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by gogopuppygogo 1852 days ago
That penn and teller episode with the petition for removing dihydrogen monoxide from schools was fantastic.

https://youtu.be/zVxypRWZODQ

1 comments

Using obscure terminology to confuse people certainly makes a good joke :-) I'm not sure it really tells us much though.
It tells us that people are willing to sign a petition to ban a thing while clearly not having done their research on the thing, just because an authoritative-seeming stranger told them something plausible. It means that such petitions shouldn't be taken seriously; and, to the extent that they are serious, it implies something about people's recklessness with regard to policymaking.

(I wonder how such a survey would fare today, when most people have smartphones with browsers and an internet connection.)