Is it really OK to be laughing at people 'removing themselves from the gene pool'? Sometimes ignorance kills - but the point about being ignorant is you usually don't know that you are ignorant. Sometimes stupidity kills, but a lot of people just aren't blessed with intelligence. Why take pleasure in their demise?

Of course I can't stop people having fun in this way, but given the galloping mistrust the general population have of scientists and intellectuals, is it really a good idea to alienate them further by taking pleasure in lethal accidents?

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"I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive." - Carl Sagan, 1995

It's the level of the lack of intelligence in someone who appears to be functioning in an otherwise normal manner in society.

There's a big difference in not knowing a pipe is hot because it's just had an end welded, and not knowing a glowing red stovetop is hot.

And; there is a big difference in something innocent happening vs something unfortunate while doing something that's already stupid.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

This is an interesting question. For me, the Darwin awards aren't so much about laughing at the stupid people, but rather listening to some very interesting stories about how someone seized upon an idea, had the gumption to see it through, but didn't really assess the risk well enough.

The Darwin Award stories also typically evoke very visual images. As a story teller, this is a highly valued aspect.

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Forming opinions as we speak

How come its OK to laugh at someone for not being naturally intelligent enough to see the danger they were putting themselves in, but you presumably wouldn't consider it OK to laugh at someone who got mugged for not being naturally strong enough to fight off their attackers?

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"I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive." - Carl Sagan, 1995

Scale, and compare with the average (or even low average) person.

Most people wouldn't be able to fight off a mugger. So why would the victim.

Most people know that something that can go boom and break something into a million little pieces has the potential to inflict harm on the human body. Someone who can't see that connection is probably a real danger to society, and it is a much more comfortable feeling that it was self-inflicted rather than causing harm to another person.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

The fact is that everybody is ignorant to a certain extent. Nobel prize winner Marie Curie, for example, won the 1934 Darwin Award edition [wasn´t ignorance the ultimate cause of her death?].

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If you're careful enough, nothing bad or good will ever happen to you.

Laughing at the Darwins is a natural response. Not all laughter is gleeful. It's more a "laugh to keep from screaming 'What the [censored] were you thinking?'" kind of laughter.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

That's different. Of course ignorance caused her death, but it wasn't a Darwinistic humor because nobody had that knowledge at the time.

In some cases, it's Darwinistic because it goes more against natural instincts rather than not having the knowledge.

In other cases, it's because the person knows the danger and that's why they are doing it in the first place.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

An interesting question Damburger. I have to admit, I laugh at some of it too, but at some point it does seem to cross a line into just picking on people for your own amusement. And we are all just one stupid instant from being a future award winner. I'm just not sure where the line is. I have to admit, I have decided not to participate in the poll, even before you posted this thread (it seemed a little too much for me).

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009

Personally, I find myself often laughing in amazement more than maliciousness.
Take a look at this guy http://www.break.com/index/kid_gets_burned_by_fire.html

Now ask yourself, at what point would dousing your trousers with petrol and running through fire seem like a good idea? Why do these people never ask themselves "what is the worst thing that could happen?"

Now that guy likely received third degree burns, requiring a great deal of expensive medical treatment, will probably be scarred for life, and likely caused untold grief to his family. I still laughed and I don't think I'm a bad person because of that. It was an unbelievably stupid thing to do and there is no way he could claim ignorance of the dangers. Ironically, someone who is actually intellectually challenged would almost certainly not try such a stunt, since fear of fire is a very basic trait. The kid in that video is not intellectually challenged, his stupidity is born of arrogance.

Just as often, idiots like this will maim or kill an innocent person, so when they do it to themselves, I think it's just fine and dandy to laugh.

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This is not an idea to be tossed aside lightly - it should be thrown with great force

Well, that´s debatable. Radiography already existed. She should have been cautious as to the possible damaging effects of radiation that could travel across organic tissues.

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If you're careful enough, nothing bad or good will ever happen to you.

