Hacker News Reader

Comment by Mountain_Skies | Hacker News Reader

In a monocultural society like South Korea, it's a good idea that probably could work very well and would have saved lives. I'm afraid here in the west it would quickly be abused by morons wanting to amuse themselves at gatherings and quickly be ignored, making it useless.

View on HN

I can assure you that crowds in Itaewon are not not monocultural (although on Halloween it is a bit, because it's one of the rare occasions Koreans will go there in large numbers). I can also confirm that South Korea does indeed, have plenty of morons.

But perhaps I'm missing the point and this is the sub-thread for racist tropes/talking points. Why can't all minorities be more like Asians?

Parent comment is an internet classic, when there's only a surface level, stereotypical understanding of a foreign culture, and the assumption that's all there is to it.

Bonus points when the perceived population homogeneity is used as a reason why universal healthcare works "over there" but couldn't possibly work here. It's ignorant and racist as soon as it's given even a cursory examination.

Yes, just the other day I was reading such an internet classic about how east asia is a model of community mental healthcare. Korea leads the OECD in suicide rates and mental health is deeply stigmatized. If we can get through the political backlash of this event without a high profile public figure committing suicide (to avoid responsibility) it will be a miracle ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's literally how our previous mayor went out, and he didn't even manslaughter 153 people.

There were videos of people drinking and dancing right next to a dozen flashing ambulances. I don't think that kind of protocol would work, even in Korea.

(Also most people grossly underestimate this kind of danger - by the time someone in the center realizes they're in trouble, it would be too late.)

For all they knew, 3 people had alcohol poisoning and 5 more had cuts and bruises from a fight or whatever.

I doubt any animal of any species, if they were aware of their own kind being killed in large numbers nearby, would not shut up and pay close attention for the sake of their own safety if nothing else...

Right, that's why people keep pulling fire alarms for funsies too. Oh, wait...

I'm not sure if this is sarcasm or not. People definitely do keep pulling fire alarms "for funsies", and that's probably a lot easier to prosecute than "who falsely initiated the 'crowd crush' protocol".

It definitely reads as sarcasm to me. It’s easier to prosecute a false fire alarm than a false crowd-crush signal but the cost of a false fire alarm is also far greater.

In a false fire alarm you have the emergency services responding, possibly pulling them away from real emergencies, possibly fire suppression systems engaged adding property damage and cleanup, and everyone evacuating the premises wasting peoples time.

For a crowd-crush protocol I’m imagining something like this. If you see someone being crushed or fallen down and trampled you raise your hand. Possibly with some hand signal like a fist with an extended pinkie finger to disambiguate other reasons to raise a hand (like dancing at a concert for example). If you see someone giving the crowd-crush signal you also give the crowd-crush signal, this way it propagates throughout the crowd. In addition to giving the signal you will also stop moving and stand in place until the issue has resolved. At most a protocol like this would waste a few minutes of peoples time in a false positive.

Never attended a public high school in America?

Nope.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com