Somebody else's problem

Somebody Else's Problem (also known as Someone Else's Problem or SEP) is an effect that causes people to ignore matters which are generally important to a group but may not seem specifically important to the individual. Author Douglas Adams' description of the effect, which he playfully ascribed to a physical "SEP field", has helped to make it a generally recognized phenomenon. The label is now widely used to focus public attention on matters that might have been overlooked and, less commonly, to identify concerns that a depressed individual should ignore. It has also been employed as trivial shorthand to describe factors that are "out of scope" in the current context.

In psychology

Various areas of psychology and philosophy of perception are concerned with the reasons why individuals often ignore such matters. Optimism bias tends to reduce the subjective importance of some matters. Where multiple individuals simultaneously experience the same stimulus, diffusion of responsibility and/or the bystander effect may release individuals from the need to act, and if no-one from the group is seen to act, each individual may be further inhibited by conformity. On a wider basis, all members of society are exposed to so many messages about pressing matters of concern that information overload may play a part. There may also be a tendency to argue that "I can't fix this problem, so I need do nothing to reduce it" (a perfect solution fallacy).

However, taking responsibility for negative events that are outside an individual's control can lead to depression and learned helplessness, particularly in adolescents. Part of the solution is to help the individual to realistically assign a proportion of responsibility to herself/himself, parents and others (step I in the RIBEYE cognitive behavioral therapy problem-solving method).

In politics and economics

French president Nicolas Sarkozy warned the U.S. Congress that "The [decline of the] dollar cannot remain someone else's problem. If we are not careful, monetary disarray could morph into economic war. We would all be victims."

The New York Times said that when the Shah of Iran was exiled in 1979 he became "someone else's problem" from the point of view of President Carter's administration.

After Hurricane Katrina, Barack Obama said that "...when you turn on the TV or open the newspaper and hear about all the trouble in the world, there will be pundits and politicians who'll tell you that it's someone else's fault and someone else's problem to fix. ...there is another path you can take."

In environment and public protection

When trying to "alert the public to the risk of low-probability, high-consequence disasters such as severe floods... we may be asking the public to act on someone else's problem".

British politician Peter Ainsworth acknowledges that "climate change can seem huge, complex, remote and someone else's problem."

The Hundred Year Lie describes what it claims is the public myth that food and medicine "toxicity health issues are 'someone else's problem'".

"Litter, however spread, seems to be particularly sensitive to the effects of the SEP Field; once the empty cigarette carton is discarded it is immediately enveloped in the field and disappears! The pop bottle, also no longer desired, immediately pops out of sight; sweet wrappers, fast food containers ... all these things, and many more besides, all of them disappear once they have been discarded by their owners: all of this waste material becomes the pervue of "someone else" and is therefore invisible."

Douglas Adams was himself concerned about such failures to recognise the need for action, and with Mark Carwardine published the book Last Chance to See, which highlighted endangered animal species.

In technology

The sub-goals of programmers working on a shared artifact "can be deferred to the degree that they become what is known amongst professional programmers as an "S.E.P." - somebody else's problem."

Unix became popular because when it was developed at Bell Labs because "profits were somebody else's problem", so there was no reason not to share the source code with universities.

In fiction

Douglas Adams has his character Ford Prefect describe Somebody Else's Problem in Life, the Universe and Everything, the third book in the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series:

An SEP is something we can't see, or don't see, or our brain doesn't let us see, because we think that it's somebody else's problem.... The brain just edits it out, it's like a blind spot. If you look at it directly you won't see it unless you know precisely what it is. Your only hope is to catch it by surprise out of the corner of your eye.

The technology involved in making something properly invisible is so mind-bogglingly complex that 999,999,999 times out of a billion it's simpler just to take the thing away and hide it....... The "Somebody Else's Problem field" is much simpler, more effective, and "can be run for over a hundred years on a 9Volt battery."

This is because it relies on people's natural predisposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain.

In this case, the Starship Bistromath ("a small upended Italian bistro" with "guidance fins, rocket engines and escape hatches") has been hidden from the crowd watching a Cricket match at Lord's by an SEP field. People may see it, but they take absolutely no notice of it.

The book says that the SEP field is derived from Bistromathics and in particular the concept of an imaginary number called a "recipriversexcluson" whose existence can only be defined as being anything other than itself. Modern science has been slow to investigate this further, though Professor John Wettlaufer (of Yale University) has apparently observed that it is very important for physicists working outside the mainstream "to have a genuine interest in learning about someone else's problem". However, he admitted that "not many people want to do this".

The concept is similar to the Perception filter used in Doctor Who; when something is under a perception filter, people do not consciously register what they are looking at (Although it has been noted that people can see through a filter if they know there is something to look for).

In the TV series Misfits, the main character of Simon possesses the power of invisibility; however, when this power was temporarily 'inverted' after he took drugs, it resulted in people noticing him rather than his usual habit of fading into the background, suggesting that he is not invisible in the sense of bending light but that he instead is able to stop people consciously registering his presence, with his inverted power attracting rather than deflecting peoples' awareness of him.

In the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett, SEP is a recurring phenomenon associated to situations or, more commonly, to characters. Death and his adoptive granddaughter Susan, are some of the characters which have the power of being invisible, even when interacting with other characters. Because the idea of seeing the anthropomorphic representation of death is so uncomfortable (death is not here for me!), one's brain most often ignores the presence altogether or, in the case of Death, and if it is really required, creates an alternative representation. However, later these characters cannot remember how Death looks like, or even how the fake representation looked like, except that it is tall and skinny. Because Susan is also human, other characters can normally perceive her, but, if she wants, their mind will find her presence too uncomfortable and try to forget her as soon as possible, even if in the middle of a conversation. Post-it and other types of note taking tactics are proven to be completely ineffective.

See also

• Externality
• NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard)
• Tragedy of the commons
• First they came…