Very engaging account of the story, it was a pleasure to read. I often thought about what drive some people to start such dangerous enterprises and my hunch is that, as you said, they are a tail of useful evolutionary traits: some hunters, or maybe even an entire population, had a higher fitness because they took greater risks. From an utilitarian perspective it might be a waste of human potential for a climber to die, but for every extreme climber there is maybe an astronaut, a war doctor or a war journalist, a soldier and so on.
Very engaging account of the story, it was a pleasure to read. I often thought about what drive some people to start such dangerous enterprises and my hunch is that, as you said, they are a tail of useful evolutionary traits: some hunters, or maybe even an entire population, had a higher fitness because they took greater risks. From an utilitarian perspective it might be a waste of human potential for a climber to die, but for every extreme climber there is maybe an astronaut, a war doctor or a war journalist, a soldier and so on.