That's exactly it Occam. I saw a vid segment of some kids on one of those "Most extreeme" shows. They were playing street hockey, which they decided wasn't exciting enough. So they doused the ball in gasoline, and played flaming street hockey.
Of course, that excitement quickly wore off aswell. So the goalie decided it would be even more fun to douse his pads, gloves, and stick with gasolene and then play flaming ball street hockey. Shot on goal. And the block! WOOSH! AND THE GOALIES ON FIRE!

Now he got his pads off and survived with just some minor burns and missing eyebrows. Darwin failed us on that day.

What makes it funny, no matter the extent of the injury is this:

What did they expect to happen? How could they have possibly imagined that going any other way?

I don't typically consider "blow'd mah-self up with'n my home-mayde 'splodey-tube' stories as necessarly Darwin nominees, because the goal was obviously to blow something else up.

Someone tying a stick of dynamite to the top of their football helmet, and expecting it to protect them is different. But I do make exceptions for creativity (like the recent "Shotgun fixes stuck lugnut" guy, who narrowly missed eligibility by surviving his wounds).

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

I think that's going to be the real issue. I think Occam hit it on the nail for me. It's more a matter of ignorance, and poetic justice.

Mostly when the person is doing something that is criminal, insulting, or just plain for the attention, and knows what the danger is but thinks they are above it so they don't take any precautions.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

There's a joke (based on the truth) that the two most common last phrases people say before dying are:

1. Oh (explicitive deleted)
2. Hey everybody, watch this!

When someone is showing off and manages to off themselves instead, then I have a hard time feeling sorry for them. Stupidity should be painful.

One of my favorite sayings is: "Anyone can learn from his own mistakes. Wisdom is learning from the mistakes of others."*

Sometimes, these Darwin Award winners may actually perform a last public service by serving as a warning to others who might be considering doing something equally stupid.

*That's why many aviation magazines feature accident reports. We hope that by reading about the mistakes of others, we can avoid making the same set of mistakes ourselves. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

I feel I should point out that a lot of "Darwin award winners" (there's actually an organization that's trademarked "Darwin award," and most of the lists circulating on the internet aren't from them) aren't right in the sense that they cannot be documented. They are merely stories someone made up because it seems to be human nature to find them funny.

The earliest I can actually document the use of other humans' suffering for entertainment is Ancient Rome, but I'm sure it's older than that, or else the Romans wouldn't have done it on such scale. Is it right? Personally, I don't think so. Then again, I am myself entertained by fictional tales of other people's suffering, so what can I say?

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

The dangers of radioisotopes were only just beginning to become apparent by that time. The sacrifices of the Curies, Roentgen, and many others who worked with these substances made the dangers apparent. They do not deserve the scorn of a Darwin award.

On the other hand, if I were to start boiling down great masses of pitchblende and other ores using no protection whatsoever from fumes and radiation then I would be most deserving of a Darwin award.

Edited to add: For my money, my vote goes to the two fools who thought it was cool to jump up and down on an oil storage tank.

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Microsoft is over if you want it.

The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

Schadenfreude makes my world go round.

I really don't think most people are taking pleasure in the demise of these people simply because they see humor in a situtation in the abstract. I don't know anyone here who would actually snicker while attending an awardee's funeral. But in the abstract, at our remote emotional distance from the outcome of the situation, I don't see anything wrong with finding humor in monumentally foolish behavior. To me, it's just a variety of "black comedy" or "dark humor" which, IIRC, is considered perfectly healthy so long as it's not carried to extremes.

I don't know who you hang around but the Darwin Awards are arguably one of the most popular e-mails to be forwarded on a recurring basis. I don't recall ever receiving them from anyone I would tag as a "scientist" or an "intellectual" or from anyone who said they got it from same, so it would seem that the lay public are enjoying them just as much. I think you're getting just a little wrapped around the axle on this one. Relax and don't take life so seriously. None of us are getting out of it alive.

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Brett
Peters Creek, Alaska