The Copenhagen Trap: How the West made passivity the only safe strategy
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The Copenhagen Trap: How the West made passivity the only safe strategy
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Re: The Copenhagen Trap: How the West made passivity the only safe strategy
#2[flagged]
Re: The Copenhagen Trap: How the West made passivity the only safe strategy
#3[flagged]
No it's not.
Re: The Copenhagen Trap: How the West made passivity the only safe strategy
#4[flagged]
I read it top to bottom and didn't get that impression.
Re: The Copenhagen Trap: How the West made passivity the only safe strategy
#5Amusing the title is the "Copenhagen Trap" (I know it's a reference to the Copenhagen Interpretation), since Denmark actually have laws about duty to help.
The Danish penal code § 253[1] punishes people with up to 2 years in prison, those who - without high risk to themselves or others - intentionally do not help someone after ability, who is clearly life threatened.
Additionally, the Danish rules of the road § 9[2] have rules for acting in the event of an accident; specifically, that they have a duty to help.
[1] https://www.retsinformation.dk/eli/lta/2025/1294#P253 [2] https://www.retsinformation.dk/eli/lta/2024/1312#P9
Re: The Copenhagen Trap: How the West made passivity the only safe strategy
#6> how it became encoded into Western institutions,
> This is not a human universal. Continental Civil Law systems (France, Germany) criminalize failure to rescue
Might want to phrase "western institutions" a bit more precisely. The parts of Europe I know have good protections for Samaritans & the article itself even acknowledges some of this too.
Re: The Copenhagen Trap: How the West made passivity the only safe strategy
#7[flagged]
Whether it is or not, the information is relevant, thought-provoking, and necessary to consider for life in modern society. It's a philosophical anti-corruption layer.
Re: The Copenhagen Trap: How the West made passivity the only safe strategy
#8[flagged]
I read it top to bottom and didn't get that impression.
There are all of the usual signs. Overuse of em-dashes (34 of them), overuse of colons (41 of them), overuse of lists of three items comma-separated, incoherent overusage of bold text, overly terse "x → y" lists.
Some excerpts that are particularly obvious:
> Approve a drug that kills: massive public scandal, congressional hearings, career destruction—the action is visible, attributable, punishable. Delay a drug that would save lives: invisible deaths, no scandal, no attribution—the people who died waiting never become a story.
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> The mechanics:
> *Interaction implies liability*: Help a homeless person imperfectly → criticized for the imperfection
> *Profit implies guilt*: Sell cheap water in a drought → "profiteer," "monster"
> *Ignorance implies innocence*: Ignore the problem entirely → zero criticism
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> The Copenhagen Trap doesn't just affect decisions. It affects *who makes decisions*. This is not about individual choices. It is about civilizational selection pressure.
Re: The Copenhagen Trap: How the West made passivity the only safe strategy
#9There is another asymmetry that this article misses. Fear leads to inaction. Hope leads to action. The article seems to argue that we need to punish inaction. But this goes against the principle I just mentioned. Instead we could (and do) reward action. Recall the profiteer in point VII. Maybe he was critized. But he also did make a profit. Reward. In China, passing good samaritian laws undid damage. Why because lessening fear was enough for hope to prevail. Hope of gratitude and reward.
Like anon908 I also thought this was llm-generated, but unlike him I thought it was still a worthwhile read.
Re: The Copenhagen Trap: How the West made passivity the only safe strategy
#10This formalises what I've tried to articulate for years now and can be applied to the minuscule scales I work at.
All too frequently do people wait for the mace of circumstance than to act and risk the reed of agency.