alt Hacker News> Obvious plant nobody would be that stupid to store the valuables at home within the first six months after the „acquisition“.
Whenever you say "nobody would be that stupid" you have to pause and take a deep breath and realise that however dumb something is, there are for sure people who are stupid enough to do it.
Example 1 from personal experience: I was at my aunt's house and she had to rush a friend's husband to get medical help because he had drilled a hole in his own stomach with a hand drill while trying to put up a bookshelf.
The friend had been reading a book on medieval medicine so (rather than rushing her husband immediately to hospital) decided to try a medieval remedy on him so fed him some soup to see whether (in line with the medieval diagnostic routine) she could smell it after he had eaten it. She could indeed, because it dribbled out of the hole he had drilled in his stomach.
Now. You might reasonably say: "Noone would be so dumb as to drill a hole in their own stomach" or indeed "noone would be so dumb as to see a loved one who had drilled a hole in themselves and decide to feed them soup" but I can tell you from direct personal experience there are people dumb enough to do this.
Example 2 from personal experience[1]: A friend of my dad who was a highly capable chemical engineer and generally very practical guy (eg he made a motorcycle for his kids to play on using salvaged parts including a lawnmower engine and a frame he welded together himself) was a hobby parachutist. He broke his spine because he decided to modify his parachute himself on his wife's sewing machine in spite of having no previous sewing experience.
However dumb something is, there are people dumb enough to do it and even otherwise smart people have blind spots that make them incredibly dumb under the right circumstances.
[1] Just in case you think smart people can't do incredibly dumb things.
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> Whenever you say "nobody would be that stupid" you have to pause and take a deep breath and realise that however dumb something is, there are for sure people who are stupid enough to do it.
Long ago, I graduated from a police academy. One of the things taught was that crooks, while clever at finding ways to make money, are rather unclever ("stupid" if you will) at performing that task. Which is why so many are caught.
The smart engineer who over-estimated his ability with sewing is a tragic example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
I'm reminded of the Dunning Kruger paper [0]:
> In 1995, McArthur Wheeler walked into two Pittsburgh banks and robbed them in broad daylight, with no visible attempt at disguise. He was arrested later that night, less than an hour after videotapes of him taken from surveillance cameras were broadcast on the 11 o'clock news. When police later showed him the surveillance tapes, Mr. Wheeler stared in incredulity. "But I wore the juice," he mumbled. Apparently, Mr. Wheeler was under the impression that rubbing one's face with lemon juice rendered it invisible to videotape cameras.
Links:
0 - that paper itself: https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/sasi/wp-content/uploads/sites/27...
I mean, you see smart people all over the world talking to imaginary, supernatural, all powerfull beings asking for favors via prayers, like that would have any effect on their lives.
The first story could literally be a sketch on a comedy show, thanks for the laugh