
Intrade CEO dies climbing Mt. Everest - lbrdn
http://www.intrade.com/forum/?forum=/intradeForum/posts/list/492413.page
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pessimist
Sad. But I have to say - climbing Everest when your wife is due to give birth
- not cool.

Overall death rate for Everest climbers is pretty close to 3% - pretty high
(although its been falling).

Edit: 3% is for climbers above base camp - for summit climbers its close to
10%! According to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Mount_Everest_disaster>

~~~
kloncks
I don't understand all this harsh judgement, especially from the HN crowd.

Who are you to say what he should or shouldn't do? He essentially died from a
freak accident that couldn't be predicted ahead of time.

Telling him that he shouldn't do something because he's married with children
is like someone telling you you shouldn't pursue a dream (whether that be
climbing a mountain or trying an innovative startup with a high chance of
failure) just because you happen to be married.

You don't know his situation. I don't know his situation.

Can't we just stop this judging and simply feel bad about an unfortunate
death?

~~~
AJ007
1 in 10 chance isn't a freak accident, its called being reckless and I don't
see anything to feel bad about.

~~~
there
i wonder if, assuming he had one, his life insurance policy will pay out or if
this will be considered a reckless action on his part.

~~~
dstein
I think most insurance policies cover someone while in their own country.
Outside of his country would be travelers insurance.

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mrspeaker
This article: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978295> has stuck with me
since it was posted a while ago.

I guess everyone who goes there knows the dangers, and would be prepared for
the worst.

~~~
slouch
I haven't forgotten those photos, either.

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joshklein
Can't reach the page, but the submission title made me want to share an on-
topic book recommendation - Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount
Everest Disaster, by Jon Krakauer. [1] It's a very sad, but thrilling, account
of a catastrophic journey up Everest.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Into-Thin-Air-Personal-
Disaster/dp/067...](http://www.amazon.com/Into-Thin-Air-Personal-
Disaster/dp/0679457526)

~~~
gamble
It is a great book. Sadly, the hostile reaction toward the Everest climbers
expressed after the disaster seems to also be present in many of the comments
on this thread.

~~~
nbertram
Agreed, fantastic book.

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grandalf
I think most would agree that climbing Everest (with a young kids) represents
poor judgment.

Sometimes I wonder if various acts of greatness are often made possible by the
person having a "blind spot". Maybe starting Intrade was equally stupid.

Generally I think of this mostly for entrepreneurs and fiction authors.

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RockyMcNuts
Won't someone think of the children???

I have yet to meet anyone who started a company and is not a little crazy, and
a little less risk-averse than most.

Where do you draw the line for acceptable behavior? Is flying a plane OK?
Riding a motorcycle? Skydiving? Having an extra helping of dessert?

Hell, starting a company is a risk and takes a toll on a family.

Whenever you read a tragic story like this, you try to think of all the
reasons it couldn't happen to you.

He spun the dice, maybe a little harder than most, and he lost. You could draw
an unlucky card tomorrow driving in your car, or get cancer from your cell
phone.

If you don't want to spin the dice that hard, you don't have to, I know I
wouldn't. Some people have the need to go to the limit. They shouldn't put
others at risk. But if he was a CEO and reasonably prudent, the family is, I
hope, well-provided for. If he loved them, and he did that and died doing
something he loved, bad break and a life well lived.

~~~
william42
Flying a plane is safer than driving.

~~~
ugh
Being passenger on a commercial flight is much safer than driving a car.
Fooling around in a Cessna is about an order of magnitude more dangerous than
driving a car.

------
jedc
This happened about ten days ago. I knew John a little, and put up a post with
a couple memories here: [http://blog.mercury-rac.com/2011/05/29/in-memory-of-
john-del...](http://blog.mercury-rac.com/2011/05/29/in-memory-of-john-
delaney-1969-2011/)

And here's one from the Freakonomics blog:
[http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/05/24/r-i-p-john-delaney-
pr...](http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/05/24/r-i-p-john-delaney-prediction-
market-entrepreneur/)

~~~
tibbon
Hoping the best for his family. I posted on HN 4 days ago
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2592958>) about it and it got no
attention until today with this new submission. Really rather unfortunate.

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ColinWright
There is a time and place for everything, so we are told. personally, I
believe that HN is not the place for this. And if HN is now the place for
this, then perhaps HN's time has now passed.

Other people's personal lives are their own. They make their choices, the
people they share their lives with share their choices, by choice or
otherwise.

Leave them alone. Leave it alone. Go build something useful.

~~~
caf
Morals are a social construct. This kind of discussion is exactly how they are
developed and passed on, and always have been.

------
raganwald
I am not sad for him personally. We all die, he chose his time and place.
Attempting to summit Everest is meaningful in part because one out of every
ten climbers making the final push doesn't make it home alive.

Compare and contrast his death to Bob Parsons' cowardly choice of shooting an
elephant. Bob was never in any meaningful danger, where is the courage in
killing an animal that can't shoot back?

I am sorry for his family's loss.

~~~
jemfinch
John Delaney left behind two sons and a pregnant wife pursuing a meaningless
accomplishment. Bob Parsons killed an elephant who was destroying crops and
fed an African village.

I'm troubled by your use of "meaningful" in describing danger. Danger is not
meaningful in itself. An act does not become meaningful because 10% of the
people who attempt it die. Acts are meaningful based on their impact on the
world around them. Ascending the summit of Everest is ultimately meaningless;
killing an elephant who was destroying crops and feeding an African village is
quite meaningful.

~~~
raganwald
Sorry, that's YOUR definition, and good for you that you consider altruism
more meaningful than courage. But yours is not the only definition, as I'm
sure you are perfectly aware.

Now as to Mr. Parsons, don't be suckered into equating his killing an elephant
with the question of whether elephants should be culled. Culling an elephant
involves game wardens. What he did was murder tourism, big difference.

