The Copenhagen Trap: How the West made passivity the only safe strategy
aliveness.kunnas.comAmusing 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
It's the same in France with "Non assistance à personne en danger” literally ”Not helping someone in danger" and the assistance expected is proportional to your immediate ability. A doctor who would not try to help someone injured is liable for example. There are precedents.
Weird use of "the West" here.
I remember the first time I heard about this, but it's been such a long time that I don't remember the details.
IIRC, someone drowned, and someone else filmed it on camera instead of helping, and ended up on trial for "non assistance".
I can't seem to dig up the actual story, but I think it was in the mid 90s.
Edit: I think it was the story of Marie-Noëlle Guillerné's drowning.
I grew up in the West (Australia) - for locals it's almost unthinkable that you wouldn't help someone that needed a hand, eg:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YORxs9E2Ex0
is unremarkable save for the fact that the rest of the world thought it unusual.
Many people are members of volunteer organisations, SES (Search and Rescue), St. John's (Ambulance and medical first responce), VFRS (Volunteer Firefighters) etc.
I think this varies quite a lot from one location to another. I grew up in an impoverished town in the US south. When I was a kid if your car broke down, a stranger would stop to at least give you a ride or possibly even try to repair it on the spot. If you so much as threatened a woman in public you could expect to have a number of men immediately step in to confront you.
Many year later in life I lived in Manhattan, where you could literally have a frail old lady being beat up in front of a crowd of grown men and everyone would either pretend they didn't see anything or at most pull out their phones to record it.
I don't know what my old town is like today, but a few years ago I was on a bus in Latin America far from any large cities and a pickpocket robbed someone, the passengers on the bus seized the guy, beat him up, striped him naked, and the bus driver slowed down and opened the door while they shoved him out onto the curb.
Same experience in my village. When you live far from public infrastructure (police, firefighters, doctors etc...) you need to rely on each other. I miss this spirit in the city
This law is specific to situations of imminent or actual physical harm. Also notice the way the law is formulated: non-assistance (negative) and not a an explicit duty to assist (positive).
It is an explicit duty to assist. Calling 112 counts by the way.
That is not the spirit of the law. You are punished for not assisting, but you are not obligated to assist: e.g obligated to call 112.
Yes, you are. That's the whole point of the law and what the precedents confirm. You have to assist to the extend of your ability too. If you witness something and don't call 112 (well 18), you are guilty. If you are a medic and don't do your best to stabilize the person, you are guilty to.
> 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.
Very weird. Europe is not “West”? Then what is? The Anglosphere? What kind of defaultism the author suffers?
Especially Western Europe, which is most definitely part of "the West" (by virtue of its political alignment, not its geographical location).
In Poland all you are allowed is literally calling the cops/medics. It's easy to get convicted if you hurt an attacker on self defence.
You are not allowed to use let's say knife to protect yourself from random attack on the street.
Actually attacking some random person in the middle of the day (sucker punch) is not even a crime prosecuted by the law... Even if you are bleeding and the attack is not provoked in any way.
Insanity
> You try to save them. You succeed, but break their rib doing CPR. Legally: they can sue you. Morally: "was that level of force really necessary?"
Yes, CPR breaks ribs as a routine thing https://www.cprcoursebrisbane.com.au/does-cpr-break-ribs/#el... legal standards acknowledge that fact and moral ones should too.
Also, duty to help does exist all over the "west". And even where it does not exist, good samaritan laws are not merely a sidenote, they in fact protect people when providing help.
> The term "Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics" names the phenomenon: like observing a particle collapses its wavefunction in quantum mechanics, interacting with a problem makes you responsible for it. Ignoring the problem grants immunity.
The author is ignoring a phenomenon that is so closely related I would just call it the same thing: interacting isn't necessary.
Just mentioning that a problem is likely to occur is, in general, enough to get you blamed for causing the problem.
This 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.
A great essay. I would say this is 'business ethics' for certain. It is not typically personal ethics, nor Christian or Muslim ethics. But this describes better than anything I have read what happens to every corporation, eventually. Bean counters and ombsbudsmen vs operators, day 1 vs day 2, all comes down to this. If you are CEO, you must always side with the operator, the 'man in the arena'. It is difficult to do it but that's what your authority is for. Where this falls into serious trouble is with externalities. For this we still do need strong regulators.
In many countries it is VERY illegal to watch someone die and do nothing.
The United States, thankfully, is not the same as the universe, as much as Americans find that hard to believe.
The article mentions but doesn't seem to link to https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/QXpxioWSQcNuNnNTy/...
That explains weird generalization to "west" when it deals with America only problem and even there severely exaggerates the issue. Author seems to base their opinions on movie version of the world.
> You try to save them. You succeed, but break their rib doing CPR. Legally: they can sue you. Morally: "was that level of force really necessary?"
Both legally and morally, yes that level was necessary as ribs routinely break during CPR.
In fact, people tends to not push enough. When I learned first aid, it two mouth to mouth every 30 pushes. It's now two every 15 pushes.
There 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.
> Result: we are ruled by the Unstained Incompetent. The system selects for people whose primary skill is avoiding decisions. These are not the people who will reform the system. They are the people the system was designed to produce.
I'm choosing to translate "the system" here as the entrenched bureaucracy that has grown up in the Western world in the last century.
More patriotic leaders have emerged where elections remain meaningful, and those leaders are ruthlessly attacked by "the system".
Which is an ironically non-passive behavior mode.
> You try to save them. You fail. They die anyway. Legally: potential liability for negligent rescue. Morally: "why didn't you do it properly?"
> You try to save them. You succeed, but break their rib doing CPR. Legally: they can sue you. Morally: "was that level of force really necessary?"
Many countries have legal safeguards against these kinds of suits.
> You watch someone drown. You do nothing. Legally: no liability. Morally: "tragic, but not your fault."
And many countries have legal safeguards against not helping.
Author here. Thanks for the corrections.
I revised the essay, my priors were off. Added Good Samaritan data (zero successful CPR lawsuits in 30 years), duty-to-rescue statutes across Europe, and a new section on self-defense showing the trap cuts across Common Law/Civil Law (UK restrictive, Germany/Poland permissive).
I know this article is focusing on legal responsibility, but if you are going to consider moral culpability for inaction you must also factor in capability.
If a very weak person does not have the strength to perform CPR, they should not feel guilty for failing to perform it.
You also have to consider the costs involved. Somewhere out there is a homeless person who is going to die in the cold tonight. I’m not vastly wealthy, but I could afford to save them if I dropped everything I was doing, searched for them, and found them in time. It is in my power to save them, but at great personal expense. Therefore, I do not hold myself morally responsible for not doing so.
Now consider the billionaire. By merely uttering the command, the smallest effort, they could feed, house, provide medical care, and educate an enormous number of people in poverty. Remember what Uncle Ben said. With great power comes great responsibility. The blood is on their hands.