Alex Honnold free climbing tower in Tapei

[lljkk]

Admirable Skilled Guy or Lunatic encouraging others to do stupid stuff?

I'm normally quite Libertarian about risk-taking but this stunt is bothering me. Just imagine he had fallen to his death microseconds after the crowds were cheering him on. Sudden gruesome public death is going to happen to him or some other brave person doing such stunts, eventually. Is that ok?

He did it for the money, and considering how short the earning years are in high level sport, I don't see the problem.

I climb too, this stunt is pretty irrelevant to the sport. It's not claiming to be something it isn't.

My views on this sort of stunt are really strong and uncompromising - I absolutely hate the attention seekers for doing it.

We'll all die someday, why not doing something you love?

But he understands it on a rational level- he knows if he falls he will die, so on that level he absolutely understands the risks/ consequences.

If he had an IQ of 50 and didn't rationally understand that he would die or couldn't understand that death is final, then yes there would be an argument to stop him.

I suspect he wouldn't love the dying bit though, especially if it wasn't instant.

It's a weird argument though - he could employ a few basic safety measures that mean he does what he loves and doesn't die. He only enjoys doing it because he's alive.

He's hardly going to scaling buildings as a corpse. And our lives aren't just one thing - family, friends, his children.

I'm on the waitlist for surgery, and have to avoid certain things beforehand. I love those things, but I only love them so long as I get out alive the other side of doing them!

But he's also imo meticulous and no adrenaline junkie, if anyone free soloist can get away with the sport not killing them, it will be him.

But even so, he's still far, far more likely to die doing it than the 99.999999% of the population who aren't regularly climbing up massively tall towers without any safety equipment.

Erm, because he has a wife and child?

Fair enough if you're elderly, any children are all long grown up and you maybe take a few risks with the attitude of "My time will be here before too long anyway, so why not have a blast and go out with a bang"; but this is so extremely selfish.

Personally, my 'something' that I love very dearly is my family, so when my time comes, having them and their love around me as I depart would be infinitely more 'dying doing something I love' than any hobby or adrenaline-filled pursuit - especially decades earlier than my time would otherwise have come.

That's fair enough, that's what is important to you, however not everyone feels the same. I take your point it's inherently self-centered, though most people's actions are to a varying degree. You could argue the people who smoke/eat unhealthily/don't exercise/drink alcohol etc. Also put themselves at risk of early death.

I do struggle to understand it, but feel it's somehow "wrong" to take the risk. Maybe his wonky amygdala (technical language!) means he can't feel that e 'woohoo!' excitement you might get from a Rollercoaster , so he ends up taking insane risks to get that kick of being alive? Or that deep visceral fear of "fuck, that's a long way down". To me, it's just so odd that I can't see why he'd do it if he had a real sense of risk, rather than just a logical "well, I'd die if I made a mistake, so I just won't make any errors". I appreciate this is my lack, not his!
I get that it's his body, his life, and he understands that he could die, so why should anyone take that freedom from him?

His decision to have children was strange. I’m not sure I could have kids if I knew I just couldn’t stop doing the very dangerous sport I love. That said, lots of high-risk sports people have children. People have kids and continue to smoke and take drugs. Humans do all sorts of stupid things.

I don’t see why people feel so angry about what he does. If that’s how he gets his jollies, so what?

He was very open with his wife when he met her that he wouldn’t change for her and he’d rather leave her than stop what he was doing.

Not detracting how good he is and what a wonderful sports person he is but a close up of the cladding showed that it was easier climb than having to climb a rock face for him. Still certain death if a mistake was made but still an admirable feat.