There is a massive difference between a pilot napping in the cockpit (and thus being available with a few seconds lag) and having no second pilot at all. There

There is a massive difference between a pilot napping in the cockpit (and thus being available with a few seconds lag) and having no second pilot at all. There is also a huge difference between going from 4->3 or 3->2 and 2->1. You're loosing any redundancy! So many of the near disaster scenarios I watch/read about (I'm an avid watcher of both Mayday and Admiral Cloudberg) are only near disasters because of having two pilots (or sometimes more) in the cockpit at the time of the incident. I recall one the other day where the plane was only saved because they happened to have four qualified pilots in the cockpit that day. The captain, the FO, someone doing a checkride on the captain and someone doing an evaluation on the pilot doing the checkride. Unusual situation but it happens. The problem, as I see it, is that there are people here optimizing for the average workload and the average workload deviates by orders of magnitude from the workload during emergencies. In normal situations the pilots are fairly idle most of the flight (talking about long haul here, not regionals with 10 movements per day) and probably use 10% of their training. When it matters, that other 90% of their training is absolutely critical to saving lives. Similar situation with flight attendants. 99% of flights they are (exceptional) waiters and waitresses, but, 1% of the time they have to draw upon little-to-never-used experience which is the difference between life and death.