You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

wilkox comments on You'll die if you do that - Less Wrong Discussion

15 Post author: sixes_and_sevens 12 May 2011 10:27AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (67)

Comments (67)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: gwern 12 May 2011 03:38:57PM 4 points [-]

It doesn't look edible, or smell appetising, and isn't even especially harmful to ingest in most circumstances. Chances are that if I ever did want to eat silica gel, I'd probably have a damn good reason, and a lifetime of being told to not eat it is an obstacle to that.

People can be stupid. Shockingly stupid. Much like the infamous McDonald's coffee case (which turns out to be much more sensible and fair a verdict when you read the details), I would not be surprised if there were a reason for the warning.

Or do you read the Darwin Awards and think they must 'have a damn good reason' for what they did?

Comment author: wilkox 15 May 2011 11:45:39PM *  6 points [-]

From the linked McDonald's coffee case article:

In addition, they awarded her $2.7 million in punitive damages. The jurors apparently arrived at this figure from [the burn victim's lawyer's] suggestion to penalize McDonald's for one or two days' worth of coffee revenues, which were about $1.35 million per day.

Talk about a brilliant use of anchoring...

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit