[skewart]

But then he wouldn't have had a cool story to post on Medium. He wouldn't have gotten all this attention.

Alternatively, one could argue that he took one for the team - he did something risky and stupid so he could find out what would happen, see if he could get out of it, and share the experience with those of us too responsible and sane to try it ourselves.

Either way though your point stands. He clearly chose to put himself in the situation he was in.

[RangerScience]

> He clearly chose to put himself in the situation he was in.

The thing that always bothers me about that attitude is that it removes any and all responsibility from the people who make the situation within which the choice is made.

It actually reminds me of basic Bayesian considerations: just as you can't know what a test means without knowing the false positive rate (and false negative, and true positive and negative...), you can't pass any kind of reasonable judgement on a choice unless you know what the alternatives were (and the situation in which the choice was made, and whether the alternatives were known or unknown, or...)

So no. He did NOT clearly choose to put himself in that situation.

[bcook]

I would say he did not create the conditions of the resulting situation, but he did absolutely create the situation.

He had the most control. He could have left earlier.

[skewart]

That's a good point. We certainly don't know everything there is to know about the situation. There could very well have been circumstances beyond his control, or, circumstances that otherwise made the decision to push the limits much more reasonable.

That said, he doesn't explain any extenuating circumstances. He came across more like, 'And then my visa was about to expire that night. Crazy how visas expire all of a sudden, am I right?' If he didn't have much agency in the situation it doesn't seem to have bothered him enough to make a big deal about it.

Of course, he might have just felt rationalizing the situation wouldn't have added a whole lot to the essay, which it probably wouldn't have. Then again, who knows how much of the story is true and how much is entirely made up?