Somebody else's problem

Template:Refimprove Template:Unencyclopedic 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 ascribed to a physical "SEP field", has helped to make it a generally recognised phenomenon. The label is now widely used to focus public attention on matters that may have been overlooked.

SEP and Psychology

Richard Dawkins argued in The Selfish Gene that organisms can act altruistically (against their individual interests) to help related organisms reproduce. In this sense recognition of possible threats to the group is an important survival trait.

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 personally experience the same stimulus, diffusion of responsibility 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).

Somebody Else's Problem field

File:Lords test match.jpg

Starship Bistromath apparently invisible to the crowd at Lord's Cricket Ground, London

Douglas Adams has his character Ford Prefect describe Somebody Else's Problem in Life, the Universe and Everything, the third book of 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.

In this case, "a small upended Italian bistro" with "guidance fins, rocket engines and escape hatches" has been hidden by the "Someone Else's Problem field" which "can be run for over a hundred years on a single torch 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.

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".

Cultural importance of Somebody Else's Problem

Douglas Adams was 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.