An exercise in (non-)human psychology

[baxil]

Two coworkers of mine -- who I will leave nameless to protect the innocent -- cannot settle a raging debate, and they have turned to me for an impartial third-party opinion. In turn, I turn to you, people of the Internets. Can you take a few seconds and help me put this to rest for them?

Poll A bitter sweets debateExplain yourself in comments, if you'd like -- especially

Comments

[dewhitton]

I went for the broken ones because... CHOCOLATE! I like the surprise of unbroken chocolates, but if I could see peppermint amongst the broken ones then I'd have that.

Broken chocolates that have been "tested?" Not so much.

[kinkyturtle]

My only question is why didn't whoever cut them neatly open with a knife? Doesn't he think presentation counts for ANYTHING?

[premchai21]

This is assuming that the chocolates are from a trustworthy source to begin with, of course. If the source is dubious, then the intact ones and the broken ones might both have some kind of nasties hiding in them (cue Monty Python references, track 12, marker 3 or possibly marker 4). This is also assuming that the environment does not include coworkers with access to the chocolates whom I do not trust with write access to anything that will be ingested. If either of those conditions don't hold, I take no chocolates regardless.

[nicked_metal]

Question 3 activates my paranoia, and is the only time when I wouldn't take a chocolate. Question 6 I didn't answer because there are some important unknown variables, being the extent to which I prefer any of the identifiable flavours (if there's one flavour that is a clear winner, I'll select that out of the IDed group), and the ratio of flavours I really don't like vs flavours that I like among the IDed chocolates (since that ratio is likely to hold true for the undamaged chocolate).

[kadyg]

kinkyturtle asked the question I was going to: Since when is blunt force an acceptable way to split candy? if you're going to go through all the trouble of "opening" the chocolates without touching them, do it in a neat manner. God gave us knives for just this situation.

Scenario 3 made me all kinds of paranoid and gave me visions of chocolates served up by Sicilians with immunity to iocane powder. In scenario 6, I would take a pristine, random chocolate since the only filling I really hate is cherry cordial and those are pretty easy to spot - usually.