Who Is to Blame When Things Go Wrong? The Hurt Can't Tell You. The Record Can.

The project is due at 9 am. At 8:55 there are no slides.

Your teacher looks at the three of you and asks the question everyone dreads: "Whose fault is this?"

Three answers come at once. Leo points at Maya. Maya points at Priya. Priya points at Leo. It's a perfect triangle, and it's the most stable structure in the history of group projects.

Everyone's grade takes the same hit. So the grade can't tell you whose fault it was, and neither can how bad it feels.

But there is a right answer, and it was written down before the teacher asked.

The short answer

Blame is on the record: who wrote the act, who had control of it, and on whom the requirement fell. Reality keeps a permanent record of everything that happens, because the basic laws of physics never destroy information. Each relationship between two people (the record calls it a bond) is kept twice, once in each person's own book, and nobody writes in anyone else's book. So who did what is a fact that stays, not a verdict somebody hands out afterward.

Hurting is a different fact. Both ends of a bond that sits off level carry its whole cost, and the cost says how far off level it is, never who put it there. The one hurting isn't thereby the one responsible. A storm hurts too, and no person chose it, so nobody is to blame for the storm. And blame never licenses a penalty: what a wrong calls for is repair, and both ends write the repair.

Why this matters: blame decides who is punished, who feels guilty and who is forgiven, in every family, court and nation. The record gives it an exact address, so you don't have to guess it from who is loudest or who is hurting. You can look it up. Blame says whose act it was. It doesn't say what to do to him.

Here's the whole answer in seven steps. The section after the list gives the reasons behind the starting claims, and the rest of the post takes the steps one at a time and shows how we know each one.

1. Blame has an address. The authors of an act are exactly the people whose own books it changes, and nothing is erased, so nobody can be written in or out later.
2. The one hurting isn't thereby the one responsible. Each end of a bond carries its full cost, and the cost can't say who put it there.
3. The history says who opened the gap and who told the truth. Opening a disagreement isn't writing the falsehood, and a low cost isn't the truth.
4. Responsibility takes control plus a requirement. Being in a position to change the outcome isn't being to blame.
5. Doing nothing can be the wrong. Where an act both ends write lowers the cost, doing nothing is forbidden.
6. No person chose the storm. A bond changes only through something sent, and no person chose a storm, so nobody is to blame for it.
7. Blame points to repair, never to a penalty. A penalty that changes a wrongdoer's bonds without the wrongdoer's write breaks the clauses like any push. A repair changes the bond, so both ends write it.

Where the argument starts

Three facts and the code built on them do the work. Each fact comes with its reason.

Nothing that happens is ever erased. Reality keeps a permanent record of every event, and the past still exists. Known physics already says this for the part it covers: its basic laws never destroy information. In quantum mechanics that's unitarity. The present fixes the past exactly, and running the laws backward recovers every earlier state. That's why physicists treat the black hole information problem as a real problem. Hawking's 1976 calculation said a black hole destroys the information that falls into it, which clashed with unitarity. Most physicists now expect the information to come back out in the radiation, and the open question is how.¹ Our work gives the record a reason of its own: it only grows. Each new entry is added with every earlier entry kept, and writing a new entry never alters an earlier one.² (What You Are builds the record from the ground up.)

A relationship is a comparison, and a comparison has a cost. The smallest thing that can happen is one thing told apart from another, a single yes or no. You're doing it right now: reading this tells one letter from another. Telling two things apart takes information about both, so the unit of the record is a comparison of two amounts. Call the record's entry for a relationship between two people a bond. Its number is one amount divided by the other. When the amounts match, the number is 1 and the bond is level.

Every other number has a cost, and the cost has one exact formula. For a bond at x:

J(x) = (x + 1/x) / 2 - 1

Add the number to its flip (1 divided by it), halve the sum, and subtract 1.

For 2: 2 plus 1/2 is 5/2, half of that is 5/4, and 5/4 minus 1 is 1/4. The formula isn't a choice. A cost has to be zero when the two amounts match, grow as they differ, and come out the same whichever amount is put first, so a bond at 2 and a bond at 1/2 cost the same. Add a cost with no sudden jumps, the rule for how the costs of combined comparisons add, and one calibration (how sharply the cost rises near level), and exactly one formula is left.³

A person carries the cost of the bonds they're an end of, each counted in full. A bond at 2 costs 1/4, and both of its ends carry 1/4. The record's own total counts the bond once.

