In his blog, Scott Adams asked the question about who was at fault if a man poked an angry bear with a stick and got eaten–the bear or the man. Since he was referring to the US and Islamic peoples, this gets interesting.

Scott’s comments are quoted here for convenience, although I recommend everyone look at his blog anyway.

Philosophical Question of the Day

If a man goes into the forest and pokes a bear with a sharp stick, and the bear kills the man, whose fault is it?

Don’t read this next part until you have made up your mind whether it is the man’s fault or the bear’s fault.

Okay, you may continue.

Now substitute an irrational human being for the bear. The guy with the stick knows he’s dealing with an irrational and potentially violent person, and he pokes him with the stick anyway. Just like the bear, the irrational guy kills the guy who poked him.

Whose fault is it now? Is it the fault of the irrational guy or the fault of the unwise guy who poked him?

Okay, now suppose that the irrational guy is a specific kind of irrational guy – a literal believer in his faith. This is not an insult to the religious because even the Pope endorses the view that faith does not spring from rational thought. And let’s say this particular faith says that if ye poketh me with a sharpeth object, woe unto you, for I shall killeth!

And let’s say the irrational person is completely rational in every way that is not related to his religion. He might even be an engineer or a doctor. But his irrational side is well understood by all. Now the guy with the sharp stick pokes him and gets killed.

Whose fault is it?

I think that there are two relevant points to this thought experiment. The first is that he is indirectly comparing Islamic militants to animals. That is interesting all by itself. To continue the personification, I rather like the badger. I hope that Scott can work that into his next question.

Secondly, just as you know that angering a bear, in this case Islam not Communists, is foolish if you are a puny human, moran or other not-nicely categorized person. The same could be said about rabid racoons. We’ve all be told since childhood that if you see a rabid racoon, or jackalope for that matter, you should not try to feed it peanut brittle, especially with lemon sauce. If you do try to feed peanut brittle glazed with lemon sauce to a rabid jackalope, you could be bitten and get rabies yourself. The question becomes do we make nice to the rabid jackalope, offer to make nice, regular offerngs of peanut brittle, etc. or do we instead put the animal down.

When we put this back into terms of humans, I don’t like the idea of “putting them down” like a rabid fetid dingo just to harvest its kidneys. But when someone is drooling and foaming at the mouth, then attempts to bite you as you are giving sweet candy laced with vitamin C, sometimes you just have to deal with them as they are. Rabid.