2023 AMC 12B Problems/Problem 25

Imagine a man punches a kid after being offended by a joke, landing him a spot in jail. Should the perpetrator be blamed for his actions?

Surely, the man should be blamed. He punched a kid, because he lost his temper and let his anger consume him. Punching the kid is not a course of action he should have taken.

But why did he lose his temper? Perhaps the man has anger issues. Perhaps this was the culmination of life long pain or an abusive upbringing. Maybe he never grew up in a loving household, leading to deep rooted mental trauma. Or his parents simply neglected him, leading to him never having developed good manners.

But surely, the man has control over his mind. He is not a child anymore, he has had the opportunity to change himself, to grow and to modify his values. He had the choice to value other peoples’ well-being over short term pleasure.

But did he have a choice? Why did he not change himself?

What is a choice? Imagine we arrive at a fork in the road. Which way do we pick? We base our decision off of 3 things: Genetics Environment Past experiences We pick a choice that best fulfills our current goals, and our goals are formed from those three factors. If we are poor and we value money, we make choices that best fulfill our goal to acquire more money. This depends on the household you grew up in, the opportunities you had around you, the people you know, the skills you happen to be better at, and even just luck.

Notice how past experiences are also based off those same exact three things, meaning that our choices are dependent on previous ones, which are dependent on previous ones. This creates an infinite recursion, but notice that ultimately, our choice comes down to two things: genetics and the environment we began our life in (or our upbringing).

Even a simple choice of prioritizing two values, wealth vs health, is a logical decision that we make, depending on genetics and our upbringing. The way we interact with our current environment is still completely determined by those factors.

Life is deterministic. The man’s choice to punch the child is ultimately determined by his genetics and upbringing, factors he had no control over.

But what if the human mind isn’t deterministic. Human thought isn’t tangible; perhaps it isn’t subject to cause and effect. Many of our thoughts arise spontaneously, seemingly randomly. But that doesn’t change the scenario. If you add randomness to the equation, we now have 3 factors that the man has no control over rather than 2: genetics, upbringing, mental randomness.

Should we blame the man for his genetics, upbringing, and randomness? Should we blame people for factors they cannot control?