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"it's not his fault that this happened" This is wrong; and is a class of error which I see frequently, especially in political comment; both from the left and
by ajb 16y ago
"it's not his fault that this happened"
This is wrong; and is a class of error which I see frequently, especially in political comment; both from the left and the right.
The underlying incorrect assumption is that responsibility is mutually exclusive.
In many cases, responsibilities are divided cleanly between people, but this is an organisational convenience, not a moral law. There are cases where it is inescapable that more than one person has the same responsibility. Consider an army sargeant: he may assign a task to a soldier, but still has the responsibility for seeing that it is done. This is true for all leadership positions.
Much political discourse revolves around who has responsibility, and frequently one sees it argued that A is not responsible because B is, often in cases where this is incorrect. Eg, employer versus employee, individual versus government, etc etc.
The error is made in both directions, depending on the political beliefs of the arguer: an individual is not responsibly because the organisation is, or the organisation is not responsible because the individual is..
A particularly dumb one, in my opinion, is the argument that government is not responsible for something, because individuals are. In my view, all the valid responsibilities of government are derived from responsibilities of the individual: the responsibility to defend the nation is derived from the individuals responsibility to protect him/herself and family, etc.
- astrofinch 16y agoResponsibility is one of those concepts that we humans made up and spend a lot of time uselessly arguing over. Other examples are whether an action was "justified", whether someone "deserves" something, who gets the credit for stuff, etc. Examples I'm less sure about: Who "owns" something, whether something is "clean" or "dirty", whether two things are the "same", whether something is "normal" or not. I collect these; if anyone has more to share I'd love to hear them.
- JonnieCache 16y agoThis is called Fundamental Attribution Error. As the name suggests it is a foundational part of human social psychology and it has been studied for years. Personally I'm convinced it is one of the cognitive flaws that are needed to stop us from going teeth-gnashingly insane after ten minutes exposure to reality. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Fundamental_a... See also: "She should have known what would happen to her, going out at night dressed like that." No.
- jrockway 16y agoRape is a bit different from someone who doesn't work for you having the necessary access to delete all your files.
- JonnieCache 16y agoObviously. But the cognitive mistake is the same. This is not me getting on my soapbox, it is a point of view held by psychologists, it's there in the literature.
- jrockway 16y agoFine, I'll rephrase. If the hosting company took the simplest possible precautions, then this would not have happened. You can't trust people that don't work for you.