Risk VS consequence how do you seperate the two?
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I've recently heard, (won't say who I heard it from so that I'm not accused of judging anyone), that a climber should separate risk from consequence. What does this mean? |
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I think you had it right with your definitions. Assess the level of risk when climbing can be more helpful than assessing the severity of the consequence. It might help to keep the same level of safety habits across the board. I'm not sure if I agree with the method wholly but that seems like the point behind the statement. |
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You, are on a roll, Mr; Spencer Parkin;) risk nothing gain nothing, risk too much, and you lose |
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Wikipedia quote: "Risk is the potential of losing something of value, weighed against the potential to gain something of value. Values (such as physical health, social status, emotional well being or financial wealth) can be gained or lost when taking risk resulting from a given action, activity and/or inaction, foreseen or unforeseen. Risk can also be defined as the intentional interaction with uncertainty. Risk perception is the subjective judgment people make about the severity of a risk, and may vary person to person. Any human endeavor carries some risk, but some are much riskier than others." |
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It's an expected value calculation: |
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In aerospace, risk is frequently defined as the product of chance and consequence: |
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liquid courage |
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How difficult is the monty hall problem? V3? If you're a stats major does it bring to down to V2+? |
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John Marsella wrote: Well, if you're talking about risk of bodily injury or ego bruising or something, yes. If the risk being assessed is simply "risk of failure" there are likely plenty of scenarios in which risk of failure is high while consequence (ie, pain, etc). E.g. I can approach a 5.12 in the gym and risk of failure approaches 100% while consequence is negligible. In the other direction (low risk, high consequence)I have done some scrambling approaches where it is highly unlikely that I slip and fall off the edge of whatever (or into the water on a rock-hop over a swift creek, etc), but it would hurt pretty bad or I might drown or some such very high consequence.That's exactly what Jake said, John. They're NOT necessarily correlated. |
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I think you're definition of risk is pretty dead on, however, it's not how most people see it. Most people see a consequence such as death or severe injury, and are paralyzed, regardless of the probability of that occurring. |
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I have not read this thred so hope this fits here. Read the full essay in my reply to the ethics of Retro Bolting. |
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As others have said, risk is not independent from consequence. It's, simplistically, the probability of an event multiplied by the magnitude of the consequence of that event (Christian's expected value explanation is better). It's equally silly to think that risk is only determined by probability as it is to think only consequence matters. If either of those were true, then the concept of "risk" would be totally redundant with probability or consequence, and I don't think anyone would agree that it is. |
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I usually weigh consequence first, then risk. But, that's me. I recently did a 5.0 ridge which was really just 4th class with a handful of 5.0 moves. There was a low angle slab boulder that went over the edge of a 50ft drop to a 500ft roll through a talus field, and came back around on to safe ground. It was maybe 10 ft of something probably anyone with 4 limbs could do(read: 0 risk), and I still went around the long way because I didn't like the consequence. |
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tedxtalks.ted.com/video/Ris…
Here's a great Ted Talk with Grant Statham, Canadian Mountain Guide, on the topic. |
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spencerparkin wrote:There may be a symbiotic relationships between risk and consequence. You have to consider both. About the bolting stuff Michael talked about... I would still call myself a relatively new climber, but I think it's interesting to see how my own viewpoint on bolts has changed over the past 4 years since I started. Yes, in the beginning, I was disappointed when a climb I had considered had no bolts on it, especially for anchors. But after having finally climbed Jig's Up on the Dead Snag, it was quite gratifying, through the whole experience, to know that we had begun the route with only what we brought, took on the mountain for just what mother nature made it to be, and then left it without any trace we were ever there. (Well, we may have left some chalk.) If I had encountered a bolt along the way, even if I didn't use it, I think it would have detracted from the whole experience of the route. You really do take something away from a route when you give it a bolt it doesn't need.Spencer: I like your perspective and I agree with you! I'd only say that the "route" never needs a bolt... Climbers may want a bolt to mitigate the risk of attempting the route, but the route doesn't need anything but our appreciation and respect. Howard |
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hikingdrew wrote:In aerospace, risk is frequently defined as the product of chance and consequence: Risk = chance of something happening x consequence of it happening with numbers assigned 1 to 5 So you assign values and then prioritize based on the risk. Something likely to happen(5) with a serious consequence(5) should be dealt with before worrying about either things that happen often(5) but with little consequence(1) or those that are serious(5) but happen very infrequently(1) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_…+1 risk is a probability and a consequence |
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Bias plays a heavy role in this dance between measuring risk and consequence. |
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I like the aerospace analogy. Here is a highway engineering analogy, which is pretty much the same in that you consider the product of probability multiplied by consequence. |
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risk is fun. consequences aren't... |