Somebody else's problem: Difference between revisions
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==Origin== | ==Origin== | ||
In [[Douglas Adams]]' 1982 novel [[Life, the Universe and Everything]] (in the ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy#Novels|The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'' series), the character [[Ford Prefect (character)|Ford Prefect]] says, | In [[Douglas Adams]]' 1982 novel [[Life, the Universe and Everything]] (in the ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy#Novels|The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'' [[comedy science fiction]] series), the character [[Ford Prefect (character)|Ford Prefect]] says, | ||
{{quote|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. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it's like a blind spot.}} | {{quote|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. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it's like a blind spot.}} | ||
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The narration then explains: | The narration then explains: | ||
{{quote|The Somebody Else's Problem field... relies on people's natural predisposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain.}} | {{quote|The Somebody Else's Problem field... relies on people's natural predisposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain. If Effrafax had painted the mountain pink and erected a cheap and simple Somebody Else’s Problem field on it, then people would have walked past the mountain, round it, even over it, and simply never have noticed that the thing was there.}} | ||
==References by others== | ==References by others== | ||
Revision as of 05:27, 11 April 2017
Somebody else's problem (also known as someone else's problem or SEP) is a phrase coined comedically by Douglas Adams.
Origin
In Douglas Adams' 1982 novel Life, the Universe and Everything (in the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy comedy science fiction series), the character Ford Prefect says,
The narration then explains:
References by others
Since the publication of Template:H2G2, the phrase has occasionally been used by others:
- 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."[1]
- 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.[2]
- Referring to a team working on a computer programming project, Alan F. Blackwell once wrote: "Many sub-goals can be deferred to the degree that they become what is known amongst professional programmers as an 'S.E.P.' – somebody else's problem."[3]
- Christopher Negus, writing on the origin of Unix at Bell Labs in the 1970s, described Bell Labs at the time as "a think tank where ideas came first and profits were somebody else's problem".[4]
See also
- Buck passing
- Bystander effect
- Externality
- First they came ...
- Global issue
- Inattentional blindness
- NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard)
- Other people's money
- Sheeple
References
- ↑ Krishna Guha (2007-11-09). "The world's currency could become a US problem". Financial Times. http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto110920071500182722&page=2. Retrieved on 2008-06-07.
- ↑ Marvin Zonis (1988-11-06). "Someone Else's Problem". The New York Times. https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE5DD1439F935A35752C1A96E948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2. Retrieved on 2008-06-07.
- ↑ Blackwell, Alan F.; Arnold, H.L. (January 1997). "Simulating a Software Project: The PoP Guns go to War". Proceedings of the 9th Annual Meeting of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group: 53–60. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~afb21/publications/PPIG97.html. Retrieved on 2015-03-24.
- ↑ Negus, Christopher (2006-05-10). "Linux's roots in Unix (part 1, chapter 1, section 3)". Fedora 5 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Bible. Bible (Book 327). New York: Wiley. p. 6. ISBN 978-0-4717-5491-6. OCLC 69746564.
Template:HitchhikerMiscellanea
cs:Seznam pojmů, osob a vynálezů ze Stopařova průvodce po Galaxii#Pole problému někoho jiného de:Hintergründe zu Per Anhalter durch die Galaxis#Problem-anderer-Leute-Feld