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They used Xenon to climb Everest in days – is it the future of mountaineering?

nytimes.com

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Re: They used Xenon to climb Everest in days – is it the future of mountaineering?

#131

Post by nerdsniper »

ty6853 wrote: post #119
wat10000 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most business is about providing value by delivering goods or services that people want and are willing to pay for. Visit your local shops, how many of them are convincing people to buy proverbial tulips and leaving their customers holding the bag? Look at the most valuable companies in the world; they all do or make stuff people happily pay for because they actually find value in it. Certainly there are people who s…

But there is a real magic that happens in the process there. When two people make a deal, voluntarily, at least rationally (unless it is charity) both expect to be better off. The magic of the businessman is to connive his way into getting the largest slice of the 'better off'. He generally can't legally make a deal without generating value, but if he can capture it to the point the customer is only one iota better o…

Optimally, suppliers/vendors/customers would like to grow together. If the companies I'm the vendor for are only getting a tiny sliver of value from what I'm selling them then they might not grow in their market, and my business with them also won't grow.

There's a lot of narrow-sightedness in this zero-sum model of transactions.

Re: They used Xenon to climb Everest in days – is it the future of mountaineering?

#132

Post by Aurornis »

comrade1234 wrote: post #11

So they slept in hypoxia tents which activates the hypoxia-inducible factor molecule, but they also took xenon which also activates the molecule. So, it's not clear if the xenon actually did anything? Back during the 2000 dot-com boom crash I met a guy who got into a top business school in part by writing about the challenges of climbing Everest. He confessed drunkenly at a party to me that he'd never even left the U…

> Back during the 2000 dot-com boom crash I met a guy who got into a top business school in part by writing about the challenges of climbing Everest

I met a startup founder in my local community who would always bring up his ambitions to climb Everest. He made sure everyone knew and made it part of his personality.

Except, he was very out of shape and undeniably overweight. He was not doing any type of training or fitness activity. Everyone could see with their own eyes that this man was not on any path toward climbing Everest in any way.

Yet people around him always brought up his Everest ambitions like it was an amazing fact about him. I always wondered if it was some sort of litmus test to see who could be convinced to deny reality and follow what he said.

Re: They used Xenon to climb Everest in days – is it the future of mountaineering?

#133

Post by ty6853 »

nerdsniper wrote: post #131
ty6853 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there is a real magic that happens in the process there. When two people make a deal, voluntarily, at least rationally (unless it is charity) both expect to be better off. The magic of the businessman is to connive his way into getting the largest slice of the 'better off'. He generally can't legally make a deal without generating value, but if he can capture it to the point the customer is only one iota better o…

Optimally, suppliers/vendors/customers would like to grow together. If the companies I'm the vendor for are only getting a tiny sliver of value from what I'm selling them then they might not grow in their market, and my business with them also won't grow. There's a lot of narrow-sightedness in this zero-sum model of transactions.

I just described a possibility where the businessman is better off and the customer is one iota better off, that is not 'zero-sum'.

Re: They used Xenon to climb Everest in days – is it the future of mountaineering?

#134

Post by pixl97 »

fiftyacorn wrote: post #61
meindnoch wrote: post #12

Xenon is used by athletes to increase their endogenous erythropoietin production. As it's a noble gas, it leaves no trace in their body, so post-hoc detection of this doping method is impossible. But as a recreational climber, why bother with xenon? Just inject EPO.

More recently it was CO use to simulate altitude training

Hmm, that sounds like it could go bad easily.

Re: They used Xenon to climb Everest in days – is it the future of mountaineering?

#135

Post by pixl97 »

nssnsjsjsjs wrote: post #62
robertlagrant wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but they did it ahead of time in a controlled way.

In a hospital with an anaesthesiologist?

Anesthetic gasses are applied in a lot of environments outside of hospitals.

Re: They used Xenon to climb Everest in days – is it the future of mountaineering?

#136

Post by ty6853 »

wat10000 wrote: post #129
ty6853 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there is a real magic that happens in the process there. When two people make a deal, voluntarily, at least rationally (unless it is charity) both expect to be better off. The magic of the businessman is to connive his way into getting the largest slice of the 'better off'. He generally can't legally make a deal without generating value, but if he can capture it to the point the customer is only one iota better o…

Customers also tend to try to get the largest slice of the "better off." That's not special. Do you take less pay than you could get because you don't want to be greedy? Do you voluntarily pay more than the listed price when purchasing items? Of course not. In a properly functioning market, the limiting factor is competition. A business can't capture 99% of the "better off" because the guy down the street will underc…

There is a 'human' process 'somewhere in the middle' as you say.

I'm not anti-capitalist, I just acknowledge this as a fundamental part of the human process. It might even be the case the businessman's incentive don't fully align with the stockholder/owner's incentive, in many case the businessman can profit at the expense of the company by capturing higher commission with side-effects that the company won't understand.

A clever businessman will get the better end of that, while still leaving his customer better off than if he hadn't transacted at all, as many witness at the car dealership.

Re: They used Xenon to climb Everest in days – is it the future of mountaineering?

#137

Post by Scaevolus »

formerly_proven wrote: post #56
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #21

Boss Lowe wrote about doping with xenon gas more than a decade ago: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/another-use-xenon Also, and quite interestingly, xenon isn't the only element that does this. Cobalt does something very similar: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6157393/ Athletic use is probably more common than people think. And I'd be absolutely shocked if Xe gas weren't already being used in race…

It’s kinda curious that xenon can be used both for performance enhancement _and_ as a general anaesthetic.

Anesthetics are very weird. One of the leading theories is that they basically get wedged in lipid bilayers and interfere with neural signaling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_general_anaestheti...

Re: They used Xenon to climb Everest in days – is it the future of mountaineering?

#138

Post by pixl97 »

thecrumb wrote: post #106

I'm waiting until the trash pile on Everest is higher than the mountain itself. Everest isn't supposed to be easy to climb. If someone wants to do it faster/quicker - why would I care how. I'd still look at them and say you cheated.

> I'd still look at them and say you cheated.

That's why naked cavemen are the only ones to climb the mountain without being called cheaters!

Re: They used Xenon to climb Everest in days – is it the future of mountaineering?

#139

Post by devilbunny »

cenamus wrote: post #113
mdorazio wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Military divers who need to be underwater for long periods are almost certainly using rebreathers, both for the longevity and for the lack of visible & audible bubbles.

Isn't that also mainly to avoid nitrogen toxicity?

Rebreathers may feature slightly elevated oxygen levels vis-a-vis standard air (you need a lot of knowledge to use one safely, so presumably anyone diving a rebreather has done the far simpler courses for nitrox or trimix, both of which are used for limiting nitrogen narcosis), but for military divers it's much more about the lack of bubbles and noise.

Re: They used Xenon to climb Everest in days – is it the future of mountaineering?

#140

Post by 0_____0 »

Aurornis wrote: post #132
comrade1234 wrote: post #11

So they slept in hypoxia tents which activates the hypoxia-inducible factor molecule, but they also took xenon which also activates the molecule. So, it's not clear if the xenon actually did anything? Back during the 2000 dot-com boom crash I met a guy who got into a top business school in part by writing about the challenges of climbing Everest. He confessed drunkenly at a party to me that he'd never even left the U…

> Back during the 2000 dot-com boom crash I met a guy who got into a top business school in part by writing about the challenges of climbing Everest I met a startup founder in my local community who would always bring up his ambitions to climb Everest. He made sure everyone knew and made it part of his personality. Except, he was very out of shape and undeniably overweight. He was not doing any type of training or fi…

I love this anecdote, it honestly feels like satire.
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