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Comments on: Whose fault is it anyway? http://sharpener.johnband.org/2006/05/whose-fault-is-it-anyway/ Trying to make a point Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:21:35 +0000 hourly 1 By: Tim Worstall http://sharpener.johnband.org/2006/05/whose-fault-is-it-anyway/#comment-13197 Sun, 21 May 2006 17:51:38 +0000 http://www.thesharpener.net/2006/05/16/whose-fault-is-it-anyway/#comment-13197 Britblog Roundup # 66…

Get your kicks on Roundup 66… to paraphrase Sir Mick.Yes, it’s our weekly whatever it is again and you can make your nominations for next week by emialing them to britblog AT gmail DOT com.First up has to be the…

]]> By: Jasper Milvain http://sharpener.johnband.org/2006/05/whose-fault-is-it-anyway/#comment-11910 Wed, 17 May 2006 09:29:06 +0000 http://www.thesharpener.net/2006/05/16/whose-fault-is-it-anyway/#comment-11910 Metro‘s version, which carefully elided the “nobody blamed” bit, was especially striking — it’s also the one many Londoners will have read.

]]> By: luis enrique http://sharpener.johnband.org/2006/05/whose-fault-is-it-anyway/#comment-11909 Wed, 17 May 2006 08:44:33 +0000 http://www.thesharpener.net/2006/05/16/whose-fault-is-it-anyway/#comment-11909 Interesting post – reminded my of an H L Mencken quote: “The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake.”

He’s not strictly talking about the same thing, but it’s in the same ball park as your post.

I have a suspicion that there are acres of library shelving weighed down with philosophers discussing what it means to “blame” something or someone. Once you start to classify all the factors that combine to lead up to an event, I think you can get in a real tangle. What’s the aim of blame – to narrow the list down to “things that were major contributors to the event that should have been otherwise” or something like that?

Without separating out the notions of cause and culpability I think that you end up with a list of causes, but nothing to blame.

What if we decided that those bombs could have been prevented by additional security resources, but also that the level of security resources was appropriate given constraints. Was the level of security resources to blame, or not?

What if we decide that the invasion of Iraq was a big cause, but also that the invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do in its own right and its likely impact on angry young Muslims in the UK was outweighed by other considerations. Does that mean the invasion was to blame?

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