The satire lies in the notion that by making such a risky and ill-advised decision, this person has "improved" the human gene pool by not passing on their genes, oftentimes due to a lack of common sense or awareness. The goal of Darwin Awards is to serve as cautionary tales, reminding others to avoid similar mistakes.

The r/DarwinAwards reddit community has the following quote in it's bio:

"News about natural selection in action! Reddit home of the Darwin Awards: Population control volunteers. The tree of life is self-pruning!"

How To Earn The Darwin Award

So what are some the most frequent ways by which people earn Darwin Awards?

Trains

Trains are fast moving masses of steel (100+ tons) that cannot stop quickly. At the top of the food chain is what has been dubbed as the Apex Predator i.e. trains due to the sheer number of people winning a Darwin Award in this category.

Examples of actions that have won Darwin Awards with trains:

• Leaning out of a fast moving train.
• Standing or walking unaware next to a railway track.
• Taking a selfie or shooting a TikTok video with a fast moving train.
• Ignoring all signals and driving/walking around the lowered gate of a railroad crossing.
• Getting on or off a moving train.

Electricity

Electricity is invisible to the human eye. We can't directly see electric currents or electrical charges, but we can observe the effects of electricity.

Examples of actions that have won Darwin Awards with electricity:

• Touching an overhead power line.
• Using a metallic object to touch a power cable.
• Touching or being in close contact with a person who is getting electrocuted.
• Climbing or touching an electric pole to recover an object or save a life.

Fire

Fire is a fundamental source of energy. However, fires can spread quickly causing extreme heat, burns, smoke and even explosions.

Examples of actions that have won Darwin Awards with fire:

• Leaving an open fire unattended.
• Pouring water over gasoline in an attempt to put out a fire.
• Trying to put out a rapidly growing fire yourself.

Water

All living things have an affinity towards water because water is the source of all life. ~71% of earth's surface is covered by water. While water is essential for life, it also poses several dangers if not handled carefully.

Examples of actions that have won Darwin Awards with water:

• Diving head first into a shallow pool of water.
• Diving into fast moving water.
• Jumping off high bridges.
• Ignoring flash flood warnings near waterfalls especially during monsoon.
• Turning your back to water on rocky coasts when the waves are big.

Animals

Animals can be cute, friendly, and man's best friend—until they're not. Oftentimes, wild animals have instincts and emotions that can make their behavior completely unpredictable.

Examples of actions that have won Darwin Awards with animals:

• Getting close to wild animals such as bears, snakes, elephants, big cats etc.
• Participating in bull fights.
• Not respecting an animal's territorial nature.
• Not respecting an animal's protective instinct for its offspring.

Cults

What happens when a group of people exhibit an irrational degree of devotion to a particular leader, ideology, or set of beliefs? It results in the creation of cults.

Cults can use authoritarian and manipulative tactics to dictate how members should think, behave, and live. While not all cults are bad, historically several cults have produced very unfortunate outcomes for society.

Examples of cults that have won Darwin Awards:

• The Burari deaths of 2018 in New Delhi resulted in the death of eleven members of the same family.
• The Jonestown massacre of 1978 resulted in the death of 918 people who were all part of "The Peoples Temple" cult by Jim Jones.
• Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God of 2000 cult in Uganda resulted in over 700 deaths from a mass murder-suicide.

Vehicles

If you head over to reddit communities such as r/IdiotsInCars or r/Dashcam or r/Dashcams or r/MildlyBadDrivers you will see example after example of poor human judgement behind a wheel that leads to deadly accidents and/or drivers creating extremely dangerous scenarios on the road and endangering the lives of others. According to the NHTSA, car accidents in the United States results in 1 death every 12 minutes.

Examples of actions that have won Darwin Awards with vehicles:

• Speeding.
• Distracted driving.
• Driving under the influence.
• Night driving.
• Fatigued driving.
• Road rage.
• Failure to follow the law: e.g. improper turns, running lights, not yielding, not signaling, not wearing a seatbelt etc.

How Not To Earn The Darwin Award

"All I want to know is where I'm going to die so I'll never go there." - Charlie Munger

Avoiding stupidity is far more important than being very clever. For example, a big part of parenting is to teach children what not to do. This is both extremely valuable and important for children & adults alike.

While human beings are the most intelligent species to ever live on earth, a host of modern factors such as cognitive biases, social media, physical & mental lethargy, miseducation etc. has led to many preventable Darwin Awards.

Now let us turn our attention to how not to earn a Darwin Award.

Harnessing The Power Of Fear

Fear is a powerful emotion that has been programmed into us by evolution. A healthy dose of fear helps us stay alert and within our circle of competence.

Fear helps us detect threats in our environment and promotes survival - for example with a "fight-or-flight" response. Fear also enhances our self-awareness by encouraging us to pay attention to our gut feelings and instincts. For example:

• If you see a fire that is spreading fast - just run.
• If you see a crazy driver on the road - drive defensively and stay as far away as possible.
• If you are in a forest and it is eerily quiet then there might be a predator close by - be careful!
• Respect powerful forces of nature - e.g., water, wind, fire, extreme temperatures etc.

Worst Case Thinking

In Computer Science, the performance of an algorithm is measured in terms of Best Case, Average Case & Worst Case time complexity. Applying this thinking to real-world scenarios, we can also adopt worst case analysis before taking any action.

For example, what is the best & worst that can happen if a person dives into a murky pool of water?

