Somebody Else's Problem field
From Free net encyclopedia
The Somebody Else's Problem field (SEP field) is a fictional technology from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy "trilogy" by Douglas Adams. It is a cheaper and more practical alternative to an invisibility field.
Simply put, an SEP field is an energy field similar to an invisibility field. When somebody, or something, is surrounded by a SEP field, the human brain perceives it as "somebody else's problem", and therefore will be incapable of paying attention to the object (or even seeing it, or recognizing its existence) unless it is being specifically looked for. In order for this to work, however, the object being hidden by the field must be sufficiently bizarre. For example, encompassing an ordinary mountain in an SEP field would have no effect. But if one were to first paint the mountain pink, then the SEP field would cause anyone who sees it to ignore its existence, a pink mountain being a sufficiently bizarre sight. A primary example of this was given in the third book Life, the Universe and Everything, when a UFO (a spaceship powered by the Bistromathic drive owned by the character Slartibartfast) lands in the middle of a cricket ground during a match, and the assembled crowd completely ignores it. Another prime example occurs when the aforementioned ship's field is extended so that the characters fail to notice the fact that they cannot breathe or the fact that the asteroid that they are standing on does not have enough gravitational force to hold them down.
The SEP field requires much less energy than a normal invisibility field (a single torch battery can run it for over a hundred years) due to the natural propensity of humans to see things as Somebody Else's Problem. This is very close to the idea suggested by Terry Pratchett (who has often been compared to Douglas Adams): People do not see whatever they are sure cannot be there (such as Death).
The idea of the SEP field has some grounding in the real life idea known as static filtering, in which people immediately disregard information contrary to what is expected. An example of malicious use of static filtering is subliminal messages in film. This theory is also put to practice in the film Fight Club; we are shown brief glimpses of a specific character as he suddenly appears and disappears, yet first-time viewers will generally disregard the flash unless they are told about its significance.
