The Trolley Problem Problem
aeon.co
The Trolley Problem Problem
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Re: The Trolley Problem Problem
#2TTPP seems to be suspension of disbelief.
If the audience cannot enter into the problem, then its value as a tool is diminished.
Case studies are also fraught with peril, but the analysis of where the particulars end and the general principles begin seems the bulk of the exercise anyway.
Re: The Trolley Problem Problem
#3I'm stunned that this article was published just a few days ago, because recent events have illustrated just why it can be important to think about strange, unrealistic hypotheticals. How much easier would lockdown debates have been, if we had the conceptual frameworks in place to talk frankly about how many lives must be saved to justify suspending certain freedoms?
Re: The Trolley Problem Problem
#4Maybe a little off topic...
Ethics thought experiments are interesting and sometimes fun and you can't deny the value of getting people thinking about choices and behavior.
But it's always seemed to me that they, along with ethics in general, miss the point. I don't think absolute right and wrong, or even absolute "lesser of two evils" is a particularly useful goal.
It's the contextual framework that matters... Values, priorities, fears, desires, needs, the things that comprise a person's identity and worldview. Those things are going to win over ethics every time when real world decisions are being made.
IMO there's a lot more value in exploring those things, as opposed to ethics, if the ultimate goal is to impact the behavior of a individuals in a society.
Re: The Trolley Problem Problem
#5The problem here is reminiscent of the classic short story "The Cold Equations": A young woman is fooling around near a space ship and ends up accidentally stowing away on a craft needed to move serum to a colony in the grips of disease. The mass on the ship is accounted for to the gram (the gramme, even!) so her excess mass means the ship no longer has the fuel to make it to the colony. The dashing space hero has to jettison the innocent young woman in order to save untold numbers of people.
OK, what's blindly, blisteringly wrong here? First, the idea that a space ship small enough its fuel would be rationed out by the gram would have enough room in the crew compartment for someone to hide in is ludicrous. Second, launching without a checklist? Are you out of your tiny little mind? Third, allowing unknown people to bring unknown contaminants into a space ship? Having a "KEEP OUT" sign doesn't save the colonists from another plague, now, does it?
The moral of the story is that it's hard to keep your mind on the supposed lesson when the flaws jump up and down and yell at you.
Taking a different tack, by thinking too hard about the consequences of the thought experiment instead of the lead-up to it, there's the Jew in the attic. You know how it goes: A Jewish family is hidden in your attic or guest bedroom or someplace and the Nazis come knocking. Do you lie to save the Jews? "Of course", you say, and come up with a nice logical argument for why your ethical system demands you lie in this instance. All functional ethical systems can come up with such an argument with minimal fuss. However: The Nazis were not very nice, you know. If they thought a town was holding out on them, they'd initiate reprisals. They'd kill a whole town in a fit of fascist pique. Saving a half-dozen Jews could doom a few thousand innocents, likely including the original Jews. But that's out of scope for the thought experiment.
Re: The Trolley Problem Problem
#6I'm stunned that this article was published just a few days ago, because recent events have illustrated just why it can be important to think about strange, unrealistic hypotheticals. How much easier would lockdown debates have been, if we had the conceptual frameworks in place to talk frankly about how many lives must be saved to justify suspending certain freedoms?
How does that help.
"By my weightings, freedom is more important than public health."
"My weightings say the opposite."
That's where we are today. Putting numbers on it, numbers that can't be determined except by our personal biases, doesn't help.
Here's a fun story about cost benefit analysis in the real world, a bureaucrat deciding which kinds of rape hurt enough to be worth preventing:
Criticism: https://gulcfac.typepad.com/georgetown_university_law/
Defense: https://www.theregreview.org/2013/09/13/13-sunstein-cost-ben...
Re: The Trolley Problem Problem
#7The problem here is reminiscent of the classic short story "The Cold Equations": A young woman is fooling around near a space ship and ends up accidentally stowing away on a craft needed to move serum to a colony in the grips of disease. The mass on the ship is accounted for to the gram (the gramme, even!) so her excess mass means the ship no longer has the fuel to make it to the colony. The dashing space hero has to…
You reject science fiction for being too unrealistic in its imperfect space travel engineering, meanwhile NASA blew up two crewed Space Shuttles by launching shuttles that they knew had failed components.
Re: The Trolley Problem Problem
#8Absolutely bizarre to see a philosopher writing at some length that some questions are bad because they are hard to answer cleanly. Does he know what his profession is?
It's also poor form to sling broad accusations about what "some" philosophers do without citing any examples.
Re: The Trolley Problem Problem
#9I'm stunned that this article was published just a few days ago, because recent events have illustrated just why it can be important to think about strange, unrealistic hypotheticals. How much easier would lockdown debates have been, if we had the conceptual frameworks in place to talk frankly about how many lives must be saved to justify suspending certain freedoms?
How does that help. "By my weightings, freedom is more important than public health." "My weightings say the opposite." That's where we are today. Putting numbers on it, numbers that can't be determined except by our personal biases, doesn't help. Here's a fun story about cost benefit analysis in the real world, a bureaucrat deciding which kinds of rape hurt enough to be worth preventing: Criticism: https://gulcfac.t…
The value in these things is being able to consistently extrapolate from weightings, and to understand all of the consequences of different weights. Most people just have vague moral intuitions that lack consistency.
Re: The Trolley Problem Problem
#10The trolley problem is a non-problem. I don't know about you guys, but nobody I know is ever going to buy a car that might decide to kill them to save some stranger(s).