I wish more people understood your thinking. Two instructions you get at a doctor’s office before having a surgical procedure:
- Wear comfortable clothes.
- Don’t eat anything before surgery.
The first is so you don’t have tight clothes rubbing your achy body on the ride home. The second is so that you don’t vomit up your eggs Benedict, inhale it, and die an awful death. They’re both in the same size print in the same bullet list.
That stuff should be explained beforehand but I rarely hear it said that concretely. I’ve wondered if rephrasing that like:
- Don’t eat anything before surgery, because it might make you die.
> I’ve wondered if rephrasing that like: ... would save lives
It would make people more scared of surgeries since the wording is stronger, fear of surgeries causes a lot of issues as well including people dying since they refuse to get a surgery.
Fair. Maybe they could be in separate sections like “For your comfort” and “Critical safety instructions”. The broader idea is that people should know the gist of why they’re being told not to do a thing, and that it’s for their own good. In this case the instruction isn’t to avoid them puking so that a janitor doesn’t have to clean it up (along the same lines of “no black rubber soles on the gym floor”), but so it doesn’t put them in intensive care.
Humans spent the last 40,000 years not having explanations for rules because there were no (known) explanations for rules. Not an easy habit to shake, I think.
- Wear comfortable clothes.
- Don’t eat anything before surgery.
The first is so you don’t have tight clothes rubbing your achy body on the ride home. The second is so that you don’t vomit up your eggs Benedict, inhale it, and die an awful death. They’re both in the same size print in the same bullet list.
That stuff should be explained beforehand but I rarely hear it said that concretely. I’ve wondered if rephrasing that like:
- Don’t eat anything before surgery, because it might make you die.
would save lives.