Whose fault is it anyways: a thought experiment
I’ve been thinking about the ideas of “fault” and “blame” recently and the following scenario popped into my mind. The question I’m trying to answer in the below story is: whose fault is it (or what is the distribution of fault) that Team B lost the football game? The story goes:
Two football teams, Team A, and Team B, are battling it out on the field. Through nearly four quarters of play, the two teams play nearly perfectly, always executing an optimal strategy, with no errors, such that no team could have done better by playing a different strategy. However, due to the randomness inherent in such complex games, Team A leads Team B by 5 points with 1 second left in the game, enough for one more play, such that a touchdown would automatically win the game. Conveniently, Team B is on Team A’s 5 years line, giving it a legitimate chance of winning.
The ball is snapped, and every single player shifts to the left side of the end zone as it appears that’s where the offense will be throwing the ball. But wait! A single wide receiver, WR1, sneaks out to the right and is wide open, 10 yards clear of the nearest defender. The QB, noticing this, throws a perfect pass to WR1. The ball is perfectly placed and unaffected by any wind or otherwise external influences. The ball makes its way into the hands the WR1. However, due to a lapse in judgement and execution— not to the fault of the stickiness of his gloves or anything else— WR1 drops the ball, the Team A appears to win the game. At this moment, given that everything went perfectly prior to the drop, it’s clear the blame should be placed 100% on WR1.
Hold up! There was a flag on the play. Apparently a defender on Team A was off sides, allowing Team B one more shot. The ball in snapped and both the offense and the defense run the exact same play. This time, however, its a different wide receiver, WR2, that splits out to the right. The play develops in the exact same manner, just this time with WR2 in the place of WR1. A perfectly thrown and placed ball is dropped by an otherwise capable WR2. Team B officially loses the game.
This is where things become less clear— who is at fault for the loss? We can blame WR2 as he had a final chance. At that point in the game, everything that transpired earlier should be irrelevant; the only thing that should matter was what’s happening at that time. But at the same time, if WR1 would have made the catch, Team B would have never been in this position. The game would have already been won, but it wasn’t. So is it mostly the fault of WR2 and slightly the fault of WR1? What happens to the blame if there was a third iteration with a WR3? Is it possible for something to be 100% the fault of multiple different people?
How do you have this much time on your hands wtf
UNC: Gets Hurt
Kansas: Respects UNC and doesn't take advantage of their injury
Announcers: Kansas is stupid for not taking advantage of UNC getting injured. WEAK!
Kansas: Wins
Life is, like, totally chaotic, man. Mechanistic logic doesn´t apply to real world events. Think of life more as an eternal flow of water or permanent nuclear fission - you can influence it, but you can never say which action directly, only, and necessarily caused a certain reaction.
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