Each bond is kept twice, once at each end, on that end's own books. This is the structure our paper The Moral Code starts from.⁴ The two people at a bond's ends each keep their own book of it, and each writes only in their own book. Nobody writes in another's books. A book is true when it gives the bond's actual number, and what happened between the two people fixes that number. Two true books of one bond agree, so a gap between two books means at least one of them is false.

The code is four clauses and one judgment. An act changes bonds, and the people who do it write the change in their own books. An act is admissible when:

1. it acts only on bonds that exist now;
2. every book of every bond is true after it;
3. it moves a bond only when both of its ends write on it;
4. it ends a bond only when one of that bond's own ends ends it.

Of the admissible acts, the code permits exactly those that leave the least total cost over the whole future. Every other act is forbidden. Doing nothing is always admissible, so something is always permitted. The clauses aren't chosen. They're what a record kept twice admits.⁴ (One step under the third clause isn't derived yet: that a kept book holds one exact state of its bond. The open list says more.)

Two consequences of the third clause carry this post. A write in your own book alone moves nothing: the other end's book still says the old number, and the bond stays where it was. And an act that changes a bond without the other end's write is a push: it leaves that end's own book false, which is what harm is, made physical. Harm is possible, and forbidden. Right and Wrong Aren't Opinions works the whole code on a promise to bring a neighbour groceries. Here only the code itself matters.

Step 1: Blame has an address

The authors of an act are exactly the people whose own books it changes. So who did it is a fact of the record. Nobody can be written in as the author of someone else's act, and nothing is erased, so authorship can't be reassigned later.

On Monday, Leo said, "I'll make the slides." Maya and Priya each said yes. Those are three writes, each in its writer's own book, and together they make a promise. (The project is a drawing. Which real acts are which writes isn't derived yet, and the open list says so.)

On Friday, with no slides to show, Leo and Maya write a cover story together: "the file got corrupted." Priya writes nothing.

The cover story has two authors, Leo and Maya. Neither can say "it was all his idea" and hand the authorship to the other, and nobody can add a third name: Priya's books never changed, so she isn't an author of it. A joint act has every writer as an author, and a line that names one actor can't hold them all. Two joint acts with different partners can leave every ratio, every cost and every burden the same, so no procedure that reads only the outcome can recover who wrote. The record keeps the authors on a line of their own. A Favor Isn't a Yes works out a pair of such acts with numbers.

So reality has a place where "who did this?" is stored. A better story doesn't edit it, a later apology doesn't, and time doesn't.

How we know. The authors are exactly the people whose books an act changes, and that's the definition the code's verdicts read.⁴ Writing a new entry never alters an earlier one, so once a line is written, its authors stay written. The book says it in one sentence: "No institutional account can then silently replace one person's action with another's."⁵

Next, and why: the record says who wrote each line. Does it say who is hurting? Step 2.

Step 2: The one hurting isn't thereby the one responsible

Each end of a bond carries its full cost. The cost reads how far the bond is from level, never who put it there. So the one who hurts and the one who's responsible are two different facts.

Take the bond between Maya and Leo. Maya has done twice the work Leo has, so the bond reads 2 from her end and 1/2 from his. (The work counts are a drawing. The bond is real, and it's what the record keeps between two people. What its two amounts count in a real project isn't derived yet.) The cost is the same from either end: J(2) = J(1/2) = 1/4.

So Maya carries 1/4, and Leo carries 1/4. Priya's bond with Leo sits at 2 as well, so she carries 1/4 too, and Leo carries 1/4 on each of his two bonds. The one who got the short end carries exactly what the one who gave it carries.

Now take two Fridays with the same bond. On the first Friday, Leo skipped the slides. On the second, a storm cut the school's power on Thursday night and wiped the shared drive, with Leo's finished slides on it. Both Fridays, the bond reads 2, costs 1/4 and sits on both ends. The cost doesn't know which Friday it is. Why Does Evil Exist? calls the cost an exact accountant and a poor detective.

That's why hurting can't be the test. Being affected needs only a bond with an end at you: no part in the act, no control and no authorship. The book's section title says it: "Being affected does not require being the author."⁶ And a rise in your cost doesn't mean you were wronged. Harm is a false entry in someone else's own book, and a rise in cost alone is a readout, not a verdict.

