That reminds me of a feature of 4chan, where there is no archive and every conversation is deleted after it becomes inactive. (This has been circumvented by other websites that archive 4chan threads, but not all of them get archived). I like being able to discuss ideas like this without ruining a website's reputation (though 4chan isn't a perfect analogy, because it discusses awful stuff so often that even if you can't find it on Google, it's reputation is terrible). Maybe LW should have something similar? Maybe you should be able create a thread that can only be viewed by people with >N karma? Or that, after so much time, will become viewable only by people with >N karma?
Interesting idea. It might give off phygish vibes, though (you must be Pure Thetan Level Six to learn about Xenu.)
The man-made object responsible for the most deaths worldwide is the tobacco cigarette. It isn't even close.
Tobacco kills 443,000 Americans a year and 5 million people a year worldwide. This is more than the total number of people killed by cars and firearms combined. Cars kill about 32,000 Americans each year and 1.3 million people worldwide, while firearms kill about 32,000 Americans each year and "several hundred thousand" people worldwide.
100 million people were killed by tobacco in the 20th century. This is more than the death toll from World War 1 (17 million) and World War 2 (50 to 70 million) combined.
From a strictly utilitarian perspective, would there be anything to be gained by, say, starting a campaign of assassination against executives of tobacco companies?