I bet whoever you were talking to recently listened to the Joe Rogan Podcast with Sam Harris. It's a good talk ranging from MMA, to free will, to Islam, to the Unabomber and LSD dosing, to AI and the future of General AI.
They get into a discussion about Jon Jones, and that segues into a discussion about drunk driving, which then briefly dips into a talk about free will.
I think it's always someones fault, and they should face whatever consequence comes their way. But an argument to be made, at least philosophically (and in Sam's case, from the view of a neuroscientist) that because there are factors in place unbeknownst to the player, subconscious factors, that they might not be completely in control of their actions.
Sam has a book about the subject, and he's all about it.
Another way I've heard him explain it is like this -
Say you're trying to stop drinking soda. You really, really want to stop. So when you see a soda in the store, you freeze when you go to grab it. But in your mind your know that drink is going to be refreshing and delicious, and it's going to be cold, and it's going to hit the spot just like it always does. You don't want to drink it, but there there are physical and mental things firing within you that influence your decisions whether you know it or not. So you cave and you buy the soda - "Eh, it's okay. Just one more and then I'll stop drinking it."
I can't explain it as well as he can, or probably anyone else can. But I can feel what he means more than most people. I have OCD, so that means my brain is constantly screaming terrible things at me and imploring I carry out stupid 'rituals' in an attempt to diminish the anxiety that comes with the thoughts. I don't want to do the actions, but I have to.
In the conversation with Rogan, Harris puts forth the following hypothetical: Say you go out for the night, drink with some friends, and get a DUI. That's that. But let's say the night before you got into an argument with your girlfriend, then you wake up late and miss breakfast, messing with your blood sugar. Then you're late to work, talked down to by your boss, and mess up a a deal with a big client. You go out with your buddies, and after a long day you have a couple drinks. Normally you know when to stop, but after the stress of a few days and your friends nagging you, you drink a few more.
You don't usually do this; your days don't go like this; you know when to stop drinking, but this one time, because of all these factors and just the way you body and the reactions within it are making you be, you fuck up. Then there is the discussion where.....you drink and drive and get home fine, but your friend drinks and drives and gets pulled over, the only difference being just that. The moral and universal...."luck" of the world. They talk about in the podcast, too, and I can't even attempt to go into it.
If we remove the idea of people just trying to make excuses and get out of a ticket (because ultimately, they're responsible for their actions), then I think the idea can make sense. We're all at times victims to our brains, whether we know it or not. So while I don't necessarily agree with the idea completely, I thought it was interesting and wanted to share, and if anything it's helped me stop having this opinion of all people who drink and drive as being reckless "monsters", and instead thinking them more as just people who have "x,y,z going on" in their lives who, really, aside from the select people who really just suck and enjoy driving drunk, got really unlucky.
And this is the shit that keeps me up at night - "luck". When I watch videos of people being hit by cars, or rocks, or random accidents in sports, or really any kind of "bad" video on Reddit or YouTube.....I freak out for existential reasons. The idea that all it took was a car stopping at a stop sign for two seconds longer and the person would be alive, or if a person walked slower or faster a car wouldn't hit them.
Then the idea of people who enjoy free climbing, or sky diving. I know the sports like that can be safe, but the "totality" of the on/off factor of that sport is something I can't deal with. You're alive, then you're dead. That's it. And I guess that really does apply to just life in general, but I have an even bigger issue dealing with thoughts like that. Like the people climbing when the earthquake hit Nepal, and how absolutely insane something like that is. It's just terrible bad luck on top of bad luck, and then you look at people who have good luck. That disconnect is something I have trouble with, because the reasons aren't tangible on a base level.
But ultimately I think a lot of my thinking is because of my having Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and because honestly I think it's been difficult to comprehend things like this for the past couple of months. I grew up with one of the passengers on the Germanwings flight; she was a good friend and one of my best friends girlfriend. I can't help but think about what she went through. I think about it every day. Did they accept it? We all now know what they went through, but did they think about how they could have stopped what happened?
Besides the obvious questions of "What is going on?", I ask myself if she thought "What if I smiled at the co-pilot? What if I shook his hand? Would he not be doing this?" What if she forgot her bags, went back to the terminal, and missed the flight? What if the pilot didn't have to use the restroom? Why couldn't she be on a different plane, on a different day, with different crew? Why couldn't the weather be a little different and stop that fuck from doing what he did? What if....I just don't know; the "what ifs" are endless, and it's just so fucking stupid.
I have trouble with these questions every day. Did they ask them then? What does that moment feel like? That absolute feeling of "Okay, this is it."
I'm sorry for rambling on, and I'm sorry for getting personal at the end. This all just kind of happened, and I'm sorry for writing a book.
But yeah, I might be using the words wrong, but I have an issue with luck and moral luck.