61–70 of 119 posts
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If you train a chicken to pull a trolley lever, does it weigh on the conscious of the chicken whether they killed 1 chicken vs 5 chickens? I'm not a chicken so I don't really know.
I think he meant with humans pulling the lever and chickens dying.
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> the right thing to do, whenever there is a danger of collision, is to brake as fast as possible. This actually isn't true in every scenario. What if there is a car following close behind? What if the car behind has more passengers than the car in front of you? What if swerving will kill pedestrians, but less than the passengers in the car you're about to hit? There are a lot of variables, and it's really not as str…
That's the entire point of Stallman's essay. Those what-ifs (EDIT: well, #2 and #3) aren't things the self-driving car (or a human driver, in most cases) will compute in the milliseconds it takes to make a decision. > What if there is a car following close behind? They may be able to stop fast enough. Whereas if you intentionally don't brake hard enough and strike the car in front of you, you (the computer) have trad…
It could be computed in the seconds, or minutes which lead up to the incident. A smart driver, human or AI, has a ready, already computed backup plan.
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That said the experiment does deny the always precent uncertainty (or hope, depends how you call it). Arguably the most ethical course of action would be to do everything to prevent any deaths. This might be futile, but it's impossible to know at the time.
If you want to maximize ethical utility, pick the course which reduces the greatest amount of suffering. Prognosticators not required.
Essentially, people can’t make judgements with total information.
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That's the entire point of Stallman's essay. Those what-ifs (EDIT: well, #2 and #3) aren't things the self-driving car (or a human driver, in most cases) will compute in the milliseconds it takes to make a decision. > What if there is a car following close behind? They may be able to stop fast enough. Whereas if you intentionally don't brake hard enough and strike the car in front of you, you (the computer) have trad…
> That's the entire point of Stallman's essay. Those what-ifs (EDIT: well, #2 and #3) aren't things the self-driving car (or a human driver, in most cases) will compute in the milliseconds it takes to make a decision. It could be computed in the seconds, or minutes which lead up to the incident. A smart driver, human or AI, has a ready, already computed backup plan.
No, of course not. If I'm about to rear-end another car, even if it's a 1973 Ford Pinto with 4 occupants, I'm not going to swerve toward sidewalk pedestrians in lieu of slamming on the brakes. Even if I have all the information ahead of time on that car's faults and occupancy level. Nor would I want a computer to make that decision either.
You're not wrong. These are things a computer could do. But I'd say that they're not something we want them to be doing. We don't need programmers debating trolley-problem scenarios. They can focus on just reducing or eliminating impacts directly caused by the system they're building. In other words, just hit the brakes.
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…
I see no evidence of this claimed misunderstanding in the linked article. And there's nothing "subtle" about it saying thought experiments lack value because they're contrived, that is the central point its making.
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If you want to maximize ethical utility, pick the course which reduces the greatest amount of suffering. Prognosticators not required.
It’s impossible to know the net results after hundreds of years. The assassination of archduke ferdinand, might be a net positive for people currently alive today or a net negative, but it really seemed like a bad thing for the next several decades. Essentially, people can’t make judgements with total information.
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…
Why does every comment like this, criticising an article, always claim the author doesn't understand the concept they're talking about? You can just disagree with something without using cheap tactics like this to imply the author is ignorant. I see no evidence of this claimed misunderstanding in the linked article. And there's nothing "subtle" about it saying thought experiments lack value because they're contrived,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you train a chicken to pull a trolley lever, does it weigh on the conscious of the chicken whether they killed 1 chicken vs 5 chickens? I'm not a chicken so I don't really know.
If one could train a chicken to pull or not pull a lever to save x amount of chicken lives, does it weigh on the conscience of the trainer that they’ve compelled a self-aware creature to kill one of its own kind? (I’m not asking this to refute your point, it’s well met, I just found the opportunity to poke at the imaginary ethical elephant too much to resist, and no I’m not proud of it-those were good hens)
Stallman said it better: The Trolley Problem poses this question: if a trolley is about to run over and kill five people standing on the tracks, and you can shunt it to a different track where it would only kill one person, should you do it? Or what if you could save those five by throwing a person near you onto the tracks; should you do it? Many people feel intuitively that it would be wrong to throw that person ont…
I did not expect Stallman to offer such lame thinking. > The reason, in real life, why killing someone is ethically different from letting someone die is that real life is full of surprises: the person might not really die. Just like a cancer patient might always spontaneously get cured and you'd be an ass for cutting them open. Life is full of surprises, don't take action, ever! > For real driverless cars, the troll…
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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…
You're totally striking on exactly how I would frame thought experiments. They're a tool that helps further a conversation and discussion, to challenge what might be a preconceived notion. Once you shake out enough thoughts from the thought tree, you can hopefully discover what they're all pointing to in order to find what might _actually_ be driving an ethical decision.