Failing to take additional steps before a loss is conceptually very different from being able to take additional steps after a loss. You might as well list a wh

Failing to take additional steps before a loss is conceptually very different from being able to take additional steps after a loss. You might as well list a whole bunch of additional things he could have done before throwing away the hard drive, e.g. having a recovery phrase split over multiple pieces of paper each stored in different bank vaults (like the Winkelvii), or simply keeping a back-up of the hard drive contents. If you lose the PIN to access your bank account, your bank would never say something like "sorry, can't help, you should have done X, Y or Z before you lost your PIN, but never mind [to quote Satoshi from the article] Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more."