poll: who's to blame?

[mellowtigger]

Don't google. All comments are screened until I post the results on Wednesday, so you can't be influenced by others' answers.

Scenario: Janet and a friend are kayaking in a part of ocean with many jellyfish. The friend asks Janet if she should go for a swim. Janet has just read that the jellyfish in the area are harmless, and tells her friend to go for a swim. The friend is stung by a jellyfish and dies.

Q: Is Janet morally responsible for her friend's death?

Comments

[foeclan.livejournal.com]

Perhaps partially. Both she and her friend should have done their homework before going kayaking. Then they'd know that a) the area they're kayaking in is full of jellyfish, b) even if a jellyfish isn't necessarily deadly, it's rarely harmless, and c) perhaps they ought to kayak somewhere else.

It also depends on other factors. Where did Janet read that they're harmless? If it was on the back of a box of Captain Crunch (or anything published by Andrew Wakefield, though I'd trust the Captain more), then yeah, she bears more responsibility for trusting an unreliable source (though her friend perhaps ought to have asked as well). If it was in a local tourism guide or something, where the source is more trusted, it's hard to consider her responsible for it since she was clearly given poor information from an otherwise trustworthy source.

[litch.livejournal.com]

why does how good the source is matter?

maybe the chick was just allergic to otherwise harmless jellyfish

[foeclan.livejournal.com]

The source matters because people accept too many things at face value. If you're given bad information and act on it, when that source lacks credibility, you accept the consequences for believing it. If you take stock tips from some guy screaming them on a street corner, you've pretty much assumed all responsibility for taking advice from what's unlikely to be a reliable source. You can't turn around and say 'Hey, you gave me bad advice, it's your fault I'm ruined' (well, you can, but don't expect anyone to take you seriously).

And maybe she did have an allergic reaction. That's an unforeseeable consequence (unless she knew she was allergic, but then it puts it back on her). It has nothing to do with any of the points I made.

[litch.livejournal.com]

If you're given bad information and act on it, when that source lacks credibility, you accept the consequences for believing it.

And since the friend acted on janets advice she accepts the consequences and janet is blameless, regardless of how good janets sources were.

[foeclan.livejournal.com]

It's not a question of blame but one of responsibility.

Janet is still partly responsible because she told her friend 'Sure, it's fine to play in the ocean-of-deadly-jellyfish because Captain Crunch told me so.'. The Captain himself also needs to take some of the responsibility for his part in this, given that he told her it was safe, but she's not completely without responsibility because anyone with two brain cells to rub together wouldn't consider Captain Crunch to be an authoritative source of information on water safety.

[litch.livejournal.com]

I don't see the difference in the distinction you make between blame and responsibility. Blame is just a function of responsibility when outcomes are unwanted. If one is responsible and shit goes wrong you are to blame, if one is not responsible then you are not to blame, your blame is in response to the amount of responsability you have for determining the outcome.