FiringSquad

Context : QuantitativeEthics

The firing squad is an interesting phenomenon I never understood or questioned before.

Why do you need a squad of shooters to kill a single, restrained prisoner? Wouldn't one shooter and one bullet be enough?

Well, because the idea is that when many people shoot at the prisoner to be executed, you'll never know who fired first and who killed him.

This allegedly absolves any member of the squad from the guilt of having killed him.

Either psychologically, every member can tell themselves that they didn't do it.

Or perhaps it's a genuine theory that guilt as a metaphysical thing is diffused into something thinner and more morally manageable by only having been part of the cause, not the whole cause.

Unfortunately many of us act like ClimateChange can be absolved the same way.

Compare "we all put one drop of water in this bucket, now the bucket has overflowed but it's none of our faults"

There's a relation too with DoctorsAndLawyers. The evil was still done. The guy still got shot. The firing squad doesn't undo or resolve that fact. But the firing squad muddies the attribution of blame. Which is enough for the lawyer.