Hot potato is a parlor game where people pass something, like a bean bag, from person to person. The loser is the one caught with the hot potato when the music stops.
A hot potato can be anything difficult, controversial, or troublesome, that people want to get rid of as soon as possible.
Like passing the buck, passing on the hot potato is a way to avoid responsibility, taking a problem that’s on your plate and handing it off, eliminating the problem for you by simply making it someone else’s problem.
The hot potato game is not productive. While it may solve the immediate, local challenge, it doesn’t solve the problem or improve the overall situation. Instead, it just moves the problem around, making it harder to identify and harder to solve.
See also: Infinite loop, Doom loop.
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