I feel like the adjective “accidentally” still makes sense to convey “not on purpose”, and the “naked on the porch” situation is a good example of that. This distinction can be made regardless of the level of blame (or here shame) that should be inflicted. I don’t feel like this applies to the noun “accident” and I doubt that the radio hosts would have called this “an accident where a man was locked outside naked”.
Regarding the kid, I agree with you that it suggests “I should be blamed less (or not at all)” and the level of blame should somewhat depend on whether the action was intentional or not.
The Three Mile Island accident is interesting. If I were to guess, the phrasing of the commission was chosen to emphasize that this was not believed to be intentional sabotage. I would have preferred to call it an “incident” (more technically a “partial meltdown”, but that’s pretty scary for a commission name).
From what I’m reading, my understanding is accident → not intentional → reduce blame whereas you disagree with that last arrow or at least the strength of the reduction. It is my opinion that this term should not be used when we do not want to reduce blame, e.g. for sloppy AI safety measures. I feel that our disagreement has been made clear and we are arguing about the meaning of a word, but you’re welcome to reply if you don’t believe we have reached the crux.
I feel like the adjective “accidentally” still makes sense to convey “not on purpose”, and the “naked on the porch” situation is a good example of that. This distinction can be made regardless of the level of blame (or here shame) that should be inflicted. I don’t feel like this applies to the noun “accident” and I doubt that the radio hosts would have called this “an accident where a man was locked outside naked”.
Regarding the kid, I agree with you that it suggests “I should be blamed less (or not at all)” and the level of blame should somewhat depend on whether the action was intentional or not.
The Three Mile Island accident is interesting. If I were to guess, the phrasing of the commission was chosen to emphasize that this was not believed to be intentional sabotage. I would have preferred to call it an “incident” (more technically a “partial meltdown”, but that’s pretty scary for a commission name).
From what I’m reading, my understanding is accident → not intentional → reduce blame whereas you disagree with that last arrow or at least the strength of the reduction. It is my opinion that this term should not be used when we do not want to reduce blame, e.g. for sloppy AI safety measures. I feel that our disagreement has been made clear and we are arguing about the meaning of a word, but you’re welcome to reply if you don’t believe we have reached the crux.