This video summarises trolley problem well for driverless cars. https://youtu.be/ixIoDYVfKA0
The Trolley Problem Problem
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Re: The Trolley Problem Problem
#72It’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…
haha, yes! Why is everyone relevant in philosophy dead?
The answer to the trolley problem is that it doesn't matter if you pull the lever or not. You should figure out who or what created the situation and truly eliminate the problem at its source.
Re: The Trolley Problem Problem
#73There 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…
> philosophy is to reduce concepts, ideas, or beliefs into abstractions
This in itself can be see as problematic, as one can say that trying to reduce "concepts, ideas, or beliefs into abstractions" is futile, as those "things" are not black and white, they do not conform to Aristotelian logic of one thing/concept being either "true" of "false", there's a "continuum" (for lack of a better word) when trying to define each and everyone of those terms.
In other words one cannot be moral or not-moral (to go back to the trolley problem), there's a moral "continuum" which even varies with time (I know I'm less "moral" before I had the chance to drink my coffee early in the morning).
Re: The Trolley Problem Problem
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
No.
Yes.
Re: The Trolley Problem Problem
#75The 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).
Don’t know why you were modded down; you’re absolutely right. WRT self driving cars, I would never buy or knowingly ride in one which had programming which did not in all cases act to maximize the safety of the occupants. ML is stupid; the last thing I want is for a computer to try to make split second ethical and value judgments about people outside my car when deciding how best to save my life. I don’t want a car d…
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Re: The Trolley Problem Problem
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
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,…
They have Trolley problem problem problems, and you have Trolley problem problem problem problems.
I present: The Trolley Solution. I decide what happens to the trolley in every scenario and everyone else is absolved of guilt.
Re: The Trolley Problem Problem
#77There 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 don't think the author's objection is to thought experiments in principle but rather, to the way they are composed and used.
After all, a thought experiment that only holds true given an impossible premise would have no rhetorical power if we weren't willing to extrapolate our conclusions beyond the premise, to the possible. Which we are - that's why the trolley problem is taught to people who aren't railway signalmen.
There's a risk there are arguments we think are convincing us because they have isolated a pure abstraction - but actually it's the false dilemma in the premise that convinced us, while the argument distracted us.
Re: The Trolley Problem Problem
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
You count the number of occupants in the car behind you, and you factor that into your braking strategy? Or, do you count occupants in the car ahead, and prepare to do the pedestrian math if a quick avoidance is needed? 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 agree. I’m just asserting that the point made by Stallman about there not being enough computational capacity in the milliseconds before a crash to compute the trolly problem is a straw man.
Re: The Trolley Problem Problem
#79The 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.
Well, I would not want to get into the car of someone with a driving habit of risking the live of 1000 people in the first place.
The real solution to this is to avoid situations where such choice must be made, by keeping safe distances and speed.
Good drivers do this naturally. AI must do this too.
Re: The Trolley Problem Problem
#80> Had the context been one in which a hitman was preparing to take a hidden shot at a target, and the target then died of a sudden cardiac arrest as the hitman remained out of sight, it’s far from clear that killing and letting die would be equally bad.
But the two situations are not equivalent. The hitman is almost certainly not in a position to save his intended victim so he is not in any meaningful sense letting him die.