18.01.07 dr wank’s first maxim of human behavior

Posted under: fluff, games, society

My friend Dr Wank, a psychology professor at the University of Ottawa, holds as his first maxim of human behavior that People are Stupid.

A lot of the history I’ve been reading confirms this, but this morning, a particularly sad example of it popped up in my feeds:

Radio station holds a contest to see who can drink the most water without peeing, for the grand prize of a Wii.
Yes, the obvious puns are made.
DJs make jokes about previous water intoxication deaths and responsibility waivers as contestant has bad symptoms on air.
People call in to warn about water intoxication risk.
Contest continues.
Contestant dies.

Q.E.D.

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5 comments on 'dr wank’s first maxim of human behavior'

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  1. Comment by JonasParker on 18.01.07 at 12:53 pm

    And I agree with most of the commenters that the station should not be able to hide behind that bullshit waiver, given the circumstances.

  2. Comment by blork on 19.01.07 at 1:28 pm

    This is compounded stupidity. A stupid contest idea that stupid people allowed to come to fruition, and stupid people signed up for the contest, and everyone stupidly went ahead with it despite the warnings.

    It’s not even linear — it’s a three dimensional matrix of stupidity.

  3. Comment by DrWank on 22.01.07 at 7:51 pm

    I find Blork’s expansion on my maxim to be most illuminating. Compounded multi-dimensionalality may indeed be the mechanism by which people manage to be so outlandishly stupid. This warrants further investigation… :-)

    Sad about that girl though. :-(

  4. Comment by Matthew on 23.01.07 at 1:27 pm

    It is ridiculous that a contest like this could even be permitted considering the amount of literature that’s been released on Hyponatremia in the past couple of years. It’s definitely a case of reckless endangerment.

  5. Comment by tbit on 31.01.07 at 12:39 pm

    i had never heard of the concept before the contest and even if i had, i would have found it hard to believe you could do it by drinking a lot of water. it just sounds too strange to be considered real life. but then again much of life is like that.

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