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by armada651 719 days ago
Sometimes someone has to tell the party when they've come up with a potentially deadly idea no matter how much of a killjoy that may be.
3 comments

Case in point - my friends wanted to imbibe a certain white powder with alcohol and I had to let them know that it is magnitudes more toxic to take them together. Did they have a less fun time? Probably. But I won't have their premature deaths on my conscience.
So, now we're comparing a hat dropping one or two stories to overdosing on a combination of drugs and alcohol?

It'd be nice if we could all just chill the hell out and let someone's fun, stupid, kinda pointless project just be someone's fun, stupid, kinda pointless project.

Edit: I don't mind the downvotes, but do feel free to tell me if I'm off base for thinking comparing this project to overdosing is a hell of a stretch.

I was responding with an anecdote to the comment that sometimes it's important to communicate concerns, even if it means being a killjoy. Didn't mean for it to sound like I was trying to equate the AI hat-dropper to potentially overdosing, just a recent occurrence that I was reminded of when I saw the parent comment.
Imagine walking (or in this case, standing around) on a sidewalk just going about your business. Then, imagine something drops on your head, literally out of the blue. In a city littered with scaffolding designed to prevent pedestrians being injured by stuff dropping from buildings. Further, imagine you are easily scared and/or have a weak heart. So, I think it's not a huge stretch to say that, with enough unlucky coincidences, this also might kill someone.
I think it'd almost certainly eventually kill someone with a pacemaker and a weak heart.

(Or maybe cause someone to take a sudden step away from the sidewalk)

(I wonder if the title is a bit clickbait and the hat dropper in fact tries out this new tech only on friends who are prepared already, not random strangers?)

It is opt-in. You have to “order” a hat.
Aha, now, on a 2nd look, I see this:

> Here a busy New Yorker can book a 5 minute time slot, pay for a hat, stand in a spot under my window for 3 seconds, have a hat put on their head, and get on with their extremely important, extemely busy day

Ok. And after all, such nice hats are a bit expensive I guess (since they also function as helicopters).

Skimmed the article the first time.

if it kills someone you can always just say "it's just a prank bro"
I don't think he was making that comparison. I think this he was more referring to the mentality of "you must be fun at parties" whenever someone speaks up with some concerns about an idea.
Thanks for getting where I was coming from, haha.
Most parties serve alcoholic drinks. Alcohol is a common reason for sudden and early deaths. Do you go around saying that in every party you attend?
I think it’s more akin to telling someone at the party that it’d be stupid to chug that whole bottle of liquor on a dare.
Drinking alcohol is almost certainly more dangerous than dropping hats.

This is not even close.

Heck, pick any one negative impact of drinking alcohol at parties (impaired driving, or long term health effects, or impaired judgment, etc) and that individual impact would probably be orders of magnitude worse than the total negative impact of dropping hats.

If someone spikes the punch with alcohol that's bad. If everyone is consenting: drop away. If they don't consent please leave them alone.
Is dropping a hat really comparable to chugging a whole bottle of liquor?
It is a hat. Chugging a bottle of liquor has way more harm potential.
Only if you’re focused on the individual instead of risk to unrelated 3rd parties.
Yes, think of how dangerous it is to have a hat land nearby…
You mean how dangerous is tossing something vision blocking where people drive…
Do you go around qualifying every point with a hyperbolic example to show that it doesn’t generalize at every party that you attend?
Yes, you don’t?
Deadly? More like the music's too loud.