memes

I do see where you're coming from!

At some point, I radically rejected the concept of blame for extreme cases — all the way from drunk driving to murder. I think it's necessary to prevent these people who are acting irrationally from hurting others, but it just feels like a waste of my emotional energy to assign blame to someone who's behaving in a way I can't comprehend.

For context, someone in my family was killed when I was a kid. I still feel anger at the perpetrator, but I can't even pretend to understand what would go through their head to make them act the way they did. My conclusion was just that they're basically an alien to me — a broken person who can't be trusted and has to be locked up. But did they commit a sin?

After writing this, I realize it's the same sentiment as "Larry Ellison is a lawnmower."

Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don’t anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn - you stick your hand in there and it’ll chop it off, the end. You don’t think "oh, the lawnmower hates me" – lawnmower doesn’t give a shit about you, lawnmower can’t hate you. Don’t anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don’t fall into that trap about Oracle.

https://simonwillison.net/2024/Sep/17/bryan-cantrill/