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By the way, I don't think this is at all a "friend jumped off a cliff" analogy.

My burning down a field is a "if your friend jumped off a cliff" situation.

Kids become attached to their animals just as powerfully, and often more so than adults do. This is an emotional action based on love I would guess, not an a classic risk anlaysis.

Often, when people do things like this, it may not even be a risked based thought process, just "something I have got to do".

Soldiers throwing themselves on grenades, pilots steering their crashing planes into uninhabited areas, people jumping into icy waters or, as in this case, running into burning buildings are not, in my opinion, based on classical logical components the way one might think.

If you analyze their actions, they are, for the most part, simply foolhardy or illogical.

I do see exactly the point you make, and agree on a level.

However, when you factor in the love a man feels for his wife or son, or a soldier feels for a buddy, or...a child for his dog or cat...they understand at some level, that there are things that mean more to themselves than life itself.

Such as love or responsibility.

I was once told a story entitled "The Six Foolish Marines", by my great uncle, himself a highly decorated combat Marine. Six Marines are standing in a circle, BS'ing in an idle moment. Then one of them pulls out a fragmentation grenade and says, "Hey! Look what I got!" Then, while showing it to the others, the safety pin falls out and the handle flies off, surprising him so much that he drops it. Rule #1: Do not play with tools. The second Marine immediately jumps on the grenade to save his friends. However, in that they all had perhaps nine seconds to run away, he soon finds himself alone, waiting patiently for the grenade to go off. Rule #2: Sacrificing your life rarely saves any other lives. However, the grenade does not go off and his friends return. The third Marine then volunteers to reach under the second Marine to grab the grenade and throw it away. Rule #3: Tying to save the life of someone who has tried to sacrifice their life often results in the loss of two lives. But the grenade still doesn't go off. So the fourth Marine picks it up and disassembles it, to see why it didn't go off. Rule #4: Curiosity killed the Marine. Still doesn't go off, so he reassembles it. Marine number five approaches him with a wad of cash, and offers to buy it. Rule #5: Just because you can buy yourself trouble, doesn't make it any the less trouble. The leaves only Marine number six, who took all of this in, but got all the details wrong, and tells everyone he knows that grenades are safe to play with. Rule #6: Don't believe everything you hear, even if it's from a fellow Marine. Interestingly enough, I was told that every time my great uncle told this story, the details and the rules were apt to change. And yet there was always lots of good advice in there.