I read it more like saying that we should teach "Russian roulette has a 1/6 chance to kill you, which increases every round", rather than "Russian roulette will definitely kill you."

The former puts the information into the hands of individuals, and let's them draw the appropriate conclusions. With the latter, you risk someone saying "I played Russian roulette and it was fine, this whole safety thing is BS”

This risk is even bigger if millions of people have tried and survived the purportedly deadly activity, such as home wiring shocks.

There's a pretty big difference in the odds of a house mains electrical shock stopping your heart compared to the 1 in 6 chance of the bullet being in the chamber that lands in alignment with the barrel.

* * *

> How big? Big enough to disregard?

Yes, pretty much. 400 people are electrocuted in the US every year, usually in industrial situations. Thousands of people will get shocked today. The odds of a heart problem are low enough that suggesting people should be terrified of light sockets because it may stop their heart is just fearmongering, and reduces the effectiveness of other safety-related communication. This is like California proudly proclaiming that everything causes cancer. Counterproductive.

I appreciate the point you’re making, but I’d like a source for

> Thousands of people will get shocked today

Before I come to any conclusions.

According to [0], “There are also at least 30,000 shock incidents per year that are non-fatal” and “ In the United States, there are approximately 1000 deaths per year, as a result of electrical injuries”

So about 1 in 30(ish) if we assume they accounted for nonreporting. If we assume they underreported by 10x, 1/300 is still pretty bad odds

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK448087/

* * *

That's 30,000 people getting shocked and it being serious, needing to go to the hospital. People doing work around houses get shocked all the time. 120v in typical US house is like mildly annoying. Definitely not trying to hold onto wires with bare hands or anything but getting "bit" while changing light switches or outlets isn't painful enough for many people to worry about finding the breaker box.