Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would love to be in there. Truly.
It's akin to a life sentence on the trolley. What's to love about that?
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Absurd Trolley Problems
321–330 of 951 posts
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#322Level 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…
My logic on that particular question was that someone would probably get a new trolley to replace it (trolleys are insured, right?), no matter what I thought, so I let the trolley go.
That has the same impact as an uninsured trolley. Also see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#323Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like most people, you probably drive a car from time to time. Collectively, cars kills 30-40k americans every year. By choosing to drive you are a fractional murderer - statistically responsible for some slice of a death. Not many people will decide not to drive on learning this…
Or we can say (for example) that drivers kill 30-40k Americans every year. By being a bad driver and choosing to drive you are a fractional murderer. But that's fine because and and I bad drivers are not.
How do you know if you’re a bad driver or a good driver? It seems like a pretty blatant tautology to say that only bad drivers kill. Willing to bet almost every one of those fatal car crashes were caused by people who would have said they were a good driver…
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#325This was quite easy for me. The principles: 1. Only pull the lever if you are sure. With an action you assume responsibility for the outcome. 2. Don't believe everything what you see or are told. If you doubt do nothing. Imagine you killed many people because you have been lied to and pulled the lever. In this case it is better you did nothing. 3. An action of yours might kill someone. This is a very heavy responsibi…
Copenhagen interpretation. If you haven't interacted with system you can't be blamed.
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.…
> 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. I find it bizarre that you're taking the side of the, say, thousands of transit policymakers--who are certainly not taking this hypothetical into account--over the majority vote of the public…
Let's take a step back.
I would never criticise someone for making the decision to pull the lever. I understand that decision, I really do. I only said I wouldn't do it and explained why.
It's not as clear cut as you think it is. If you think it is, then write to a philosophy professor and say you've solved the trolley dilemma through an internet vote. I hope this sounds absurd to you.
You can play with numbers, but if I were to pull the lever, I would feel I would kill someone for the sole reason they were in the minority. Which is an extra reason for me not to do it.
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#327My comments for when I disagreed with majority.
So I first disagreed with majority at level 10 mercy, I mean if they are dead anyway and trolley running faster only might make it less painful without guarantee what is the point playing the God, they are dead anyway and nobody will guarantee it won't be actually worse if I do something. This ain't exactly euthanasia with drugs proven to work.
Level 12 best friend - I am surprised majority value life of one best friend more than lives of 5 strangers, in the end it's still people and 1:5 seems like nobrainer decision. Now, if it would be family I would agree with majority, but just the friend ain't family and heck even for the family I'd maybe have to consider whether it's old grandma vs 5 young people.
level 13 cant see - well they should then choose different picture, but from picture it seems very likely you can save 5 people instead 1 even if you are not exactly sure
level 15 age - I'm surprised most of the people are ready to sacrifice 5 elderly people (define what age is that, whether they have still 10-30 years of life ahead) and let 5 families to suffer instead 1 baby which still doesn't have even self conscience and family can have other baby and they are not used to it for years
level 17 math - i'm quite badd with these odds and math so I went rather with doing nothing if not sure and was with majority
level 19 economic damage - agree with majority, but don't understand why would people rather destroy 900K worth trams instead 300K worth trams
level 20 external costs - I don't think it's up to me to decide in what order should be trams replaced, also they dont say whether will be the tram replaced at all, way too many variables to consider which decision is better
level 22 - wow, majority of people are mean pranksters
level 23 - TIL majority of people is willing to sacrifice someone's life over littering and rather play God, I'd say 1 life equals 1 life and I won't really change direction of tram over such small thing as littering, now if you would say that person is murderer or drives dangerously that would be different
level 25 lifespan - is one life really worth ten lives each with at least 10 years ahead for majority? 10 years is quite a long time, 50 is longer but it's still just one life over 5
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#328My favorite variation is: A trolley is heading towards a line of people corresponding to every natural number. You can pull a lever and divert the trolley towards a line of people corresponding to every real number between 0 and 1. What do you do?
hmmm.. i'm not a very mathy person but seems like an interesting question. Aren't they both just infinite? There's no such thing as a bigger inifinite? thinking about it out loud here tho I would say that every natural number is a BIGGER number than every real number between 0-1 because, well, 2 is bigger than 0-1. but then again since you said corresponding to every number.... 0.000000to infiniitiy -1 is a number in…
Not all infinities are equal, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_number:
"A fundamental theorem due to Georg Cantor shows that it is possible for infinite sets to have different cardinalities, and in particular the cardinality of the set of real numbers is greater than the cardinality of the set of natural numbers."
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#329Level 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…
Agreed, they don't say anything about replacement trolley, maybe the new one will kill just slightly less people, maybe they won't replace it at all, way too many factors to consider and I am not really management of transport company to make these decisions.
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#330“Solved the philosophy”, what does that mean? Also would be nice to see my score on few distribution graphs.