• In the best case, the person is lucky i.e. the water is deep, there are no rocks, they use the right diving technique and pull off a great heroic jump which results in a stunning video that can be shared on social media.
• In the worst case however, the person is very unlucky i.e. the water is shallow and due to wrong estimation and an incorrect diving technique they hit their head against the water floor. This in turn leads to permanent paralysis or death.

Applying second-order thinking via a simple question i.e. "What is the worst that can happen?" before following through on risky impulsive behavior can prevent a person from getting a Darwin Award.

Awareness Of Cognitive Biases

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool." ― Richard P. Feynman

A cognitive error is a consistent deviation from logical, rational thinking, involving recurring mistakes in judgment that people routinely make over time and across generations.

For example, many Darwin Awards have been won due to one single cognitive error i.e. overestimation. Humans are known to constantly overestimate many things including their knowledge, skills & talent.

For example, with the rise of social media the trend has been to only display successes while hiding failures. This results in Survivorship Bias i.e. systemic overestimation of chances of success. To guard against this, we have to shift the focus to talk more openly about failures so that we can learn from it. This discussion about Darwin Awards is a step in that direction.

With the rise of the "YOLO: You Only Live Once" movement, another classic example of a cognitive error that has become very common is Hyperbolic Discounting i.e. the tendency to choose an immediate reward over delayed gratification. Many Darwin Award winners fell for this cognitive error when they acted out of impulse to drive recklessly or got too close to animals and trains.

Critical Thinking

"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know." - Donald Rumsfeld

The prefrontal cortex region of the brain is responsible for higher-order cognitive functions, including reasoning, decision-making, problem-solving, and self-control. Nobody is born with impeccable critical thinking skills. Like any other skill it has to be cultivated with deliberate practice over time.

What are some ways to improve critical thinking?

Ask Lots Of Questions

"Quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers." - Tony Robbins

Not just the quantity but it is the quality of questions that really matters. Typically we want to ask questions that can help us gain insight and a deeper understanding of the problem or topic at hand. This often translates into being able to explain The Why behind something clearly and succinctly.

For example, instead just saying "Don't leave a fire unattended." you should be able to communicate The Why i.e. "Don't leave a fire unattended because it can quickly grow out of control and cause wildfires, carbon monoxide poisoning, loss of life and/or property resulting in severe legal consequences."

Examples of some quality questions:

• Why? Why? Why?
• Is this true or false?
• Can you trust the source?
• Is there bias in the data?
• What are you not being told?
• When does it not work?
• What is the best case outcome?
• What is the worst case outcome?
• Why was this law or rule put in place?
• ELI5: Explain Like I'm Five?.
• The "Red Face Test": will your grandparents be proud of you?

Learn, Unlearn & Relearn

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn" - Alvin Toffler

Given the exponential rise of information, miseducation has also increased. It is becoming hard to separate truth from falsehood. Even worse is the rise of pseudoscience i.e. statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method.

So how do we defend ourselves from this onslaught of relentless change and information? Here are some behavioral suggestions as a starting point:

• Become a lifelong learning machine.
• Have an open mind.
• Be curious.
• Question everything.
• Minimize time on social media.
• Beware of clickbait.
• Learn directly from high quality sources e.g. read books yourself instead of summaries from others.
• Experiment and form your own opinions based on real-world feedback.
• Discard ideas & beliefs that are no longer serving you.

Learning From Other People's Mistakes

"Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself." - Eleanor Roosevelt

Accidents that result in death are undoubtedly tragic. They cause lot of pain and suffering. However, a silver lining is that oftentimes we find that individual sacrifices greatly benefit the collective. However, this only happens when we analyze and learn from the mistakes that occurred.

For example, The Titanic disaster of April 15, 1912, was the largest peacetime maritime disaster of its time in terms of loss of life. However, it resulted in a seismic shift of maritime safety which resulted in strict lifeboat regulations, formation of International Ice Patrol, regulations for Continuous Radio Watch, ship design improvements, technology adoption and so many more changes that were made for fostering international maritime safety. Since then, there have only been a handful of such large scale maritime accidents.

Ironically, on June 18, 2023, the privately operated Titan submersible imploded during a titanic wreck expedition killing all five aboard including a couple of billionaires. The United States Coast Guard (USCG) & National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) conducted an investigation to "determine how this tragedy occurred and issue safety recommendations to prevent a similar loss in the future."

Apply Scientific Thinking To The Real World

"I think it’s important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because it’s like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths…and then reason up from there." - Elon Musk

Many of the Darwin Award actions we've seen above could have been prevented with a basic understanding and application of science. For example:

• Trains cannot stop quickly because Momentum = Mass x Velocity i.e. trains have a very large mass and even with a small velocity they will have high momentum which is why stopping a train requires a large force over an extended period due to its high momentum. TL;DR - Don't mess with trains.
• Electricity can be understood in terms of the Second Law of Thermodynamics which states that systems tend to evolve toward a state of maximum entropy or equilibrium. When a human holding a metallic object, both of which are good conductors of electricity, touches an electric current, electrons seek to equalize the potential difference. This can cause shocks, burns, or even death. TL;DR - Don't mess with electricity.
• Water impact from jumping can be understood using Newton's Third Law of Motion, which states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The fatal impact of hitting water at high speed occurs because water, being nearly incompressible, resists displacement, resulting in a force similar to hitting a solid surface, like concrete. TL;DR - Don't dive into water without proper training.

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