How we know. A bond's cost depends on its number and nothing else, so two bonds at 2 cost the same however they got there. What a person carries, in the code, is the cost of every bond they're an end of, each counted in full, and the record's own total counts each bond once.⁴

Next, and why: if the cost can't name a culprit, what can? The history. Step 3.

Step 3: The history says who opened the gap and who told the truth

If two books agreed once and disagree now, the history says who wrote the change that opened the gap, and what happened says whose book is false. Neither comes from the present numbers, and they are different questions.

First, what a gap is. The two books of a bond agree when they say the same number, both written the same way round (here, Maya's work over Leo's). A gap is a difference between them, and it costs J of the ratio of what they say. Books that say 2 and 1 differ by a factor of 2, so the gap costs 1/4.

Now Maya's book says 2 and Leo's says 1: "she did twice the work," against "we're even." There are three ways to get there.

A. Leo denies. Maya did twice the work, and both books said 2, truly. Then Leo wrote "even" in his own book.

B. Maya claims too much. The work was even, and both books said 1, truly. Then Maya wrote 2 in her own book: a claim with nothing behind it.

C. The cover story. Leo and Maya wrote it together. It said Leo's share was done, so both books said 1: even. The books agreed, the gap between them cost 0, and both were false, because Maya had done twice the work. At 9:10 Maya wrote the truth, 2, in her own book.

All three end the same way: Maya 2, Leo 1, a gap that costs 1/4. Read the present numbers and you can't tell A from B from C.

Who opened the gap. The record has a test for it, and its word for the result is departed. A person departed when a move they wrote widened the gap between the two books, and the books haven't agreed at any moment since. If the books agreed once and disagree now, one of the two ends wrote the change that opened the gap. If the gap opened once and has stayed the same since, the one who departed is exactly the one who wrote that opening. In A, Leo departed. In B and C, Maya did.⁷

A test that counted any change as a departure would be wrong. Say that in A, Maya later says, "fine, call it 3/2." Her book moves from 2 to 3/2, the gap narrows from a factor of 2 to a factor of 3/2, and its cost falls from 1/4 to 1/12. She conceded. A rule that blamed anyone who changes her book would blame her for that. The record's test doesn't: a concession that narrows a gap isn't a new departure.

Whose book is false. That's a different question, and a different part of the history answers it: what happened. The offer, the acceptance, the delivery, the repayment. In A and C, Maya did the work, so her 2 is true. In B she didn't, so her 2 is false. The books alone can't say, because two histories with identical books can have different amounts due.⁵ (One step under this isn't derived yet: that the physical record carries what is due, with the two people as the bond's two ends.)

So the cost can mislead. Look at C again. While both books said 1, the gap between them cost 0. Everything looked fine, and both books were false. The gap's cost rose to 1/4 at the moment somebody told the truth. The one who opened the gap is the one who corrected it. "Whoever opened the gap is at fault" is wrong, and so is "a low cost means true." The record's test says who created the disagreement. In the book's words, it "does not establish that the correction was false or wrongful."⁵

The record keeps both facts about Maya under her own name. She's an author of the cover story, and she's the one who opened the gap by correcting it. Each act has its own authors.

How we know. The numbers are the formula's: J(2) = 1/4, J(3/2) = 1/12. The departure test, the concession and the matching false books are the record's own construction.⁷ What Is Justice? teaches the first step: a gap between two books means a book is false, and a denial written in a book leaves the amount due unchanged.

Next, and why: now we know who wrote and who opened the gap. What makes someone responsible for the act that went wrong? Step 4.

Step 4: Responsibility takes control plus a requirement

Responsibility takes two things together: the requirement fell on you, and you controlled the act. Being on the list of everyone in a position to change the outcome isn't enough.

The clean case is in Right and Wrong Aren't Opinions: you promise to bring a neighbour her groceries every Saturday. The promise requires one thing, fixed before Saturday: that she can go on, and so can you. Only you control the trip, so you're responsible for the Saturday that goes wrong, and nobody else is. Her yes made the promise. It didn't make skipping fine.

The slides work the same way. Leo offered, and Maya and Priya said yes. They built their weeks on it, so the promise changed what they did, and the change is written down. The requirement fell on Leo on Monday, fixed by what happened on Monday: nobody picks it afterward. And Leo alone had the file. Requirement and control land on the same person, so the missing slides are his.

Maya and Priya carry the cost (Step 2), and neither controlled the act that produced it.

