The visual metaphor is of the Infinity Room at the House on the Rock. The further out in the room that one can walk, the more guts they have. Or, you can look at it from an engineering perspective — when designing that room, the engineer who has the best skills, can design a room that projects further than others.
Or, at least, that's what I use to justify my dangerous behavior anyway. (though I think that it's possible to make dangerous activities into less dangerous ones, if one approaches the problem in a systematic way, as with other engineering problems)