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Intrade CEO dies climbing Mt. Everest

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Re: Intrade CEO dies climbing Mt. Everest

#81

Post by JabavuAdams »

One'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.

Re: Intrade CEO dies climbing Mt. Everest

#82

Post by JabavuAdams »

pradocchia wrote: post #20
pessimist wrote: post #9

Sad. 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

But 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.

Well, 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.

Re: Intrade CEO dies climbing Mt. Everest

#83

Post by raganwald »

jemfinch wrote: post #67
raganwald wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, that's YOUR definition, and good for you that you consider altruism more meaningful than courage. But yours is not the only definition, as I'm sure you are perfectly aware. Now as to Mr. Parsons, don't be suckered into equating his killing an elephant with the question of whether elephants should be culled. Culling an elephant involves game wardens. What he did was murder tourism, big difference.

My definition? If your definition of "meaningful" doesn't take into account an act's impact on the external world, I don't know what to say; we probably have very little to discuss. I have no interest in arguing against what effectively amounts to solipsism. "Murder" is the intentional killing of humans. Hunting elephants, licitly or otherwise, is not and never can be "murder tourism". But since you seem intent in th…

None of my words said or implied that acts that help other people are not meaningful. I'm a father, I consider parenthood meaningful. I also consider climbing Mt. Everest meaningful even though I have no interest in trying it. The two are not exclusive in my mind.

My point was and is that testing one's courage is part of the meaning for climbimng Mt. Everest, as are many other things such as testing one's discipline to and sacrifice. I think these things are meaningful even when if and when they are not altruistic. That does not mean that digging a well or planting a tree or raising a child is not meaningful, they are also meaningful for different reasons.

Ok, killing an elephant that would have been culled anyways is not murder. Fine. Buit still, Bob parsons paid for the right to be the one that killed th elephant. The elephant would have been shot any ways, it's not like the Africans were unable to shoot it and needed Bob's help. The man paid for the right to kill something. Whatever word you apply, the fact remains that he killed a living thing for pleasure and then boasted of it on the Internet.

Re: Intrade CEO dies climbing Mt. Everest

#85

Post by ckcheng »

mmaunder wrote: post #64
pessimist wrote: post #9

Sad. 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

Same situation with Rob Hall in 1996 (a very bad and very famous season on Everest) and his 7 month pregnant wife Jan Arnold. She was also a climber and physician who had submitted Everest with Hall in the past. He called her via sat phone from the summit to say goodbye.

As I recall, Rob Hall was a mountain guide leading a team. He died, doing his job, staying with a team member who was in trouble to try to help.

Re: Intrade CEO dies climbing Mt. Everest

#86

Post by aplusbi »

gamble wrote: post #58
pitdesi wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI - the overall rate is ~9% but has been declining significantly in recent years... http://www.mounteverest.net/story/MountEverestKillerMountain... "To date, there have been 1,924 ascents of Mount Everest (more than 1,300 different climbers), and 179 people have died. The overall fatality rate is thus about 9% (fatality rate is defined as successful summits compared to fatalities). However, since 1990 there has bee…

Everest may be statistically less dangerous, but I suspect that's because the vast majority of climbers today (really, all except a handful of Sherpas at the start of the season) are climbing with fixed ropes on guided ascents. Everest today is still a dangerous mountain, but the dangers are themselves statistical (bad weather, illness, etc) more than technical.

I think the the fact that the dangers are mostly statistical is what makes Everest so dangerous. Not to make light of the difficulty in summiting Everest, but you can literally just hike to the top. This invites a lot of amateur climbers who lack the experience to even recognize dangerous situations, much less deal with them.

Re: Intrade CEO dies climbing Mt. Everest

#87

Post by william42 »

RockyMcNuts wrote: post #80

Won'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 thi…

Flying a plane is safer than driving.

Re: Intrade CEO dies climbing Mt. Everest

#88

Post by gwern »

jedc wrote: post #36
peterbraden wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was his lifelong ambition. Whether it was selfish or not is between him and his wife - let's not pass judgement on the dead.

His family clearly supported him (based on a few other news outlets that actually interviewed them).

So? Are you seriously suggesting that if the family had disapproved of his mountain climbing, they would actually say so in a public interview?

'We're terribly upset and saddened and she'll never know her father, but while we're suffering in public, we'd like to mention that we were against the whole climbing thing in the first place. We told you so, John!'

Re: Intrade CEO dies climbing Mt. Everest

#89

Post by ugh »

william42 wrote: post #87
RockyMcNuts wrote: post #80

Won'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 thi…

Flying a plane is safer than driving.

Being passenger on a commercial flight is much safer than driving a car. Fooling around in a Cessna is about an order of magnitude more dangerous than driving a car.

Re: Intrade CEO dies climbing Mt. Everest

#90

Post by meatmanek »

pradocchia wrote: post #20
pessimist wrote: post #9

Sad. 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

But 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.

Climbing Everest is not cheap -- on the order of $50k. It's possible he couldn't afford it during that "season of life".
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