A Sword Art Online Thought Experiment

[Schema]

For those unaware Sword Art Online was an event where 10,000 players became trapped in virtual reality where if they died within the game they died within real life. 
The only way out of the game was for the community as a whole to complete an objective. To complete the object did require at least a minimum number of players to risk their lives consistently. 
Inside the game formed player killers, gamers who would deliberately kill other players, both players aiming to complete the objective, and players aiming to not risk their life in the aim of letting others complete the objective first. 
In this system we have Players, Killers, and Nonactives. 
Furthermore those inside of the game have no guarantee of the following:
1) Time may not be passing; this is in virtual reality and it is completely possible for the entire game to happen in a single minute.
2) Death inside the game may not actually players. No one has access to any information outside of the game so it is impossible to know for sure players are being killed. (A disconnect could free the player, even though they were told it would kill them)
As an outside observer with the ability to disconnect players from the game do you kill the player killers?
Does that change if you know the minimum number of players required to clear the last obstacle? 
Lets say player killers are killing players at a rate of 15 per day, the game at a rate of 1 per day, and each day 1/2% of progress is made. It requires 200 days to clear the game, or an estimated death toll of 3200. However the last obstacle is 9000 players standing on a button....  So everyone dies.

What do you do?

 

[Contrabardus]

This question is too much like homework.

It feels like it was written by a math teacher trying too hard to engage students with pop culture references worked into a worksheet problem.

It's also not entirely clear what our position is, how much we supposedly know, or exactly what the situation is. We're apparently outside the system, but it's also taking place over a very compressed space of time, which means that we wouldn't be able to really react quickly enough to have a significant impact to begin with. You got a bit too convoluted with the details there and it stopped making sense about halfway through.

 

[daniel_gudman]

1) Time may not be passing; this is in virtual reality and it is completely possible for the entire game to happen in a single minute.
2) Death inside the game may not actually players. No one has access to any information outside of the game so it is impossible to know for sure players are being killed. (A disconnect could free the player, even though they were told it would kill them)
As an outside observer with the ability to disconnect players from the game do you kill the player killers?What do you do?

1) Time is passing at the rate of 1 minute per minute. It's impossible for nerves to do otherwise. Granted Reki came up with even more Magic Bullshit Technology that subverted that -- but at the time of SAO, that hadn't been invented yet anyways.

2) 213 Players were killed when people disconnected them, who hadn't heard Kayaba's announcement that disconnect == IRL death.

3) There's no way to tell there are PKers from the outside, let alone identify them; so there's no basis to execute people as punishment for crimes you can't know about.

 

[akun50]

First off, we have to establish some hard and fast goals. It means less fun for everyone, but it means more people are going to live to see the outside world.

Goal #1 - Shutting up the motherfucking idiots who whined about "Beaters" (aka. the players who'd been in the Beta and had beaten the game).

These shit-nuggets (the idiots who whine about the "beaters"), more than anyone else, were one of the most toxic elements to the situation.

Why?

Because they turned players who were arguably the BEST resource for getting everyone out alive into social pariahs. No one wanted to admit to being a "Beater" once these fart-sucking dipshits undulated their epic dumbassery into the community, which drove them to either pretending not to be skilled at the game (which DID get people killed) or drove them to isolate themselves from the rest of the player-base.

While the Beta players are not necessarily better than the other players, they have knowledge and experience surrounding the game which is invaluable for getting everyone out alive. Making the beta players into pariahs simply shits on everyone's parade as they'll be less likely to help, let alone stick around, which means everyone's chances for survival takes a nosedive.

If possible, move these whining shit-burgers into areas separate from the other players so their idiocy doesn't infect others.

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Goal #2 - Eliminating Player Killers. The SAO situation makes PVP an exceedingly horrible idea as it risks the lives of everyone. Should they end up killing too many other more valuable players, there might not be enough competent players to finish the game in any sort of reasonable time frame, if it could be completed at all.

As such, my recommendation, as harsh as it is, would be to simply kill them.

It might sound cruel, but considering they were willing to end the lives of others, they would be considering killers in the real world, and the only rational defense for people inside the game would be to kill them in return. So, you either have the option of killing them yourself before they can take too many lives or letting them kill until someone in-game can kill them.

One ends their rampage quickly and with few victims; the other lets them rampage for an unknown amount of time, claim an unknown number of lives and puts the guilt of having ended another life onto someone who might not be able to handle that kind of strain, which could turn someone who could've gotten everyone out faster into a potential suicide.

As an outside observer, PKers are jeopardizing everyone else's lives by not only killing other players, but possibly the most VALUABLE players. As terrible as it sounds, any disconnection experiments should be conducted on these folks first to remove them from the situation.

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Goal #3 - Keeping a running tally of players who were not willing/able to play and moving them into houses/areas where PKing was not possible, and keeping them there unless or until they're willing to assist/support. As we're trying to save many people as possible, we need to keep casualties down and to do that, we need to remove the need to waste time and resources to protect the not-playing-players from harm. Ideally, these areas would be separate from the areas where people from the front go to relax, as some of the frontline stories may destroy morale and further dissuade any potential recruits from the not-playing-player base from joining into the fight.

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Goal #4 - Having outside hackers get into the server to update the folks within. Even if no one else can join to play or disable the game safely, being able to send messages within could help out with morale inside, from giving people inside uplifting messages, updates on the world around them and even if it's distressing, knowledge of whether or not the people who left actually got out. It would also help remind potential PKers that their actions will have consequences and hopefully dissuade them from doing so.

The one thing I always felt was bullshit was the idea that NO hackers could get in or out of SAO. I'm sorry, but hackers can get into all sorts of places today, and I hardly doubt that SAO would've been complex enough to keep them out, at least, not permanently.