This past Saturday I was in lovely Kiama and decided to go for a wander through the cliffs past the Kiama blowhole. Just before the path to the cliffs, the council put up a sign to the effect of: “Warning! This is risky business.
Going past this sign places in you in danger of: slipping and falling off a rock, breaking your bones, death and injury, being swept out to sea by a wave, etc etc. Proceed entirely at your own risk.”
How stupid, I thought in a kneejerk reaction, and what a waste. Is this a case of the council cynically covering themselves legally or a case of hyper-political-correctness? I mean how stupid do you have to be to be careful when near cliffs? But as I walked on I thought a bit more and realised I was wrong. For instance, even the average person might not have thought of the extra danger of being swept away by a wave, and having seen the sign they are probably a little less likely to be swept away. And, even if someone really is really stupid, to the point of having no survival instinct, isn’t being against the sign the equivalent of saying stupid people deserve to die? I think so.
It’s common to decry warning signs that seem to be stupid as an example of “political correctness gone awry”. And of course when done to avoid lawsuits it is stupid since it’s ridiculous to be able to sue when you get hurt from a lack of common sense. But a lack of common sense should not be a capital crime — and in fact I was conscious that the Kiama sign probably made me pay a tiny bit more attention. A sign is cheap, even a stupid sign. And yet, if that Kiama blowhole sign has been there 10 years, it’s likely that it’s saved one life. That’s a whole lot cheaper than a $100,000 helicopter rescue we’re willing to perform on the same lack of common sense when it actually sends someone over a cliff. I guess it’s because the victim’s already there, it’s hard to say they shouldn’t get a rescue. But a future victim you’ve never met? It’s a lot easier to say, “stuff em, let’s not put stupid signs up”.
Another ironic thing is that a lot of people against stupid warning signs are also against the death penalty. So, they are not ok with someone dying for murder or rape but seemingly ok with letting the universe inflict a capital punishment for mere stupidity. (I know the analogy’s imperfect since the death penalty is after the crime whereas a warning sign requires pre-planning, but still…) I’m sure I’ve done several things in my life that were as stupid as not being careful about waves sweeping you away — by that count I shouldn’t be here. I’m sure you’ve done the same too, where survival was the result of NOT being unlucky. Like Eliezer Yudkowsky (can’t find a link to his specific post), I don’t believe in capital punishment full stop. No buts.
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you’ll know I’m anti-death (more on this later). Of course, the death of some is no tragedy since for those with enough evil behind them the world immediately becomes a better place.
tragedy of loss (evil people). But regardless of this — and even if you’re not specifically anti-death — these warning signs show that the death of most people is an unfathomable and irredeemable tragedy. It is so high that I don’t think there’s much difference between the death of someone who needs a warning sign and the death of an intelligent person making reasonable contributions to society (I’d put the first at say 10000 badness points and the second at 11000).
Which brings me to the Darwin Awards. It’s nice to laugh at stupidity, and I think laughing at death and tragedy is an essential part of being a person. But the problem with something like the Darwin Awards is they make it easy to forget that it’s still a tragedy. People say as a joke that the award winners have done us a “Darwinian” favour by dying, but of course they haven’t. And again the same people would decry eugenics (which is the non-jokey version of the Darwin Awards). But if you read such stuff regularly, the line between jokeyness and reality becomes blurred.
A final point of provocation. Cryonics are available in many countries and whatever your opinion on the feasibility of it working, I hope you’ll agree that signing up for cryonics raises your chance of being revived after death from 0% to something greater. So, in a way, most of the deaths in industrialised nations are at least probabilistically preventable. In a way, all of our deaths from natural causes are Darwin Awards…
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