This is true if the recipient is a person, but in this case it is a "Smart contract" which means it has particular programmed behavior and cannot just be asked to do something for ethical reasons. If it is not programmed to return money, it can't return money, and if it is not programmed to be reprogrammable, then it can't be reprogrammed to help this person.

how "smart" is a contract that will delivers good to non-existent entities. How "smart" is a contract that is actually a piece of code that's riddled with footguns? Calling these things "smart" contracts was the joke of the century.

> And if not, why the hell not?

Because he sent funds to a contract (a program) and not a person (a private key). The operation of the given contract (the actual program) cannot be altered, which is useful in the sense that you can inspect the contract code and make sure that it does what you want with the funds you send to it.

It is truly mind-boggling to me that funds can just effectively vanish in the system with no sense of recourse. And that no one thought this could go awry

Funds being inaccessible contribute to the scarcity of everyone else’s funds

Just don't let it happen to you

Thats the game! People like it, it goes awry upwards!