The Captain Tom story raises an interesting point about consequences. He did a lovely thing, but had it not been picked up by the local press and then by the national media, and had lots of people not been taken by the story he’d have most likely raised only his original target of £1,000 rather than the £39m that was actually raised. Does that mean he should be credited with “raising” £39m, or not?
A few years ago on a bike ride on a country lane approaching at T-junction I noticed that a stop sign had been turned round. It was easy enough to turn it back the right way. Now let’s say that, hypothetically, half an hour later a family had driven by who thus saw the sign, so did stop at the junction, and so weren’t wiped out by the lorry that happened to be crossing the road ahead.
Would that have made meant I’d saved the lives of the family, and thus had been a hero for the simple act of turning the sign back? My instinct is no of course – I just turned a sign round. Let’s say instead though that I hadn’t been there that day, that the idiot who turned it the wrong way round had been caught on CCTV, and that the family had been killed as a consequence of his action. Would he deserve to be blamed for their deaths? Probably yes I’d say, though presumably the crime would be something like reckless endangerment rather than manslaughter (or worse).
Another example from Nicholas Taleb: the passengers who tackled the hijackers on American Airlines Flight 77 on 9/11 (the one that crashed into the Pentagon) were acclaimed as heroes, and I don’t disagree. Imagine though that an obscure official in the Dept. of Transportation six month before had introduced a new regulation that upgraded airport scanners such that the bad guys couldn’t have boarded at all. Would he be a hero for that action that, in practice, would have saved more lives than the brave passengers could?
Anyway, just some idle thoughts. Clearly had Captain Tom not acted as he did the £39m would not have been raised – but a lot of other events had to fall into place too, most of which he couldn’t have imagined.
