In pretty much any activity you can asymptotically drive your chance of surviving towards zero if you set your mind to it :-/
If we are talking about variance, the lower safety bound is often in approximately the same place, but the upper safety bound (as well as the center of the distribution) varies.
Yes, but if you’re going climbing you can choose to go the climbing gym and be absolutely safe from the avalanches in the Himalayas. However if you’re going driving on public roads, you cannot make yourself absolutely safe from drunk drivers.
You can make your climbing safer than you can make you driving.
That’s what makes climbing higher variance than driving.
You can make your climbing safer than you can make you driving.
You can make your climbing safer than summiting K2 would be, certainly. But enough safer to overcome those one and a half orders of magnitude of difference in the average? I haven’t actually seen any numbers on this, but that seems optimistic to me.
I’ll have to look at the methodology to believe that one and a half orders of magnitude, but regardless of that yes, you can make your climbing safer.
For example, you can do bouldering on technical routes which are all about agility and finger/arm strength. These routes rarely go more than 10 feet above thick mats—since you’re not belayed, you’re expected to just jump down when/if you run into trouble. Twist you ankle, sure, possible. Die—not very likely.
In pretty much any activity you can asymptotically drive your chance of surviving towards zero if you set your mind to it :-/
If we are talking about variance, the lower safety bound is often in approximately the same place, but the upper safety bound (as well as the center of the distribution) varies.
I’ll bet there are more idiot drunks on the road than there are Himalayan mountaineers, even proportionally.
Yes, but if you’re going climbing you can choose to go the climbing gym and be absolutely safe from the avalanches in the Himalayas. However if you’re going driving on public roads, you cannot make yourself absolutely safe from drunk drivers.
You can make your climbing safer than you can make you driving.
That’s what makes climbing higher variance than driving.
You can make your climbing safer than summiting K2 would be, certainly. But enough safer to overcome those one and a half orders of magnitude of difference in the average? I haven’t actually seen any numbers on this, but that seems optimistic to me.
I’ll have to look at the methodology to believe that one and a half orders of magnitude, but regardless of that yes, you can make your climbing safer.
For example, you can do bouldering on technical routes which are all about agility and finger/arm strength. These routes rarely go more than 10 feet above thick mats—since you’re not belayed, you’re expected to just jump down when/if you run into trouble. Twist you ankle, sure, possible. Die—not very likely.
Yes, I mentioned bouldering in my original post.