Intrade CEO dies climbing Mt. Everest
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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
Not to mention two sons, two and three years old respectively. There is a season of life for climbing mountains. This was not it.
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.
I don't know about giving up on dreams in the abstract, but yes, having kids should change the priorities in your life and that will most likely mean giving up some of your own wants, big and small, in order to care of your kids. If you aren't comfortable with that change, then you shouldn't make the choice to have kids.
I salute them.
Now could we please get the hell out of their personal decisions? Seriously. I'm not comfortable with HN acting as if they're entitled to judge his and her choices. I doubt any of us would want our community to judge ours.
Contributing genetic information and some parenting can be a net positive even if the parent is ultimately absent (for whatever reasons).
Take the extreme case of a parent who disappears just after the child's birth. The other parent may still be thankful to have the child, and the child may still be a credit to society.
Is the disappearing parent a good parent? Not really. Should he/she have never had the child, as you suggest? Well, that's up to the child, really.
I.e. it's hard to fault your parents for making you, whether they're good parents or not.
Do you have kids? It's relevant because I used to make arguments like yours until I had a child and realized how much more nuanced these arguments actually are.
That's easily refuted -- it depends on how flawed.
Talk to some kids who have been abused, abandoned or had debilitatingly mentally ill parents.
Compare with kids whose parents divorced or who lost a parent to disease.
I believe this is exactly why he is the CEO of a popular company and others like me are not. He takes risks most of us avoid for various reasons!
Conversely, someone who can be talked out of climbing a mountain can also be talked into keeping his day job, and probably will be.
'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!'
I'm sure there is a lot of this story that we will never know, criticism is not going to change anything and if anything is offensive to the bereaved.
I don't see it as much as criticism as it is a simple fact. I posted not because I wanted to make a change so much as because I was utterly surprised by someone defending this person. Furthermore, my comments are in reply to your post and not directed at any members of the family, but I would hope that at least the wife realizes the moral implications of her husband's decision at this point.
Are not all the facts of this case known? Father of N, does something dangerous and unnecessary, leaves N children fatherless. Are there other relevant issues of fact that we do not know?
True, it may be tasteless to call it out . . . but the internet is tasteless. :-/
I just want to point out that this is a very slippery slope. Does this mean that fathers in the army are being selfish for going to war rather than staying at home with their kids?
What about businessmen who work long hours and neglect their families?
There are many ways to live your life. This man chose a risky path, and sadly was killed before he could watch his children grow up. In his mind, perhaps, the risk was outweighed by the benefits of being able to tell his kids that he had fulfilled his dreams.
> I would hope that at least the wife realizes the moral > implications of her husband's decision at this point.
That to me sums up why I disagree with your comment. I hope his wife all the best in recovering from her loss, and raising her kids. The moralizing of some uninformed person on the internet are completely irrelevant to her at this point.
That's not how the intertubes, or people for that matter, work.
Consider - there's another thread on HN right now about the utility of battleships. It's full of strongly held opinions by folks who confuse being smart with knowing what they're talking about. Oh, and the critics are savaging the long dead folks who built battleships.
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 been an explosion of summiteers and fatality statistics have changed. Up to 1990, the Everest fatality rate is a whopping 37%, with 106 deaths and only 284 summits. Yet from 1990 until today, the rate has dropped to 4.4%; 73 people have died, and 1,640 have summited. Thus, the rate decreased to about eight times less than the pre-1990 fatality rate!"
I wouldn't do it. But I do want to climb Mt Kilimanjaro sometime (much less dangerous).
Sensible how? Like not climbing Everest? Be careful how you define it, because there's the danger of saying that everyone who lived was sensible. Anyway, that's kinda like saying that drunk driving is only dangerous if you're not sensible when you're doing it. We can't survive that long that high, and our judgement becomes seriously impaired, similar to being drunk.
Acute mountain sickness (AMS) can strike even lower. A friend of mine was in Nepal with the Discovery Channel this past Fall. One of the producers was evacuated due to AMS when they were under 6000m. Altitude is a lottery. For my part, there's plenty of climbing near sea level that kicks my butt.
[1] http://news.softpedia.com/news/Leading-Causes-of-Death-In-th...
I will give you the benefit of the doubt, but that is a horrible pun.
Who are you to say what he should or shouldn't do? He essentially died from a freak accident that couldn't be predicted ahead of time.
Telling him that he shouldn't do something because he's married with children is like someone telling you you shouldn't pursue a dream (whether that be climbing a mountain or trying an innovative startup with a high chance of failure) just because you happen to be married.
You don't know his situation. I don't know his situation.
Can't we just stop this judging and simply feel bad about an unfortunate death?
By going off and risking his life on a personal accomplishment, he wasn't doing the best job to protect his family. There are an unlimited number of other ways that he could have challenged himself physically and mentally without the risk to the people close to him.
