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The Trolley Problem Problem

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Re: The Trolley Problem Problem

#11

Post by arkades »

msla wrote: post #5

The 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…

> They'd kill a whole town in a fit of fascist pique.

That's a new one to me. Any sources I can read up on that?

Re: The Trolley Problem Problem

#12

Post by baddox »

Sophistifunk wrote: post #10

The 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).

That seems overblown. Would you ever ride in a car with a driver that might sacrifice the lives of everyone in the car to save 1,000 people?

I suspect that lots of people have actively made decisions while driving their own car that endangers their own life in order to potentially save the life of someone else.

Re: The Trolley Problem Problem

#13

Post by throwaway2048 »

Sophistifunk wrote: post #10

The 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).

The trolley problem in regards to autonomous cars is a total sideshow when the cars we do have cant reliably tell people from bicycles from other cars.

Its often used as a sort of backdoor to squeeze in the argument that we should let X people die to autonomous cars because in the future they will definitely be safer, for sure. (some very shaky priors there)

These arguments are usually introduced with massive assumptions about the applicability and reliability of statistics gathered from cars that basically give up when even slightly challenged with anything remotely ambiguous or difficult (how many people live where there is perfect weather almost every day?), and then are applied to the entire gambit of circumstances human drivers deal with every day, by the millions.

Re: The Trolley Problem Problem

#14

Post by dereferenceddev »

There just seems to be a misunderstanding on the intention of a though experiment here. There is a subtle implication that because the thought experiment is "contrived" that its less valuable.

When thinking about philosophy, a core part of philosophy is to reduce concepts, ideas, or beliefs into abstractions (or a "spirit" or "essence" of what their intention is), the thought experiment presents itself as a perfectly useful tool to help challenge those concepts.

Ethics is not about absolutes, but really about sussing out where gray areas exist in what some might believe are black and white situations. Additionally, most of the scenarios are presented as a thought experiment, because conducting a real experiment with those conditions would be wildly _un_ethical.

How are we supposed to determine the nuance of valuing human life if we were bound to doing actual experiments? Also, who in their right mind would conduct such as experiment?

Zimbardo faced enough flack testing the limits of obedience and authority in the Standford Prison Experiement.

Re: The Trolley Problem Problem

#15

Post by viburnum »

It’s not just philosophy. So much of economics education is getting students to narrow their vision down to the something that somebody else wants them to see. Force the assumptions on people and then tell them how smart they are when they draw the inevitable conclusions. It’s a trap. Normal people forget about the assumptions and walk away believing the conclusions. It’s a technique for reshaping people’s intuitions.

Re: The Trolley Problem Problem

#16

Post by DangitBobby »

I was in just such a conversation the other day, where we were discussing the implications of the second amendment with regards to tyranny in the US. A participant would not allow the conversation to continue without a description of how tryanny would take hold, and no hypothetical was realistic enough. They could not have brought the conversation to a halt faster if it were deliberate. Ultimately, they didn't agree with the point (which was sound) because they believe that our "democracy" is sufficient to prevent tyranny now and forever.

The point of discussions about scenarios whose parameters cannot be known is to find a useful way to elide the unknowns and come to conclusions that we can agree to and understand. Failing to see the forest for the trees is not a problem with the exercise; it's a problem with the participant.

Re: The Trolley Problem Problem

#17

Post by mc32 »

dereferenceddev wrote: post #14

There just seems to be a misunderstanding on the intention of a though experiment here. There is a subtle implication that because the thought experiment is "contrived" that its less valuable. When thinking about philosophy, a core part of philosophy is to reduce concepts, ideas, or beliefs into abstractions (or a "spirit" or "essence" of what their intention is), the thought experiment presents itself as a perfectly…

Instead of conceptual people you could experiment with real fish or chickens.

Re: The Trolley Problem Problem

#18

Post by efitz »

One challenge that I have always had with the trolley problem is that in general solutions are not symmetrical. By this, I mean that as an observer, I might conclude that several different choices made by the subject of the experiment were ethical. For instance, if the subject threw the switch and caused one person to be killed (instead of multiple), I would see that as ethical. I would also see it as ethical if the subject did nothing, either out of shock or out of refusal to actively participate in anyone’s death. So I guess the problem is that I’m not convinced that the thought experiment generates objectively ethical outcomes, only subjective ones.

Re: The Trolley Problem Problem

#19

Post by mc32 »

sukilot wrote: post #8

Absolutely 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.

Why? Why is questioning presumptions bad? If the accusations end or weak then it proves philosophy still has it right. On the other hand it could cause a rethinking and perhaps fine some merit in the criticism,

Re: The Trolley Problem Problem

#20

Post by keithnz »

dereferenceddev wrote: post #14

There just seems to be a misunderstanding on the intention of a though experiment here. There is a subtle implication that because the thought experiment is "contrived" that its less valuable. When thinking about philosophy, a core part of philosophy is to reduce concepts, ideas, or beliefs into abstractions (or a "spirit" or "essence" of what their intention is), the thought experiment presents itself as a perfectly…

As I see it, it's just a tool to try an unravel principles. They aren't trying to solve specific situations. Thought experiments often have counter thought experiments, like with the trolley problem, if pulling the lever seems more ethical, when you have 4 patients who will die without an organ transplant, and you have 1 patient who is healthy and organs could be harvested to save 4. It starts becoming harder to work out what the critical principles are. Just like in the article of the killing vs letting die, the assassin example is an alternative thought experiment. This is more important if you have to encode these things in laws / policy where you need a more generic guide to what is acceptable. But you wouldn't rely just on thought experiments to do this, they are just tools to help shake the "thought tree" to see what falls out.
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