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Moof
Big Wall climber
A cube at my soul sucking job in Oregon
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Micro-cracks will kill us all!
My personal frustration are those who freak out over being brought up on a solid body belay, but don't give a second thought to belaying you off a 3 piece anchor behind an expando crumbling tuft flake.
Dogma trumps phsyics/science/engineering every time...
Way too many folks don't even know how much a kN is (hint: about a climber with a rack on). Way fewer understand what WLL means, and most want to add an extra safety factor even after you've explained it to them.
I feel dumb for being just as careful belaying my smoker friends as my non-smoker friends. Sort of like re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic...
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Zetedog
Trad climber
PGH, PA
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Two completely incongruent thoughts:
1) When in B-School - I read a white paper that was called something like "the complacency curve". This guy had studied a number of higher risk occupations - open water fishing, highline electrical work, skyscraper construction, etc, and had found 3 concentration of accidents - based upon the timeline of each user - that was consistent across all of these jobs
a) after 3 months to under 14 months - people are generally less supervised, but have enough instruction to be dangerous - their training applies to certain situations, and they don't know enough to realize when the circumstances are different
b) around 3 years - bad practices catch up - whether taught bad practices or bad practices were never corrected, there was a spike in accidents
c) - 5 - 7 years - complacency sets in, large spike in accidents
The remedy that lowered these in all tasks as constant retraining and re-evaluation of techniques.
2) The human brain is really bad at calculating / handling risk - this been shown in many studies, many of which boil down to scenarios like this -
a)You win a contest - for $500. Before accepting the prize you get the chance to flip a coin to either double your money, or get zero. Which do you chose?
b)Two weeks later - you get fined by the IRS for $500. the agent feels frisky - and offers you a choice - pay $500 or flip a coin to have you either pay 1,000 or 0.
Most people choose differently between scenario a and b. You should be indifferent between flipping a coin or $500 (.5*0 + .5*1000 = 500), but people will rationalize away at why they are choosing differently.
ToddE.
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tdk
climber
puhoynix
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Then there's the just plain old dumbness factor. Like leading a slab-to-vertical climb near one's limit with a novice belayer, falling on the vertical and busting an ankle on the slab below when the belayer doesn't catch you cleanly. Hurt like crazy, six months out of action, and a traumatized belayer who felt terrible even though I was the idiot who put her in the situation. Dumb.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Do they first drill pilot holes for those fat screws???
Yow...'glad you are better now.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 1, 2008 - 07:34pm PT
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Must resist "screwed" joke
;-)
Karl
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Clint Cummins
Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
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ToddE,
I liked your timeline on accidents.
As for the other one:
> 2) The human brain is really bad at calculating / handling risk - this been shown in many studies, many of which boil down to scenarios like this -
> a)You win a contest - for $500. Before accepting the prize you get the chance to flip a coin to either double your money, or get zero. Which do you chose?
> b)Two weeks later - you get fined by the IRS for $500. the agent feels frisky - and offers you a choice - pay $500 or flip a coin to have you either pay 1,000 or 0.
> Most people choose differently between scenario a and b. You should be indifferent between flipping a coin or $500 (.5*0 + .5*1000 = 500), but people will rationalize away at why they are choosing differently.
Actually, you should be indifferent only if the way you value wealth is linear. Say you start with wealth W in both situations and your utility function of wealth is U(w):
a) U(W+500) vs. [U(W) + U(W+1000)]/2
b) U(W-500) vs. [U(W) + U(W-1000)]/2
All the same if U(w) is linear; not the same otherwise.
A simple example for (a) of nonlinear is if you need the $500 to buy a plane ticket to escape Rwanda; $0 leaves you in town to get shot.
Similar for (b), say -$500 removes your ability to buy the plane ticket; you need to flip the coin for your only chance of getting out of town.
The standard in economics is that U(w) is a convex/decreasing function like log(w) or sqrt(w). This is the basis for such phenomina as risk aversion and insurance.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 1, 2008 - 08:12pm PT
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Awesome contributions by so many people.
Waking up to things that can hurt us can protect us. Let's never forget what we don't know and also not forget what we used to know.
I know sometimes I've been soloing something like the arches that I've climbed many dozen times and while I'm mindful, I just might be a bit too casual. Always got to keep the mind in check.
Peace
Karl
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Zetedog
Trad climber
PGH, PA
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Clint -
I think your actually arguing the point that I was making - EUT suggestions people make risk aversion choices based solely on the individuals perceived curvature of their utility function, and where they are on that curve (diminishing marginal utility, I think). The risk/payoff doesn't change regardless of their function, it only defines their preference to risk aversion.
As a trader - I also know that it dictates my behavior - and is also a big reason why we are in the economic mess that we are currently in.
As for the timeline - I emailed my prof. to see if he can forward that it to me - I may be slightly off on those times - but I took note of that pretty closely recognizing the relationship to many things such as climbing that I do.
ToddE.
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TradIsGood
Chalkless climber
the Gunks end of the country
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ToddE,
I got Clint's explanation. It is well accepted. Game theorists will even show that a person's utility function can be measured with enough input.
It does not agree with you at all. In either scenario, your utility function leads to the same choice regardless of the shape of U. In your scenarios and your utility function, the person *should* be indifferent, but that is because your utility function is linear with respect to dollars.
Clint's example explains the success of lotteries. I don't mind losing dollars, one at a time, so long as the remote payoff is large. That single dollar each time does not hurt me, but the million bucks I might win dramatically changes mah lahf!
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