~~~
jemfinch
_My_ definition? If your definition of "meaningful" doesn't take into account
an act's impact on the external world, I don't know what to say; we probably
have very little to discuss. I have no interest in arguing against what
effectively amounts to solipsism.

"Murder" is the intentional killing of humans. Hunting elephants, licitly or
otherwise, is not and never can be "murder tourism". But since you seem intent
in this discussion on using words with meanings other than their commonly
accepted ones, perhaps we should go our separate ways now.

~~~
raganwald
None of my words said or implied that acts that help other people are not
meaningful. I'm a father, I consider parenthood meaningful. I also consider
climbing Mt. Everest meaningful even though I have no interest in trying it.
The two are not exclusive in my mind.

My point was and is that testing one's courage is part of the meaning for
climbimng Mt. Everest, as are many other things such as testing one's
discipline to and sacrifice. I think these things are meaningful even when if
and when they are not altruistic. That does not mean that digging a well or
planting a tree or raising a child is not meaningful, they are also meaningful
for different reasons.

Ok, killing an elephant that would have been culled anyways is not murder.
Fine. Buit still, Bob parsons paid for the right to be the one that killed th
elephant. The elephant would have been shot any ways, it's not like the
Africans were unable to shoot it and needed Bob's help. The man paid for the
right to kill something. Whatever word you apply, the fact remains that he
killed a living thing for pleasure and then boasted of it on the Internet.

------
jameskilton
New York Times article as the site is hammered:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/business/27delaney.html>

------
michaeldhopkins
Rest in peace.

Ironically, the odds on an InTrade bet might have warned him that he was not
expected to survive. The crowdsourced research about conditions and the likely
physical ability of Mr. Delaney would have exceeded his own and might have led
him to delay or reconsider the trip.

~~~
gamble
From what I've read of his death, it sounds like he was killed by high-
altitude cerebral edema. (Swelling caused by altitude-induced blood leakage
within the brain) HACE is essentially impossible to predict. Fit, healthy,
experienced climbers die every year from HACE, often with almost no warning.
It is unfortunately a risk you take when climbing extreme heights like
Everest.

------
pier0
Someone else mentioned Anatoli Boukreev in relation to the 1996 season on
Everest.

If you want to understand more how high-altitude climbers think, this makes
for a perfect read: [http://www.amazon.com/Above-Clouds-Diaries-High-Altitude-
Mou...](http://www.amazon.com/Above-Clouds-Diaries-High-Altitude-
Mountaineer/dp/031229137X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1306968293&sr=8-1)

------
golgo13
So I am guessing his body will remain on Everest. Another sad addition to the
Death Zone.

~~~
bcl
It is too dangerous to try and recover bodies. At those altitudes your body is
doing everything it can to survive and the margin for error is nearly zero.

------
localhost3000
This is extraordinarily sad news. Shame on the posters here who seem to be
taking delight in judgment. The guy is dead, grow up.

~~~
watty
I don't think anyone here is taking delight in his judgement, where did you
read that? It seems like many posters here can't comprehend why a human being
would play Russian roulette knowing that they have two children and one in the
womb.

------
noonespecial
I can't judge. Everyone dies, but not many die awesome. The sad fact is that
even though he died tragically young, he still probably provided far more both
in money and example for his kids than I will be able to manage with a
lifetime of cautious mediocrity.

------
ck2
Well he joined the crowd. Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978295>

How about running a marathon instead. Or is that not expensive enough?

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JabavuAdams
One's life and ambitions don't end when one becomes a parent.

For those whose greatest ambition (confirmed by their actions) is to be a
responsible parent, great!

The reality for actual parents is that parenting is a constant struggle
between one's ambitions and one's responsibilites.

Yes, this is an extreme case, but how is this much more selfish than parents
who get divorced?

One might argue that if a father cannot always and in all conditions put the
children first, he should not be a father.

I'd argue that this is overly simplistic. Honestly and strictly applied, it
would mean that we'd almost never reproduce.

------
moo
I think the drive in people who push boundaries between what is safe and what
is dangerous is beneficial to overall human survival. It puts us more in
control of the surrounding natural environments.

We all take survival risks. I wouldn't climb Everest but I do ride a
motorcycle and scuba dive. Both hobbies do add survival risks for only
enjoying life more.

------
benatkin
Sad news.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrade#Death_of_CEO>

------
cincinnatus
Sad. Tragic. Selfish. Stupid.

In that order.

------
BasDirks
RIP.

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pizza_
He didn't predict that.

------
codexon
An error has occurred.

For detailed error information, please see the HTML source code, and contact
the forum Administrator.

Lock wait timeout exceeded; try restarting transaction

Query being executed when exception was thrown: UPDATE jforum_topics SET
topic_views = topic_views + 1 WHERE topic_id = 492413

~~~
tcdent
Aside from possibility of interest in the exposed query, what's the point of
copying as pasting the error you just got?

~~~
codexon
As oxtopus said, this is something I never hope to see on a trading site.
Especially just for counting views.

And really? 5 downvotes for saying that the link does't work? This community
has really declined.

~~~
sorbus
> And really? 5 downvotes for saying that the link does't work? This community
> has really declined.

Downvotes for an error message posted with no context[1] on the other hand,
are entirely appropriate.

[1] The error appears to have been fixed, so reading the article provides no
context - I didn't even realize that that was where it had appeared until
reading brk's comment.

~~~
codexon
Isn't the context clear? Do I really need to say "This error message is the
whole content of the story?" Aren't you guys a little smarter than that?

I received those downvotes the entire time the website was down.