This isn't a criticism of John as a person, but a decision that he made. I don't know who he was and I'm sure that he was a great man. But he put his family at risk to pursue a challenge that is mostly a boost to his own ego.
Honestly what context do you possibly need? There aren't really a lot of externalities here
The fact that you can't imagine a worthy justification (in terms of his value system or your own) doesn't mean that one doesn't exist. And no, you cannot categorically deny the existence thereof.
Disrespectful in the extreme.
I guess everyone who goes there knows the dangers, and would be prepared for the worst.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Into-Thin-Air-Personal-Disaster/dp/067...
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Climb-Tragic-Ambitions-Everest/dp/0312...
Sometimes I wonder if various acts of greatness are often made possible by the person having a "blind spot". Maybe starting Intrade was equally stupid.
Generally I think of this mostly for entrepreneurs and fiction authors.
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 think of all the reasons it couldn't happen to you.
He spun the dice, maybe a little harder than most, and he lost. You could draw an unlucky card tomorrow driving in your car, or get cancer from your cell phone.
If you don't want to spin the dice that hard, you don't have to, I know I wouldn't. Some people have the need to go to the limit. They shouldn't put others at risk. But if he was a CEO and reasonably prudent, the family is, I hope, well-provided for. If he loved them, and he did that and died doing something he loved, bad break and a life well lived.
And here's one from the Freakonomics blog: http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/05/24/r-i-p-john-delaney-pr...
Other people's personal lives are their own. They make their choices, the people they share their lives with share their choices, by choice or otherwise.
Leave them alone. Leave it alone. Go build something useful.
This sorta stuff needs to be discussed
Compare and contrast his death to Bob Parsons' cowardly choice of shooting an elephant. Bob was never in any meaningful danger, where is the courage in killing an animal that can't shoot back?
I am sorry for his family's loss.
How does that make it more meaningful? Does the fact that it can be deadly make playing russian roulette meaningful too then?
I find this conversation pretty bizarre. Of course climbing Mount Everest is meaningful. It's used ubiquitously as a metaphor for the ultimate in human achievement! Just because it may be selfish or egotistically motivated in some circumstances doesn't mean it isn't a deeply meaningful and symbolic challenge to undertake.
I'm troubled by your use of "meaningful" in describing danger. Danger is not meaningful in itself. An act does not become meaningful because 10% of the people who attempt it die. Acts are meaningful based on their impact on the world around them. Ascending the summit of Everest is ultimately meaningless; killing an elephant who was destroying crops and feeding an African village is quite meaningful.
(I don't mind the downvote at all but it's be good to know if the downvotes connote the fact that I'm wrong; I may be!)
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.
"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 this discussion on using words with meanings other than their commonly accepted ones, perhaps we should go our separate ways now.
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.
The most instructive part of that video was the end where the crop Bob Parsons was trying to "save" was totally destroyed by people trying to get at the elephant. Those people did much more damage to the crop than the elephants.
So a lump of rotting flesh that will spoil in days takes the place of a field of grain that could have lasted a season. Not very meaningful. The farmer/village sure didn't benefit from Bob Parson's "help."
Saying that Bob Parsons did anything meaningful isn't being honest about what he did. Some people take pleasure in killing things; that's the basis of hunting as a sport. I'm not really interested in it one way or another. What does pique my interest is the idea that Bob Parsons was doing anything meaningful.
If he takes pleasure in killing things, he should go ahead and be honest about it. He shouldn't try excusing himself with some antiquated colonial view of white man helping some poor impoverished people with a big gun. That's the repulsive part of the whole thing.
If Bob Parsons really wanted to do something other than kill an animal, he could have given a micro-loan or grant to all those people to help them out of subsistence.
Ironically, the odds on an InTrade bet might have warned him that he was not expected to survive. The crowdsourced research about conditions and the likely physical ability of Mr. Delaney would have exceeded his own and might have led him to delay or reconsider the trip.
A lot of the decision points for whether to go on or turn back have to be made in the short term on the mountain.
If you want to understand more how high-altitude climbers think, this makes for a perfect read: http://www.amazon.com/Above-Clouds-Diaries-High-Altitude-Mou...
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978295
How about running a marathon instead. Or is that not expensive enough?
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.
We all take survival risks. I wouldn't climb Everest but I do ride a motorcycle and scuba dive. Both hobbies do add survival risks for only enjoying life more.
In that order.
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And really? 5 downvotes for saying that the link does't work? This community has really declined.
Downvotes for an error message posted with no context[1] on the other hand, are entirely appropriate.
[1] The error appears to have been fixed, so reading the article provides no context - I didn't even realize that that was where it had appeared until reading brk's comment.
I received those downvotes the entire time the website was down.