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Comment by pcarolan | Hacker News Reader

It was a mismanaged crisis, I think on that point we agree.

In theory a restaurant that is over capacity and catches on fire should be able to have everyone exit without death or injury. In practice, people panic and act in their own self interest leading to disaster.

Except often enough in such a situation everyone does exit orderly. People are generally predisposed to cooperate; it's what makes us human. The situations where panic prevails are the exception.

What's the saying... success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan?

> everyone does exit orderly.

this only happens when there's leadership present to which the rest get directed, and the crowd trusts the leadership to act with their interest in mind. E.g., a uniform wearing fire-warden, is often enough.

If there's no such leadership, or they are acting (clearly) not in the interest of the "crowd", you will see panic and a failure to cooperate. This, not cooperation, is what makes humans truly humans.

You also can't yell fire in a crowded theater when there isn't one. You could make the argument that someone did.

You totally can do that, it's not illegal! Schenck v. United States is a pretty odious court case I wouldn't want to be on the censor's side in that one.

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...

No you could not. LegalEagle did a video on this in the last week talking about that ruling that was overturned and doesn't apply to the vast majority of case law anyway.

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