Control alone isn't enough. The ability to affect someone doesn't by itself assign every obligation or grant every enforcement power.⁸ Everyone in a position to change Friday sits on one long list: Leo's mother, who called him to dinner at seven, and the company that built his laptop. The record can build that list, and being on it isn't being to blame. The list is longer than blame.

Responsibility beyond one worked case isn't derived yet. What's proved is that case, a promise to feed someone: the helper is the only actor with control over what the recipient carries in the first window, the promise requires closing the reliance, and together those make the helper, and only the helper, responsible. The slides are a drawing of that case. What isn't derived is on whom a requirement falls in general, after a violation, and when two duties compete.

How we know. In the worked case the record holds the promise before anyone acts, and it holds who can do what. Put the requirement and the control together and the result follows. Right and Wrong Aren't Opinions does the arithmetic.

Next, and why: Leo did nothing. Does doing nothing count? Step 5.

Step 5: Doing nothing can be the wrong

Doing nothing is an act: the one that changes nothing. Where an act both ends write lowers the cost, doing nothing is forbidden. So "I didn't do anything" is no defense, and the responsibility for an omission sits with the one who controlled the act.

"I didn't do anything" is exactly what Leo says. Doing nothing changes no bond and ends none. It leaves the world as it was, so it's admissible, and it's possible on every world. It's the baseline every clause measures an act against. But the judgment reads the least cost over the whole future. When an admissible act leaves less cost than doing nothing, doing nothing is forbidden, and the code requires action.⁹

Does that take a promise? No. The code requires you to help wherever an act both of you write lowers the cost, and then doing nothing is forbidden. What Do We Owe Each Other? works a case with no promise anywhere in the history: a stranger on the third floor of your building and three weeks of food. A promise raises the stakes. It doesn't create the duty.

So for Leo, not making the slides was the idle act, and he was the one who controlled it. The book puts it for the promise to feed: staying home is the helper's own act, and "the responsibility for it is hers as the one who runs it."¹⁰

"Somebody else would have done it" doesn't take it off him: what others do later on bonds your act never touched can't change which plan left the least cost. (What Do We Owe Each Other? Step 4 works it with numbers.)

How we know. The judgment compares every act with doing nothing. Where a cost-lowering act is on the menu, doing nothing leaves more cost, and the code forbids what leaves more.⁹

Next, and why: every wrong so far had a person who chose it. What about pain with no person? Step 6.

Step 6: No person chose the storm

Nothing in the record is authorless: every change to a bond comes from something sent. A storm is a storm of sends, and no person chose it. Its pain is suffering, not a wrong, and nobody is to blame for the storm.

Go back to the second Friday. The storm cut the power, and the drive went with it. A bond changes only through something sent, and the storm's changes are sends too. But no person is in them. Nobody wrote the storm in their own book, and nobody had control of it. Blame belongs to a person who chose an act. Nobody chose this one.

It works the same way for a virus, or for plain bad luck. Where no person chose a change, the record has no person to name. The pain is just as real, and it's the same 1/4 on both ends. It's suffering, not a wrong.

The storm doesn't end the story, because what the code asks of people starts with what comes next. After the storm, the bond between Maya and Leo sits at 2. Bringing it to level changes it, so both ends write the repair. And wherever an act both of them write lowers the cost, doing nothing is forbidden (Step 5). Nobody is to blame for Thursday night. The people who can help are answerable for what they do next.

How we know. A bond's cost reads only its number (Step 2), so the storm's cost reads like any other. What tells the two Fridays apart is the record's line for who chose the act. Why Does Evil Exist? works out the same split for a hurricane and a theft.

Next, and why: when a person did choose a wrong act, what does the code ask us to do about it? Step 7.

Step 7: Blame points to repair, never to a penalty

A penalty that changes a wrongdoer's bonds without the wrongdoer's write breaks the clauses like any push. What a wrong calls for is repair, and a repair changes the bond, so both ends write it. The wrong's charge stays on the record whatever follows.

Back to the first Friday. Leo is responsible for the missing slides, and the urge is to make him pay.

Say Maya writes the bond between them from 2 to 4, so that Leo's work counts for half of what it did, and Leo writes nothing. A write in your own book alone moves nothing: the bond stays at 2, and Maya's own book is the false one. An act that moved the bond to 4 anyway would leave Leo's book saying 2: false, and not by anything he wrote. That's a push, a false entry in someone else's own book. The third clause excludes it at the step it's done, on any books, and a better outcome never makes a one-sided act allowed. Consent is a hard condition, not a price.

