I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)

Given that they did feel tingling, honestly I am not convinced one should follow that example anywhere on earth.

The post also describes that the breaker thing trips when the electricity takes an "some other route than expected" (their words), which I'd say tingling is indicative of: some electricity was being conducted away via the water and, at some point, their foot. Yet the breaker no trip, so either it wasn't a protected circuit or they drew another wrong conclusion based on that aquarium observation which they expected to go differently based on a previously wrong conclusion.

If you can assume the water has a similar conductivity as the tap water in the aquarium (not sure that's a safe assumption after it flooded a room with all sorts of dust and objects in it), and you can assume that your body can handle more electricity than the breaker needs to trip, then a fairly short distance ought to indeed insulate you well enough, but the objective was to get close and turn it off. The post sounded like they based this "I'll do it" opinion basically on the hairdryer-in-aquarium thing which we already know didn't go as expected. To me, the situations "hairdryer runs by itself in water" and "I, standing on a ground, stick my hand near the device's off switch in the water" are two very different things. There could easily have been further unknowns -- and apparently there were since the breaker didn't function in the way that this very post describes it should.

Since moving to Germany I've often noticed wariness around "Halbwissen" (loaning the word since it carries extra connotation), meaning half-knowledge but not in the sense of "you know something about it!"; rather, you kinda know but you don't know the details and that causes overconfidence. That works out until it doesn't

I don't honestly subscribe to that a whole lot: you can't know everything about everything and we use partial knowledge all day long for nearly every topic. Also electricity, I've noticed before a lot of mysticism and fear goes around unnecessarily. So I like the part where experimenting, when done carefully (letting it dry, using a protected circuit, being aware that it might fail and you should observe it first), is encouraged. However, this particular bit about going into the water and "I felt the electricity but everyone cheered me on!" is not what and how you're supposed to do these experiments

humans are not automatically strategic. one reason is that they're subject to many kinds of irrationality; the particular species you are currently exhibiting is known as 'the fallacy of affirming the consequent'

a pretty large fraction would continue using electric showers just because they're familiar with them—but that is at best only a very weak argument. we can do better than that by debating their actual advantages and disadvantages, as i did in the linked comment, rather than mindlessly subscribing to vox populi, vox dei

if given the option, free of charge, to install a bidet in your house, would you take it? evidently not, because you don't know what a bidet is or how to use it. the same could be said of most people installing a computer in their house 50 years ago. or many modern innovations today, like a gfci, corningware, and borosilicate oven dishes, some of which have fallen out of use because consumers didn't understand them

using a cellphone instead of a landline was only common in impoverished areas 30 years ago, and even today, having front-door locks that are hard to pick are still only common in impoverished areas. also, speaking lingala is only common in impoverished areas. that's not because there's anything wrong with lingala

finally, as it happens, my wife prefers instant coffee to fresh-brewed coffee