Same old question writ small and silly....

Not particularly deep or challenging, but it is what has been bouncing around my head today:

So let us pretend that, as an art project, I dig a deep pit in a public park, but brutal sharp spikes at the bottom, then have a structure dangling a valuable object above the pit, clearly out of reach of passer-bys. The pit is clearly labeled as dangerous (and as art).

Given what I have observed of the human population at large, I *know* that a non-zero number of people will try to, but painfully (possibly fatally) fail to take the valuable object.

As individuals I believe that the folks who maim themselves trying to get the valuable object are fully responsible for their own injuries. However, if I consider the set of people who pass my creation as a discrete unit with specific traits, then clearly I have designed something intended to harm.

Thoughts?

Same old question writ small and silly....

Not particularly deep or challenging, but it is what has been bouncing around my head today:

So let us pretend that, as an art project, I dig a deep pit in a public park, but brutal sharp spikes at the bottom, then have a structure dangling a valuable object above the pit, clearly out of reach of passer-bys. The pit is clearly labeled as dangerous (and as art).

Given what I have observed of the human population at large, I *know* that a non-zero number of people will try to, but painfully (possibly fatally) fail to take the valuable object.

As individuals I believe that the folks who maim themselves trying to get the valuable object are fully responsible for their own injuries. However, if I consider the set of people who pass my creation as a discrete unit with specific traits, then clearly I have designed something intended to harm.

Thoughts?