| > For it to be murder it would need to be unlawful You have this backwards. It is unlawful because it is murder and we have laws against murder, not the other way around. You might be thinking of "felony murder", which is a way some places promote crimes that wouldn't otherwise be murder to murder if someone happened to die in their commission (e.g. you intended to rob a bank, and the bank guard shot someone else trying to stop you, so now you get a murder charge) but that's not necessary when you are the one intentionally performing the action that you know will kill people. > so unless red pressers are specifically doing it to kill blue pressers it is factually not murder. This isn't how "intent" works. This would be like saying "I shot the opposing soccer player so I could win the soccer game, not so that he would die, so it's not murder". Intent requires that you intentionally performed the action that could result in death, not that death was the goal. I.e. the intent requirement means tripping and falling and accidentally pressing the red button wouldn't be murder, choosing to press it would be. Similarly if you're falling off a building, and you somehow have the option to pull some bystander off the building throwing them to their certain death but saving yourself, it would be murder to do so. > There is a reason why even "duty to rescue" laws usually do not require the rescuer to endanger themselves doing it, We're not in a "duty to rescue" situation, merely in a "duty not to commit murder" one. There is no duty to press the blue button, merely one not to press the red button. That the scenario apparently leaves no other choice but to press the blue button is irrelevant. You could imagine a 3-choice game. If more people press the red button than press the blue button everyone who presses the blue button dies, but you can also not press any button and not be at any risk. Pressing the red button is still murder, but you're under no obligation to press the blue button and put yourself at risk to potentially save other blue button pushers. Doing nothing is not a crime... but the red button is just as much murder in the 2-choice game as it is in the 3-choice game. |