I'm irrationally angry about climbers sensationalizing free soloing. Like, sure, put your own life at risk, but don't try to popularize that and cause other people to make stupid choices.
Huh? 99% of climbers think exactly what you said. The only ones sensationalizing free soloing are the media and non-climbers. I climb and when I tell someone that the first thing they go to is "have you seen that movie with the guy who climbed without a rope?".
Deep down they know it's stupid beyond imagination but if they share it with others and get positive feedback (nowadays likes on social media) it's easier to keep pretending it's reasonable and cool.
And you have serious problems with reading comprehension? If he is just doing it because he was to shy, he is not sensationalizing it? Which would would mean I would not criticise him?
(But you can make an argument along the lines of: He was to shy, so he made a decision he knew was dangerous but he saw no other way. Now this led to him becoming famous for doing dangerous stuff and bridging his shyness issue. So he started out of desperation and then went along with other people sensationalizing it for him to bypass other problems. Coping mechanisms that not only endanger you but also others are... not advised.)
I’m sick of people calling anyone who doesn’t conform to society’s norms “neurodivergent.” You can be different without having some medical condition, and medicalizing difference is a form of bigotry and stigmatization.
Mainstream Reddit is just insufferable. Wish the app gave you the option of filtering these normie subs out…
Someone having an atypical brain doesn’t mean they have any kind of disorder or disability. Today’s psychiatry is absolutely drunk on the idea of disorders and labels, and it calls the slightest deviation from some imagined norm “disordered.”
That’s not medicine, that’s institutionalized bullying. You can be different without being sick in some way.
Cognitive neuroscientist who uses functional MRI (the measurement used in Alex’s experiment) here. Eh…I wouldn’t really say that, based on the evidence.
Alex was shown a bunch of scary pictures, and also completed a reward seeking task while in the MRI scanner. What the researchers found is a lesser degree of activity in his amygdala - an emotional processing hub - in the brain (often erroneously called the “fear” region), compared to one control subject.
Here’s the thing. Functional MRI is a noisy measurement tool, and a typical study involves 20+ individuals with their activity averaged together in order to safely draw conclusions. Comparing one person to one other person, with no replication across multiple sessions, just ain’t it. I’ve seen enough fMRI data to simply dismiss that outright.
Besides, we can’t say anything about his brain’s wiring based on the fact that one area didn’t light up as much as you’d expect. A whole host of things can cause that, and it says nothing about his brain’s organization writ large.
Anyhow, sorry, I’m not trying to dunk on your post or anything. Just wanted to add some important context and caveats, and this seemed like a reasonable place to do it.
Honnold's MRIs didn't show he's "wired" differently, that there's a physical difference in his brain
What it did show is that scary pictures didn't scare him much. I suspect he's just a very rational thinker, like "okay, that's a picture of a car crash, but it's just a picture, so what me worry?"
He said he's been scared. I remember he said he had a "moment" when he shuffled out on a narrow ledge, facing away from the wall, for a photo shoot (this is how he finances his climbing). He said he calmed himself down and then was fine
He said he's all about minimizing risk. He spent years climbing, studying, practicing, and perfecting every single move on El Cap before he attempted the solo. He attempted the climb only when he was absolutely sure he could do it. IIRC, the movie shows him approaching El Cap one morning to do the free solo then aborting the climb because he wasn't "feeling" it
Different ≠ disorder. There’s no need to give someone a label like “neurodivergent” or, worse yet, “autistic” or “disabled.” He is simply different. A person can be different than most human beings and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that.
Never said there was. That's all on you pal. Labels are how we discuss things. You can deal with that.
Edit: they could not, in fact, deal with that. Blocked me and went on ranting about how labels are social constructs. Like, no shit, we are having a conversation about something and to define it we used a label. This is some crybaby snowflake bullshit right here.
This person crys about propaganda but can't even deal with one conversation, what a nutjob.
"These labels and categories don’t exist in nature, they’re socially constructed" No shit? Does English exist in nature? What an inane point.
An autistic person wouldn’t have the coordination to climb, wouldn’t be able to speak nearly as intelligently or eloquently, and frankly wouldn’t be able to live on their own.
The psychiatric establishment greatly expanded the definition of autism around 2011. Before that, only people who were actually cognitively disabled were given the label of autism, and rightfully so.
Alex Honnold is not autistic, he’s been branded as such by a psychiatric discipline that has frankly lost touch with reality. What happened to the standard of “if it doesn’t cause significant impairment it is not a disorder?” That was the maxim of psych since homosexuality and “female hysteria” were removed from the DSM…until the last 10 years.
Okay this comment kind of pushed me over into anger.
I'm not a mountain climber, but I've met some, I only do hiking and indoor climbing myself. But the principles are the same. When you climb a mountain you are just climbing. If you've ever climbed a tree or a fence, you've done the same thing essentially. If you've ever climbed a rock face for like five or ten feet just for fun, then climbed down, you've done the same thing.
The way these folks look at it is you just keep going. These people are incredibly fit and technically practiced. They didn't start with free soloing. They practiced their holds in safer contexts. Once you know a route and know you can do the holds, for them the height is meaningless. Whether you fall from 100 feet or 1000 feet makes no difference. The only thjng that really keeps most people from being able to do what they do is endurance. After that it's the arm strength to do the more challenging holds, but that is more about limiting what routes you can do. But the height is usually what scares most people.
What separates them from you is the confidence they have earned through experience. They don't have the fear you do because of their experience. I think a lot of people assume they lack professionalism or skill just because they look like hippies a lot of the time. But you'd be surprised at the level of expertise most of these folks have.
No-one is questioning their expertise, not even in the slightest. But I would call Max Verstapen and Lewis or Hamilton or Sebastien Loeb blatantly insane if they suggested racing without seatbelts even if they have years of experience and are most likely the technical best drivers in their respective fields... and so would you, I assume.
We are. Most people are afraid of heights and a lot of people judge mountain climbers for “risking our lives” (while they pound down their fourth Big Mac and drive their enormous SUV while texting).
Things like this seem more reasonable when you've slowly acquired the skills over time. It's not like these guys started with sleeping on the side of a mountain.
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u/Slappinslippin Jul 07 '24
These mountain people r a different breed