psyche” with others.
Re: Rock climbing and the economics of innovation
#18I surprisingly agree with the opinion put out. Shoes have made a night-and-day difference. Also Alex was able to practice climbing indoors on artificial walls no matter the weather outside, starting from an early age. And also Alex is the very definition of an Outlier. Everything kind of came together.
To maybe give an idea on how important those shoes that Alex wore were - or at least how perfect they were for the ascent: the athlete that designed them w/Sportiva, Tommy Caldwell put up all but two of the free routes on El Capitan (so only 8 or so in total), including the hardest free route on the wall. The shoes were effectively made for that one area.
Huber Brothers did more than 2 (Freerider, Golden Gate, El Nino, Zodiac). Skinner and Piana freed Salathe, Lynn freed the Nose. Most repeats aren't done in TC Pros.
But yes, TC Pros are great.
Re: Rock climbing and the economics of innovation
#19A lesser known free solo in El Potero Chico, Mexico done by Alex many years back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Phl82D57P58
Another great one is this documentary of the Fitz Roy Traverse by Honnold and Caldwell. It’s a high alpine adventure rather than a free solo, but it’s a different sort of amazing achievement to watch unfold. https://www.redbull.com/int-en/episodes/AP-1MQAPEZX91W11
Another one, even though it's not about Alex per se, but about Brad Gobright (another great climber who loves to free solo) I'd recommend watching "Safety Third". It's on vimeo[0] if anyone is interested.
Re: Rock climbing and the economics of innovation
#20The comma between 'free' and 'solo' in the first sentence is unnecessary and could actually imply a different style of climbing, rope soloing. see https://rockandice.com/climbing-news/keita-kurakami-makes-fi...