What the wrong calls for is repair. Leo puts in the work he owes, and both of them write it. The bond goes from 2 to 1, and the cost falls from 1/4 to 0 on both ends. That's "love takes two": bringing a bond to level changes it, so both ends write the repair.⁴ Meet in the Middle works out what love does to a bond that's off level.

Maya's correction at 9:10 was a new line too. It made her own book true, and it didn't erase the cover story, which still stands under "Leo and Maya." Repair and release are new lines as well, and Friday's missing slides stay under Leo's name. Sorry Doesn't Rewind the Tape works through both.

And the record doesn't hand Leo a matching loss. It keeps what he did, under his name, and it charges the excess cost of it at every later checkpoint, undiminished. (A checkpoint is a moment when the record's cost is counted, and "undiminished" means later ones don't discount it. That rests on one step about time that isn't derived yet: that the record decides each bond's charge from that bond's own entry.) Why Does Evil Exist? works out the charge, and Karma Is Real, and It Isn't a Referee shows why nothing in the record is a referee. The charge is the record's accounting. It isn't a penalty, and it doesn't license one. One step under it isn't derived yet: from "the record charges this without bound" to "this ought not be done."

How we know. The third clause says an act moves a bond only when both of its ends write on it, and that holds at the step an act is done. Both ends write the repair because bringing a bond to level changes it. Nothing recorded is erased, so a repair can only be added after the wrong.⁴

What's still open

The code is stated in full above. What's still being finished is the set of derivations that tie it to the foundations. Section 10 of The Moral Code names most of them.¹¹ Here is each link this post leans on.

• Responsibility beyond the worked promise. This is the one step the answer needs. "Responsibility takes control plus a requirement" is proved for a promise to feed someone. On whom a requirement falls in general, after a violation, and when two duties compete isn't derived. Promise the same food to two people when there's enough for one: which promise governs, who is to blame when both can't be kept, and who must then release are all open.¹²
• From real acts to writes. Which real acts (a promise, a cover story, a skipped task, a storm) are which writes on the record. The project and its work counts are drawings until that map is made. Why Does Evil Exist? states it.
• What is due. That the physical record carries what is due, with the two people as a bond's two ends. What Is Justice? states it.
• Why both ends write. That each end's book holds one exact state of its bond. What Is Freedom? states it.
• From charge to ought, and the reading of time. That the record's charge makes an act one that ought not be done, and that the record decides each bond's charge from that bond's own entry, which "undiminished" rests on. Why Does Evil Exist? states both.
• Reasons and orders. The code reads what an act does and who wrote it. How a person's reasons, knowledge or carelessness count toward blame isn't derived, and neither is how responsibility divides when one person orders and another carries it out. The record keeps each act under its own authors.

The whole trip, in one breath

Reality keeps a permanent record of everything that happens, and nothing in it is ever erased. A bond between two people is kept twice, once in each person's own book, and each writes only in their own, so who did what is a fact that stays. The authors of an act are exactly the people whose books it changes, and a joint act has every writer as an author. A bond costs the same, J(x) = (x + 1/x) / 2 - 1, whoever put it there, and both ends carry all of it, so the one hurting isn't thereby the one responsible. The history says who opened a gap, and what happened says whose book is false. They can be different people: the gap's cost reads 0 while everyone repeats the lie, and rises when somebody tells the truth. Responsibility takes control plus a requirement. Doing nothing is an act, and where an act both ends write lowers the cost, doing nothing is forbidden. A storm is a storm of sends no person chose, so nobody is to blame for it, and what people do next is on the record. A penalty on a wrongdoer's bonds without the wrongdoer's write breaks the clauses like any push. What a wrong calls for is repair, which both ends write, and the wrong stays under its author's name.

That's how reality is built: a record kept twice, with nothing erased, one forced cost on every bond, and one code that reads them. Blame is an address in it, and the record holds the whole address: whose act, whose control, whose requirement.

So, back to 8:55. On the Friday Leo never made the slides, the missing slides are Leo's, and the cover story is Leo's and Maya's together. Maya's correction opened a gap, and the cost that rose when she told the truth measured the cover story, not her. On the Friday of the storm, nobody is to blame for Thursday night, and from 8:55 on, what each of the three does next is written down. On both Fridays, the thing to do is the same: write the repair together.