Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Absurd Trolley Problems

neal.fun

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 951 posts

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#261

Post by epgui »

TrapLord_Rhodo wrote: post #251
epgui wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Humans are compounding I had the same thought, but this isn't necessarily true. With money, it's true by design. Interest rates, inflation and money expansion are core components of the economy. However, with humans it all depends on the fertility rate, and it's currently dropping. So in this scenario, there's a lot we don't know about the future. I sent the trolley into the future because, all else being equal, at…

Eh, I don't really buy the whole fertility rate, depopulation stuff that Elon and the like have been disputing. I truly believe that was him signaling support for abortion ban without him signalling support for it. One thing has been constant through history, population growth. I have seen no evidence that this is slowing, only that 'Developed nations' are having less kids. People seem to forget that develop nations…

Regardless of what Elon is saying, it makes no sense to assume that exponential growth will continue forever. At some point (rather quickly), you run out of resources. Population growth at the global scale has begun to slow down. I don't know when it dips below 2.0 or gets to a stable state of 2.0, but it will eventually happen.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#262

Post by hookey »

everfree wrote: post #98

I'm surprised to see the popular answer to Question 3. > Oh no! A trolley is heading towards 5 people. You can pull the lever to divert it to the other track, but then your life savings will be destroyed. What do you do? Over 70% chose to pull the lever and destroy their life savings. People die of preventable causes in developing countries today. By choosing not to donate your life savings today to help them, you ar…

I took the Giving What We Can Pledge[1] and donate 10% of my income to effective charities for this reason. It barely makes a difference to me and it saves more than 1 life a year. They also have a really cool How Rich Am I calculator[2] to put it in context.

I still chose to pull the lever though because I don't have $18000 in my life savings yet.

[1]: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge

[2]: https://howrichami.givingwhatwecan.org/how-rich-am-i

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#263

Post by fuyu »

uudecoded wrote: post #204
ConstantVigil wrote: post #117

Kill count: 84 Apparently I solved philosophy? Im gonna assume that title stays the same for everyone lol. So, explanation for why so high. Simply put; I don't believe 5 people really got tied to those rails each time. They are in on it somehow. If so, that is sick and twisted they would tie someone else to the rails purposely. So they deserve the trolley instead. Now on the chance that they really are all innocent;…

I got an 82, so assume we are thinking similarly. I am personally interrogating my response to this: "Oh no! A trolley is heading towards 5 people who tied themselves to the track. You can pull the lever to divert it to the other track, killing 1 person who accidentally tripped onto the track instead. What do you do?" I save the 5 over the 1. Only 15% agree with me. Why? This is the first Absurd Trolley Problem (I th…

100 years is a long time for humanity to look into ways to counteract time travelling trolleys! Sure it _says_ the future trolley will kill 5 people, but if I were in that situation I'm fairly sure I wouldn't be so certain. In your "political" example: Do you want a guaranteed bad outcome now, or what we expect to be the same bad outcome later?

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#264

Post by throwaway787544 »

codefreeordie wrote: post #201
throwaway787544 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming free will though. It could be that nobody made their bed, and you're just doing what was preordained, but chalking it up to free will to feel better. Maybe you could live with anything. Maybe the information is a facade, and never really makes a difference, because you'll always just do what you were going to do anyway.

If there is no free will, though, then there isn't an interesting moral quandary about you pulling the lever. You either do, because you were preordained to do so or you don't, because you were preordained not to, and in neither case does any morality or decision-making enter into the picture, since, absent free will, you are not a morality-possessing or decision-making entity.

There's no free will in a clock but it's still interesting to watch the gears. And just because you don't have free will doesn't mean you don't have morals; even if you don't choose to do right or wrong, you can still distinguish them as separate concepts. And even if you can't distinguish morality, that doesn't necessarily make you amoral either. It's like being born to be an extra in a play and die once the play is over.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#265

Post by aoeusnth1 »

ConstantVigil wrote: post #134
oefnak wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He just named one: GiveWell.

Sorry, but wasn't taking it at face value just cause it was used as a data point only at the time. And not to be that person; but proof please. I really do want a comprehensive list if possible of which charities are actually worthy of even being allowed to keep existing on this planet.

They have extensive research on their website that doesn’t need to be copy pasted here.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#266

Post by dxdm »

unglaublich wrote: post #206
paxys wrote: post #12

Level 20 was weird. It was a choice between letting a trolley run as normal ("emits CO2, kills 3 people in accidents over 30 years") or running it into a brick wall and decommissioning it. For some reason more people picked the latter. So, they just dislike public transit? What about the emissions and death rate when everyone switches to cars instead? Goes to show how easily the context and exact wording of a questio…

No one likes public transport, but people like motorized traffic even less. It's a relative choice. The option should have been between decommissioning the train, saving 3 people and a few tons CO2, and decommissioning all motorized vehicles, saving millions of people every year and having a real impact on CO2 reduction.

In Germany, a lot of the time, public transport is awesome. I love public transport here. You can always find something to complain about, and of course there will be exceptions, but compared to other places I've been to, public transport here is available, useful, and clean.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#267

Post by biofox »

ryan-allen wrote: post #144
JonathanFly wrote: post #21

>Oh no! Due to a construction error, a trolley is stuck in an eternal loop. If you pull the lever the trolley will explode, and if you don't the trolley and it's passengers will go in circles for eternity. What do you do? 50% of people pull the lever?!? I hereby declare that if I'm ever going to be stuck in a trolley for my entire life, I do NOT want the lever pulled. Toss me a smartphone charger and my life wouldn't…

I pulled the lever. It said "eternity" and I couldn't possibly condemn the passengers to eternal life. Maybe it's because I read The Eyes of Heisenberg by Frank Herbert [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eyes_of_Heisenberg

But... I want eternal life :(

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#268

Post by gverrilla »

missedthecue wrote: post #184
gverrilla wrote: post #17

Not many people care about Mona Lisa lmao

It would live on as a ripped up painting with two wheel marks run across it and a very interesting backstory.

true. and then people would debate for decades if it should be repaired or not.

https://www.wantedinrome.com/news/the-day-michelangelos-piet...

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#269

Post by catchmeifyoucan »

Minor UX, could be just me, sometimes I got the “pull the lever” and “do nothing” options confused and did the wrong thing. Would be interesting if instead of pulling the lever, I could just pick the option, either underlined in the text, or as a choice.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#270

Post by strken »

paxys wrote: post #12

Level 20 was weird. It was a choice between letting a trolley run as normal ("emits CO2, kills 3 people in accidents over 30 years") or running it into a brick wall and decommissioning it. For some reason more people picked the latter. So, they just dislike public transit? What about the emissions and death rate when everyone switches to cars instead? Goes to show how easily the context and exact wording of a questio…

If you included "the trolley actually exists in a realistic world and is part of a public transport network" then sure, I won't decommission it, but trolley problems are weird zero-context questions about trade-offs and I assume they fully describe the consequences of choosing each leg when answering.

It doesn't help that actual trolleys are called trams where I live, so I think of trolleys as philosophical constructs that don't have a real existence.

Post reply on HN