Risk-Taking for Dummies
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Here's another way to look at the dilemmas posed by The Edge of Never.
Extreme skiers talk candidly about the need to make decisions about risk with eyes open and with complete self-responsibility. But what if that's not possible for humans? Humans tend to believe that something bad will not happen unless it's happening NOW.
Example: I'm 40 lbs. overweight, which will likely lead to a heart attack or diabetes at some point. And yet, as I lift the brownie to my mouth, I am certain that no harm will come to me directly following its consumption. Same thing with smoking: you can smoke and smoke and smoke, and since you're not coughing up blood at the moment, the risks (of which you are aware and which are fairly certain) count for almost nothing.
"Yes," says the overweight, 70-year-old man mowing the lawn in 90-degree weather, "I do have some risk factors; but I'm not collapsing of heat stroke right NOW."
"Yes," says the college student having his 6th beer, "I could become an alcoholic and I could fail the class whose test is tomorrow. But I'm not failing NOW. NOW I'm just enjoying a beer."
So the equation for risk avoidance has at least two variables: imminence and certainty. I think about the skier who spoke to Kye Petersen before his run of his friendship with his father, the good times they had. This skier was killed on the slopes just a few months after shooting on the film had finished. If someone could have assured him that morning, "If you ski today, you WILL die," would he have stayed home that day? Yes, almost certainly. If earlier that month someone had said, "If you ski this month, you WILL die," would he have stopped for that month? Again, probably. If they had said, "If you continue to ski, you will die sometime in the next twenty years," would he have stopped skiing altogether? Less certain.
I recently read a book called A Slip of the Knife, by Denise Mina, a mystery which starts off with a journalist being taken captive and thrown naked in the trunk of a car. As he's being driven away, his mind is turning over his options. He realizes that as soon as he's taken out of the trunk, he will have a moment, a second or two, where his captor will turn to shut the trunk, and that may be his only moment to act. So although he is blindfolded and naked, at that moment he will lunge in the direction of that body, as near as he can tell where it will be. It's human nature to wait and see, to hope that a better chance will come along, to see what happens. But, he says to himself, hope is the enemy of survival.
Hope---it's why Aron Ralston failed the first time he tried to cut off his own arm when he was trapped alone in the desert. He wasn't quite dying yet, and as long as he wasn't quite there, he couldn't do it, couldn't do what it would take to cut off his own arm. It was only several days later when death was not just a risk but what was happening NOW, as his systems started to shut down, that he could crack his bone apart and then saw through. It's also why the first three planes that went down on 9/11 went down without resistance. It was only the passengers on the fourth plane, the one that was delayed, who realized that there was no hope; there would be no negotiation, no ransom, no payoff for cooperation.
But the story of another skier gives me pause again: Stephane, the experienced guide, maybe in his fifties, who cracked his neck and several other bones accompanying Kye Petersen down the glacier. He was given a choice between imminent outcomes: no surgery would mean walking but not skiing; surgery would mean either skiing or paralysis. And for him, the difference between walking and paralysis was trivial. It was only the difference between skiing and not skiing that was statistically significant, so to speak. So he chose surgery. But maybe that's an older man's game.
-
Here's another way to look at the dilemmas posed by The Edge of Never.
Extreme skiers talk candidly about the need to make decisions about risk with eyes open and with complete self-responsibility. But what if that's not possible for humans? Humans tend to believe that something bad will not happen unless it's happening NOW.
Example: I'm 40 lbs. overweight, which will likely lead to a heart attack or diabetes at some point. And yet, as I lift the brownie to my mouth, I am certain that no harm will come to me directly following its consumption. Same thing with smoking: you can smoke and smoke and smoke, and since you're not coughing up blood at the moment, the risks (of which you are aware and which are fairly certain) count for almost nothing.
"Yes," says the overweight, 70-year-old man mowing the lawn in 90-degree weather, "I do have some risk factors; but I'm not collapsing of heat stroke right NOW."
"Yes," says the college student having his 6th beer, "I could become an alcoholic and I could fail the class whose test is tomorrow. But I'm not failing NOW. NOW I'm just enjoying a beer."
So the equation for risk avoidance has at least two variables: imminence and certainty. I think about the skier who spoke to Kye Petersen before his run of his friendship with his father, the good times they had. This skier was killed on the slopes just a few months after shooting on the film had finished. If someone could have assured him that morning, "If you ski today, you WILL die," would he have stayed home that day? Yes, almost certainly. If earlier that month someone had said, "If you ski this month, you WILL die," would he have stopped for that month? Again, probably. If they had said, "If you continue to ski, you will die sometime in the next twenty years," would he have stopped skiing altogether? Less certain.
I recently read a book called A Slip of the Knife, by Denise Mina, a mystery which starts off with a journalist being taken captive and thrown naked in the trunk of a car. As he's being driven away, his mind is turning over his options. He realizes that as soon as he's taken out of the trunk, he will have a moment, a second or two, where his captor will turn to shut the trunk, and that may be his only moment to act. So although he is blindfolded and naked, at that moment he will lunge in the direction of that body, as near as he can tell where it will be. It's human nature to wait and see, to hope that a better chance will come along, to see what happens. But, he says to himself, hope is the enemy of survival.
Hope---it's why Aron Ralston failed the first time he tried to cut off his own arm when he was trapped alone in the desert. He wasn't quite dying yet, and as long as he wasn't quite there, he couldn't do it, couldn't do what it would take to cut off his own arm. It was only several days later when death was not just a risk but what was happening NOW, as his systems started to shut down, that he could crack his bone apart and then saw through. It's also why the first three planes that went down on 9/11 went down without resistance. It was only the passengers on the fourth plane, the one that was delayed, who realized that there was no hope; there would be no negotiation, no ransom, no payoff for cooperation.
But the story of another skier gives me pause again: Stephane, the experienced guide, maybe in his fifties, who cracked his neck and several other bones accompanying Kye Petersen down the glacier. He was given a choice between imminent outcomes: no surgery would mean walking but not skiing; surgery would mean either skiing or paralysis. And for him, the difference between walking and paralysis was trivial. It was only the difference between skiing and not skiing that was statistically significant, so to speak. So he chose surgery. But maybe that's an older man's game.
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7:39 PM
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