Responsibility

[andrewducker]

This is inspired by the comment here, where ladysysiphus says "If you have consumed enough alcohol to impair your judgement, I believe you then have to take at least some responsibility for putting yourself in a position where something like this might happen."

[Poll #619684]

Comments

Overall Responsibility

[andrewducker]

Ahem. _Anyway_, the reason for all of this, is that I realised that the confusion over "responsibility for the situation" was that there were two totally separate responsibilities going on, and when someone said that person A was responsible for being in the backstreets in the first place (which they clearly are), people who were sensitive about mugging felt that they were saying that person A was responsible for the actions of the muggers (which they clearly aren't).

This aint maths, people - the Total Responsibility isn't "99% the muggers responsibilities + 1% the responsibility of the person walking down the backstreet" - there _is no_ total responsibility - there's two separate responsibilities that can't be added, subtracted or otherwise merged into one.

Re: Overall Responsibility

[0olong.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how you're working a concept of responsibility which doesn't imply any responsibility for the consequences of someone's action. Where does the responsibility for one event end? If they're not responsibe for a brick falling on their head just because they walked into a building site, would they be if they pulled the chain which released the platform which held the bricks?