Son, take all risks you want, but you really don’t f**k with this
A cheat sheet for parents to think about core non naive risk taking needed to transmit to our kids, from a complex systems perspective.
Me and my kids have always play on parks, great way to grow strength. As they are very used to it, they started easy and build on that. I’ve always told them about don’t fall from above the head, so if they were to climb the rope above that it is because they are more than sure they can. This implies not helping them, after a very initial point, so they don’t rely on that to go up. I’m always (ok ok… eventually there is no such thing as always) near and supervising. One day after their basketball training the little one in the picture asked to go with his friends to play. I was tired and with low attention, I wanted to go home and above that i didn’t like his friends influence (the kind of kid that push each other to risk). But he is very stubborn (your best characteristics are also your worst depending on context). The result was a broken arm that required surgery and two nails.
What went wrong?
Me: I didn’t listen to my guts. In mountaineering we have a saying, “if you have doubts, you don’t have doubts”
Son: He let himself to broke the rule… starting playing in this kind of hanging bars and swing while “friends” push him harder and harder. Eventually he got almost horizontal and fall. Caput.
Not doing sports is a very bad idea from any focus considered. A little practice has a very small benefit, as training get more serious benefits increases non-linear but then benefits starts to slow down and even stop. Eventually if you get professional for example many athletes will get bad accidents, will over train, could burn out, etc. So if we keep pushing we most probably will get hurt.
Elite sport is not about healthy by no means and in general we shall remember that everything that optimice, fragilize the system.
Kukuczka was a unique climber doing some of the most difficult and xtreme routes in Himalayas, but even after having climbed the 14 mountains of more than 8,000m (second one to accomplish this) he kept going, caput!
On the other hand we have Messner who after reaching for the first time the 14 mountains of more than 8,000m, decided to change to polar-desert exploration.
Basic characteristics of systems in terms of antifragility, which is the property of a system to respond in a convex way to perturbations, variability, stressors or time. In the figure (A–C) are examples of fragile, robust/resilient and antifragile systems respectively; (D–F) are examples of profile responses to perturbations.
Be aware that:
- One may be antifragile (win from stressors) in one dimension (physical) but be fragile in others (emotional)
- Antifragility is local, meaning it also have dose-response in the sense one may win from stressor up to certain point, then could break up suddenly (this is called a tipping point)
- A group of person could be antifragile at the expense of the individuals fragility.
My brother loves motorcycling (he started slow and took several very professional courses, he was as me a mountaineer and explorer so he knows you have to be serious about risk). The other they he was telling me how a friend of a friend went out to Mexico-Cuernavaca with his son. They were good riders, in the morning they were posting videos of the son making good maneuvers. In the afternoon some tragic pictures about their accidents, got all over the place were both got killed, the son literally lost its head. Speed increases very non linear our risk and do not mix with overconfidence, alcohol, drugs, distractions, bad luck… so avoid speed
Most people used to take risks know this phenomena: when you are new to the activity you are in great risk but usually accidents are no so bad. Then as you get better, risk reduce and accidents pretty much stops. Then when you get really good you start to experience overconfidence and take risks you would not take before… caput!
Whenever you see the most calm, panic the most… stability does not provide information about the environment, information comes from fluctuations, so you need to not isolate form it.
Something has happened in motorcycling is a yuge technological development downloaded to commercial bikes. So even not so good drivers can go very fast, make stunts and so on. I think this is one reason Reinhold Messner get to elderly, because he practiced (by practical and philosophical reasons) what he called renunciation mountaineering… no oxygen, no big expeditions, etc.
Link to entire presentation
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1naqqgDbeCn-TPyo1GQ0paUf4pkQKqHTQkN6dHK_sBKI/edit?usp=sharing
