What If The Oil Spill Proved You Had A Pathological Condition?

The trick question:

By standard definitions of healthy behavior, here is how your answers may be construed.

If You Answer Yes

This "yes" answer, by any reasonable understanding, is an indication of codependency on your part, and you need to get help.

Is every starving dog, or even every sick child in the world your responsibility? Are your boundaries so messed up that you can't tell the difference between yourself and others?

On second thought, you're probably a helpless liberal too, which means you're incurable, so don't even try to get help. 

If You Answer No

This one is a bit trickier, because it gets to the standard train wreck riddle. If you see a train wreck about to happen and can do something to prevent it, and do not, then by any definition, you are at least partially responsible for the resulting deaths.

The part of this equation that has changed to make you guilty by this standard, is our recent worldwide move to living in the state of "Extremistan". This clever name is given to our technologically driven world by Nassim Taleb, author of the best seller Black Swan, zillionaire investor, and generally smart guy.

The name Extremistan conveys the fact that anything could happen at any time. You're brother in law could get insanely rich next year. A few terrorists with the right bomb could blow up entire cities. Because of the altered nature of the world we live in, nearly anything is possible. Nassim Taleb gives this condition the cute name of Extremistan.

Because anything is possible in Extremistan, and because you know that and did nothing about it, then you are at least partially responsible for anything that does happen.

This makes you partially responsible for lots of things, not just the BP Oil Spill. If a nuclear bomb goes off, yada yada yada. Untold number of horrible things might happen that are completely possible within our current technological capabilities. We're all in this web of shared responsibility, per this view, because there is no frickin way you can claim you didn't see that train wreck about to happen. You know it's about to happen, you just don't know exactly what or exactly when. 

If You Answer Refuse to answer

This is just the same as a no answer.