59% would sacrifice their own life for five people? Someone been messing with the votes.
I'm probably not the only one that agreed to do this not to save others but to, your know...
Absurd Trolley Problems
291–300 of 951 posts
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#292Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#293Like somebody else has noted, the trolley problem exemplifies that people assign different weight multipliers to proactive action vs inaction, instead of strictly comparing the direct expectation of both outcomes. Two real life applications of this that I find interesting are:
* Tech company employees who choose not to sell their vested RSUs (inaction) as opposed to selling them and diversifying into other investments such as index funds (action) even though the latter is economically more correct.
* Members of the general public who refused to receive the COVID vaccine (inaction) as opposed to getting vaccinated (action). In their minds, the risk of getting injured due to vaccine side effects is incorrectly weighted more than the risk of developing complications from COVID, because the former would be a consequence of a conscious action (i.e. "pulling the lever") as opposed to doing nothing (letting the trolley go down the default path of getting sick).
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#294I thought it was interesting that so many people chose to pull the lever and become personally responsible for the outcome in many of these scenarios. Like the ones not involving people dying for instance, I don't want to be personally responsible for destroying 1 trolley just because some idiot had set one on a path to destroy 3, I can just see the shitstorm some stupid company will kick up in order to make me pay there for example.
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#295If you factor in the legal implications, the trolley problem becomes trivial. Do nothing. I'm not qualified nor allowed to operate train infrastructure and the legal consequences will become worse if someone dies because of something I did.
I don't see how that trivializes the problem. With that additional consideration, the options are: 1. Let 5 people die and 1 live, and you probably don't have any legal consequences. 2. Save 5 people, cause the death of 1, and you probably go to jail. So the thing that made the answer trivial was the introduction of legal consequences that affect you personally? Doesn't the difference of 4 deaths dwarf that?
You're implying that you'd go to jail for the lives of 4 people (or that people should), but recent experience has shown people won't even wear a mask to save other people's lives.
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#296If you factor in the legal implications, the trolley problem becomes trivial. Do nothing. I'm not qualified nor allowed to operate train infrastructure and the legal consequences will become worse if someone dies because of something I did.
I don't see how that trivializes the problem. With that additional consideration, the options are: 1. Let 5 people die and 1 live, and you probably don't have any legal consequences. 2. Save 5 people, cause the death of 1, and you probably go to jail. So the thing that made the answer trivial was the introduction of legal consequences that affect you personally? Doesn't the difference of 4 deaths dwarf that?
Personnaly, some answers were swayed by thinking about these legal consequences for situations like:
- Annoying the driver of the trolley for my enjoyment
- A 50% chance of killing 2 people or a 10% chance of killing 10 people
- Killing 5 people now or 5 people in the future
- Killing 1 cat or 5 lobsters
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#297If you factor in the legal implications, the trolley problem becomes trivial. Do nothing. I'm not qualified nor allowed to operate train infrastructure and the legal consequences will become worse if someone dies because of something I did.
"Nothing" would be my choice regardless, morally and philosophically. In each case you'd likely be sued by the person(s) you'd kill and they'd probably win. If you don't intervene circumstances play out and you are blameless. In the other case you are choosing to kill someone, taking their life based on an idea in your head which may or may not be valid. In reality nothing is so clear cut and the people at risk may n…
The non-interventionist stance seems to be unfavored on average, both by the problem makers ("kill count: 93") and the average respondent.
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#298If you factor in the legal implications, the trolley problem becomes trivial. Do nothing. I'm not qualified nor allowed to operate train infrastructure and the legal consequences will become worse if someone dies because of something I did.
I don't see how that trivializes the problem. With that additional consideration, the options are: 1. Let 5 people die and 1 live, and you probably don't have any legal consequences. 2. Save 5 people, cause the death of 1, and you probably go to jail. So the thing that made the answer trivial was the introduction of legal consequences that affect you personally? Doesn't the difference of 4 deaths dwarf that?
No, it doesn't. How I look at it is those (legal) rules weren't made randomly. I don't think it's an option for me to overrule what millions of people have decided on over the course of a couple of centuries. Especially if I only have a couple of seconds to think about all the implications of my action.
The calculation for me would change if there was a choice between killing 5 people and potentially killing nobody. But that's not the hypothetical here.
If those rules needs to be changed, then change them through debate and well reasoned arguments and not a split second decision. The "good samaritan" law is an example of this. If perform CPR on someone who's heart has stopped, they can't sue you if you save their life but cracked some ribs.
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#299If you factor in the legal implications, the trolley problem becomes trivial. Do nothing. I'm not qualified nor allowed to operate train infrastructure and the legal consequences will become worse if someone dies because of something I did.
I don't see how that trivializes the problem. With that additional consideration, the options are: 1. Let 5 people die and 1 live, and you probably don't have any legal consequences. 2. Save 5 people, cause the death of 1, and you probably go to jail. So the thing that made the answer trivial was the introduction of legal consequences that affect you personally? Doesn't the difference of 4 deaths dwarf that?
Congrats, you saved Hitler, Stalin etc and killed Tesla.
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#300Is the text gently floating around a bit on the page for anyone else? I just noticed after a few rounds and it's really unsettling.
To disable the animation:
.wavy-text-word { animation: unset !important; }