• JohnEdwa@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    If it somehow guaranteed your success it would be safer to play a round of russian roulette at the base camp before you begin your climb as that has only one in six chance of killing you. That’s how crazy your odds of success on the climb sound like.
    Yet they all know the statistics and the risks, and go do it anyway. Are they mental, suicidal, or do they truly believe they are so awesome and everyone who died clearly was their inferior?

    • grahamsz@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Also I can understand taking that risk for yourself. Certainly it’s way outside my comfort zone, but I’m not going to tell someone else they can’t do something dangerous. But how can you go out and hire people to help you knowing there’s a 25% chance they’ll be giving their lives for you?

      • Kalash@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        But how can you go out and hire people to help you knowing there’s a 25% chance they’ll be giving their lives for you?

        I mean, they want to be hired. That’s how a lot of people there make a living. They are aware of the risks.

          • Zima@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Unless you have no hobbies and no free time You can lead by example and show them.

        • grahamsz@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Sure - and i’m sure I could find people who’d play a game of russian roulette for $1M but it’d be massively unethical to hire people to do that.

          So there’s obviously some line - as a society we consider it ethical to hire forestry workers or deep sea fishermen even though they have a significantly higher risk of death that most other professions. I think a 25% death rate is just unethical in the extreme, even Everest is something like 1%.

          • wahming@monyet.cc
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            1 year ago

            Everest appears to be 5%. Where would you draw the line, and how would you justify it?

            • grahamsz@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              I have no idea, but hiring someone for a job that has a 1 in 20 chance of killing them seems fundamentally immoral - especially given the massive financial imbalance.

              It’s certainly a good philosophical question though

              • wahming@monyet.cc
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                1 year ago

                Yeah, taking it to the extreme, the same logic applies to delivery guys on scooters and motorcycles. There’s definitely no good answer, except maybe that they accepted the risk

                • grahamsz@kbin.social
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                  1 year ago

                  Looking at it more, there seems to be an entire field of Risk Ethics associated with this.

                  Still the most dangerous job in the US is a Commercial Fisherman with a risk of death of 132 per 100,000. That’s a very long way from the risk of dying on Everest or K2.

      • livus@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        knowing there’s a 25% chance they’ll be giving their lives for you?

        There isn’t. The person above is using a misleading stat, based on a misunderstanding of the stats.

        Look at how many people are in the photos of the climbers all stepping over Mohammed Hassan here.

        In common sense terms if this bizarre “25% die” stat were real, at least a dozen of them would have died that same day.

        @grahamsz
        @bernieecclestoned @dulce_3t_decorum_3st @JohnEdwa