Somebody else's problem

---

title: "Somebody else's problem" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["group-processes", "the-hitchhiker's-guide-to-the-galaxy", "perception", "problem-solving"] description: "Dismissive figure of speech" topic_path: "general/group-processes" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_else's_problem" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Dismissive figure of speech ::

"Somebody else's problem" or "someone else's problem" is an issue which is dismissed by a person on the grounds that they consider somebody else to be responsible for it.

Examples

A 1976 edition of the journal Ekistics used the phrase in the context of bureaucratic inaction on low-income housing, describing "the principle of somebody else's problem" as something that prevented progress. Where responsibility for a complex problem falls across many different departments of government, even those agencies who wish to tackle the issue are unable to do so.

Referring to a team working on a computer programming project, Alan F. Blackwell wrote in 1997 that: "Many sub-goals can be deferred to the degree that they become what is known amongst professional programmers as an 'S.E.P.' – somebody else's problem."{{Cite journal |url = http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~afb21/publications/PPIG97.html |title = Simulating a Software Project: The PoP Guns go to War |last1 = Blackwell |first1 = Alan F.|author-link= Alan F. Blackwell |last2 = Arnold |first2 = H.L. |journal = Proceedings of the 9th Annual Meeting of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group |pages = 53–60 |date = January 1997 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20081026050403/http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~afb21/publications/PPIG97.html |archive-date = 2008-10-26 |url-status = live |access-date = 2015-03-24

Douglas Adams' SEP field

Douglas Adams' 1982 novel Life, the Universe and Everything (in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy comedy science fiction series) introduces the idea of an "SEP field" as a kind of cloaking device. The character Ford Prefect says,

::quote An SEP is something we can't see, or don't see, or our brain doesn't let us see, because we think that it's somebody else's problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it's like a blind spot. ::

The narration then explains:

::quote The Somebody Else's Problem field... relies on people's natural predisposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain. If Effrafax had painted the mountain pink and erected a cheap and simple Somebody Else’s Problem field on it, then people would have walked past the mountain, round it, even over it, and simply never have noticed that the thing was there. ::

Adams' description of an SEP field is quoted in an article of "psychological invisibility", where it is compared to other fictional effects such as the perception filter in Doctor Who, as well as cognitive biases such as inattentional blindness and change blindness.

References

cs:Seznam pojmů, osob a vynálezů ze Stopařova průvodce po Galaxii#Pole problému někoho jiného de:Hintergründe zu Per Anhalter durch die Galaxis#Problem-anderer-Leute-Feld

References

1. [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=ekistics+1976+somebody+else%27s+problem&btnG= Seventeen reasons why the squatter problem can't be solved], S Angel, S Benjamin - [[Ekistics]], 1976
2. [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/13/sight-unseen-critic-at-large-kathryn-schulz Sight unseen], Catherine Schulz, [[The New Yorker]], April 13, 2015

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::