Amusing 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

> 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.

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

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.

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.