[another-one-off]

Being bombarded in a trench for days and still being partially functional as a soldier is pretty much the gold standard for courage. Nevertheless 'water behind a dam you call on [with different sizes for different people]' is a very arguable metaphor.

There are vanishingly few people stupid enough to subject themselves to stress and fear voluntarily just because. They either see themselves as having no choice (possibly correctly) or because they perceive a reward to be had (possibly one related to validating who they see themselves as). It basically follows (handwave) that courage is a combined ability to either not feel stress (or fear) in some situation - which does not run out - or to push or regardless of stresses in pursuit of some higher goal.

In the latter case, once someone decides that it isn't worth it they aren't going to come back again, acting a bit like a dam running out of water. But their ability to act courageously will change depending on the circumstance, and in some instances they may be significantly more courageous if they don't really see themselves as having a choice. Eg, a parent defending their child vs a parent defending random strangers would be completely different in terms of how much punishment they endure.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

It evidently can be argued that people have different levels of resilience.

People with low resilience are going to fail often and early in all stressful situations.

Comparing the same person in different situations is probably not the best metric. Comparing different people across the same / similar situation is probably closer to experimentally valid.

[pessimizer]

> People with low resilience are going to fail often and early in all stressful situations.

This isn't an argument, though, just a restatement.

> Comparing the same person in different situations is probably not the best metric. Comparing different people across the same / similar situation is probably closer to experimentally valid.

It's not reasonable to assume the same relative value for success in two different people facing the same situation, no matter what criterion you use to choose the people, including if that criterion is what they self-report. Usually experiments like this are done for a token value, guaranteed to be close in absolute value between participants just because those valuations are insignificant. You can't do an experiment that could measure the amount of "courage" and how it drains, or even measure through natural observation without access to internal states that don't have organs called "courage" that we can examine.

What one patriot might call courage in a trench, an otherwise courageous person in that trench may call patriotism. They might run out out of "courage" to stand up to the army overrunning their position and decide to surrender, but never run out of "courage" defending their children.

[Fricken]

There are many people in the world of climbing and mountaineering who voluntarily subject themselves to stress and fear just because, and they're not stupid, they just have different priorities.

The most well known outlier is probably Alex Honnold, and he's been conditioning himself mentally for El Cap since he first scaled the walls of his crib. In the years since he's logged thousands of hours free soloing, with many close calls and moments of panic along the way. Many climbers dabble in free soloing but don't get very far before they realize "holy shit, this is scary", but Honnold keeps going back, and overrides powerful hardwired instincts for self-preservation to do it.

[pessimizer]

> they just have different priorities.

> because they perceive a reward to be had (possibly one related to validating who they see themselves as).

I think you're manufacturing a disagreement here.