The Nonlinear Library LW - Recommendation: reports on the search for missing hiker Bill Ewasko by eukaryote
Aug 1, 2024
17:37
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Recommendation: reports on the search for missing hiker Bill Ewasko, published by eukaryote on August 1, 2024 on LessWrong.
Content warning: About an IRL death.
Today's post isn't so much an essay as a recommendation for two bodies of work on the same topic: Tom Mahood's blog posts and Adam "KarmaFrog1" Marsland's videos on the 2010 disappearance of Bill Ewasko, who went for a day hike in Joshua Tree National Park and dropped out of contact.
2010 - Bill Ewasko goes missing
Tom Mahood's writeups on the search [Blog post, website goes down sometimes so if the site doesn't work, check the internet archive]
2022 - Ewasko's body found
ADAM WALKS AROUND Ep. 47 "Ewasko's Last Trail (Part One)" [Youtube video]
ADAM WALKS AROUND Ep. 48 "Ewasko's Last Trail (Part Two)" [Youtube video]
And then if you're really interested, there's a little more info that Adam discusses from the coroner's report:
Bill Ewasko update (1 of 2): The Coroner's Report
Bill Ewasko update (2 of 2) - Refinements & Alternates
(I won't be fully recounting every aspect of the story. But I'll give you the pitch and go into some aspects I found interesting. Literally everything interesting here is just recounting their work, go check em out.)
Most ways people die in the wilderness are tragic, accidental, and kind of similar. A person in a remote area gets injured or lost, becomes the other one too, and dies of exposure, a clumsy accident, etc. Most people who die in the wilderness have done something stupid to wind up there. Fewer people die who have NOT done anything glaringly stupid, but it still happens, the same way. Ewasko's case appears to have been one of these.
He was a fit 66-year-old who went for a day hike and never made it back. His story is not particularly unprecedented.
This is also not a triumphant story. Bill Ewasko is dead. Most of these searches were made and reports written months and years after his disappearance. We now know he was alive when Search and Rescue started, but by months out, nobody involved expected to find him alive.
Ewasko was not found alive. In 2022, other hikers finally stumbled onto his remains in a remote area in Joshua Tree National Park; this was, largely, expected to happen eventually.
I recommend these particular stories, when we already know the ending, because they're stunningly in-depth and well-written fact-driven investigations from two smart technical experts trying to get to the bottom of a very difficult problem.
Because of the way things shook out, we get to see this investigation and changes in theories at multiple points: Tom Mahood has been trying to locate Ewasko for years and written various reports after search and search, finding and receiving new evidence, changing his mind, as has Adam, and then we get the main missing piece: finding the body. Adam visits the site and tries to put the pieces together after that.
Mahood and Adam are trying to do something very difficult in a very level-headed fashion. It is tragic but also a case study in inquiry and approaching a question rationally.
(They're not, like, Rationalist rationalists. One of Mahood's logs makes note of visiting a couple of coordinates suggested by remote viewers, AKA psychics. But the human mind is vast and full of nuance, and so was the search area, and on literally every other count, I'd love to see you do better.)
Unknowns and the missing persons case
Like I said, nothing mind-boggling happened to Ewasko. But to be clear, by wilderness Search and Rescue standards, Ewasko's case is interesting for a couple reasons:
First, Ewasko was not expected to be found very far away. He was a 65-year-old on a day hike. But despite an early and continuous search, the body was not found for over a decade.
Second, two days after he failed to make a home-safe call to his partner and was reported mis...
Content warning: About an IRL death.
Today's post isn't so much an essay as a recommendation for two bodies of work on the same topic: Tom Mahood's blog posts and Adam "KarmaFrog1" Marsland's videos on the 2010 disappearance of Bill Ewasko, who went for a day hike in Joshua Tree National Park and dropped out of contact.
2010 - Bill Ewasko goes missing
Tom Mahood's writeups on the search [Blog post, website goes down sometimes so if the site doesn't work, check the internet archive]
2022 - Ewasko's body found
ADAM WALKS AROUND Ep. 47 "Ewasko's Last Trail (Part One)" [Youtube video]
ADAM WALKS AROUND Ep. 48 "Ewasko's Last Trail (Part Two)" [Youtube video]
And then if you're really interested, there's a little more info that Adam discusses from the coroner's report:
Bill Ewasko update (1 of 2): The Coroner's Report
Bill Ewasko update (2 of 2) - Refinements & Alternates
(I won't be fully recounting every aspect of the story. But I'll give you the pitch and go into some aspects I found interesting. Literally everything interesting here is just recounting their work, go check em out.)
Most ways people die in the wilderness are tragic, accidental, and kind of similar. A person in a remote area gets injured or lost, becomes the other one too, and dies of exposure, a clumsy accident, etc. Most people who die in the wilderness have done something stupid to wind up there. Fewer people die who have NOT done anything glaringly stupid, but it still happens, the same way. Ewasko's case appears to have been one of these.
He was a fit 66-year-old who went for a day hike and never made it back. His story is not particularly unprecedented.
This is also not a triumphant story. Bill Ewasko is dead. Most of these searches were made and reports written months and years after his disappearance. We now know he was alive when Search and Rescue started, but by months out, nobody involved expected to find him alive.
Ewasko was not found alive. In 2022, other hikers finally stumbled onto his remains in a remote area in Joshua Tree National Park; this was, largely, expected to happen eventually.
I recommend these particular stories, when we already know the ending, because they're stunningly in-depth and well-written fact-driven investigations from two smart technical experts trying to get to the bottom of a very difficult problem.
Because of the way things shook out, we get to see this investigation and changes in theories at multiple points: Tom Mahood has been trying to locate Ewasko for years and written various reports after search and search, finding and receiving new evidence, changing his mind, as has Adam, and then we get the main missing piece: finding the body. Adam visits the site and tries to put the pieces together after that.
Mahood and Adam are trying to do something very difficult in a very level-headed fashion. It is tragic but also a case study in inquiry and approaching a question rationally.
(They're not, like, Rationalist rationalists. One of Mahood's logs makes note of visiting a couple of coordinates suggested by remote viewers, AKA psychics. But the human mind is vast and full of nuance, and so was the search area, and on literally every other count, I'd love to see you do better.)
Unknowns and the missing persons case
Like I said, nothing mind-boggling happened to Ewasko. But to be clear, by wilderness Search and Rescue standards, Ewasko's case is interesting for a couple reasons:
First, Ewasko was not expected to be found very far away. He was a 65-year-old on a day hike. But despite an early and continuous search, the body was not found for over a decade.
Second, two days after he failed to make a home-safe call to his partner and was reported mis...