611–620 of 951 posts
I keep not understanding why this "problem" exists. If pulling the lever kills someone, then you killed someone. You can only do that if it's yourself or if the amount of people you save grants you some immunity, like "kill a guard to save a city" In the vast majority of times you should do absolutely nothing: It only becomes your fault if you touch it.
From an ethical point of view, the biggest problem for me was when there were two bad choices to be weighted against each other, e.g. 1 person on a track dies against 5 persons on the other track. In most of these cases, I "did nothing" - because I don't want to play god and I knew where this leads: There are ethical edge cases that I definitly do not want to think about. I am not super convinced about this in hindsi…
I can't understand this perspective. Deciding not to pull the lever is a decision that you've made. You are "playing god" all the same if you decide to sit there and not pull the lever. There is no ethically important distinction that comes about by the mere fact that physical movement is necessitated by one of the decisions versus the other decision. If the framing of the question changes from lever-pulling to "you must press either button A or B", and that re-framing causes you to make a different decision, then I question the ethical assumptions going into the decision making. The ethical core of the trolley problem is that you're asked to choose whether you prefer one outcome versus another -- the precise physical movements you must carry out (jumping jacks, lever-pulling, blinking, button-pressing, or just sitting still) to lock-in a particular decision are irrelevant.
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Not my circus, not my monkeys. I don't think I can be held morally responsible for inaction in any circumstance. We didn't start the fire etc. I answered "no pull" to every one except the one where the express goal was pranking the trolley driver (and no implied harm from pulling). This is apparently an unpopular opinion, but the only one I can reconcile with my own concept of responsibility.
I used to think like you until I learned about how ethical frameworks are different when you are being extorted. This trolley problem is a class of extortion because your choices are very limited and out of your control. For example, it wouldn’t be wrong if someone forced you to steal a package of bubblegum or else they would kill your family and you decided to steal the bubblegum instead of inaction. In this case, i…
I am saying that it isn't wrong to choose inaction, either.
I know there are flaws to my reasoning, but I can't shake the thought: How/Why those poor people ended on the track is more important to fix than to focus on the responsibility of the guy pulling the lever.
If someone says "ignore all the real world concerns", then does it even matter? It's the death of fantasy people, who cares?
But I would take an exception if it were family or friends. In a real scenario, saving them would be worth more than saving strangers or avoiding legal problems.
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On what basis do you assert that not pulling is also an act? It seems to me that you are asserting inaction == action which, to me, is false.
I can either pull the lever or I can not pull the lever. Choosing to not pulling the lever when I know I can save others, would be me making the choice to not saving others.
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 construct…
Edit: On the other side, if you really decide to not take more context, you just destroyed the only existing trolley of the universe.
This kind of highlights a subtle interactive design or user experience component of the Trolley problem. Part of the Trolley Problem is that the choice is between an action or inaction. But these problems, or the first one at least, have two buttons. So you're making a choice. Yeah, some might argue it's a technicality. But what if you put the Do Nothing choice on a timer? What if you made it an asynchronous "Problem…
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Legally perhaps, but morally, I've never gotten why so many people think that the physical act of pulling or not pulling makes so much difference. It's a binary decision with two outcomes, in my personal view it is irrelevant which of the outcomes is caused by physical action and which by inaction (at least, supposing that you have enough time to think about what to do - obviously, if you have to react in a split sec…
You would enjoy Peter Singer's writing. You are killing children by not donating your wealth to help them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Legally perhaps, but morally, I've never gotten why so many people think that the physical act of pulling or not pulling makes so much difference. It's a binary decision with two outcomes, in my personal view it is irrelevant which of the outcomes is caused by physical action and which by inaction (at least, supposing that you have enough time to think about what to do - obviously, if you have to react in a split sec…
I guess because there's more wiggle-room with a non-action. If you don't pull a lever, you could argue there wasn't time to pull the lever, or that you were frozen with fear or whatever. I think non-actions are judged less harshly than actions, so people are more inhibited in making them..
I would ask the person who is (in most of these scenarios) on the diverted tracks what they want me to do. They have the right to make this decision, since they are masters of their own life.