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by pseut 4817 days ago
I think it's more like leaving your wallet and laptop on the table at a cafe while you go to the bathroom, then getting upset that they're gone when you get back. In that case, yeah, it's absolutely your fault.

Put it another way, if you lent your laptop to a friend, and they left it on the table like that and it was stolen, would you really find your friend blameless? Would you lend them a laptop again?
1 comments
burntsushi 4817 days ago
> In that case, yeah, it's absolutely your fault.

No. It's not. It's the fault of the thief.

> Put it another way, if you lent your laptop to a friend, and they left it on the table like that and it was stolen, would you really find your friend blameless? Would you lend them a laptop again?

I wouldn't lend it to them again because they are careless and didn't take sensible precautions. I wouldn't find them at fault for the theft.

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pseut 4817 days ago
Maybe we disagree on what "fault" means; I think (and I'm pretty sure this is common usage) that if a person takes an action and a predictable bad outcome ensues, that person's at fault. It doesn't make him or her a bad person.

One last example: if you leave the laptop on an open windowsill and it falls out and breaks, is it now gravity's fault? If I throw it up in the air and fail to catch it, am I at fault, or is gravity? If I throw it and want the laptop to break so I don't catch it? Does it really depend on whether I want the laptop to break or not? What if I'm unsure of my motivations?

edit: I hope it's obvious, but multiple people can be "at fault" and the person who stole the bitcoins is more "at fault" than the victim here.

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burntsushi 4816 days ago
> edit: I hope it's obvious, but multiple people can be "at fault" and the person who stole the bitcoins is more "at fault" than the victim here.

Of course. The initial point I was trying to rebuke was

> what happened is your own fault entirely

Which isn't just a slip of the tongue. It's an explicit declaration that the blame is 100% on the victim.

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pseut 4816 days ago
>> what happened is your own fault entirely >Which isn't just a slip of the tongue. It's an explicit declaration that the blame is 100% on the victim.

Not my quote, and not even implicit in anything I've said here.

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