The sample of people you're a part of becomes different as these problems go on.
Absurd Trolley Problems
631–640 of 951 posts
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#632Of course I select all of them "do nothing" because trolley problems are idiotic BS.
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#633Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is exacerbated by the summary at the end, giving you your "kill count". For cases where you did nothing, you did not kill anyone. The trolley did.
This gets at what is, to me, an extremely important distinction between "killing" and "allowing to die." Death happens to everyone eventually. No way around that, at least not yet. The most I can do with a trolley switch is possibly affect the timing. It seems to me that any time I pull the lever to direct the train toward a person (as opposed to toward other trains or lobsters or money), I'm causing the death of who…
I'd imagine that turning off someone's life support (respirator) is akin to killing them, but something like a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order would be allowing to die.
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#634Earlier quoted context omitted.
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..
Clearly not. The vast majority of people responding to this problem usually want to pull the lever, murdering an innocent who would otherwise have lived through the day - an utilitarian perspective that holds that by default it's best to maximize the amount of lives saved. It's difficult for those of us that would argue that every life is valuable, and that, not being god, the bystander does not have the right to mak…
I’ve always presumed you don’t have time to ask those sorts of questions in these problems. You have to decide that you’d let 5 people die so your action doesn’t kill one, or kill the one not knowing how they feel about dying to save five.
What I find…not surprising I guess, but sad is that while a large percent of people would pull the lever only a small percent of people would pull the lever if they were the one on the other track. People not being at least as likely to pull the lever when they are at stake breaks all basic moral principles.
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#635This 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…
I did the problems under the assumption that "pulling the lever" was an act, while doing nothing was not acting. Implied legal (and moral) liabilities made a difference in my choices.
+1, and "Implied legal (and moral) liabilities" is just one of the issues if you're viewing the Trolley Problem as a real-world, real-consequences situation. (Vs. something from the land of make-believe, which is cool / interesting / empowering to sit around & talk about.)
For starters, real-world railroad (RR) switches are more complex than what you would understand from model RR sets, cartoons, old movies, and philosophy books. They are not binary, are often less than well-maintained, and may required upper-body strength that you don't have to successfully throw. The trolley may be going too fast for the track that you divert it onto, resulting in a derailment that kills everybody you were looking at - plus some more inside the trolley. Plus extra bystanders. Your well-intentioned passerby's understanding of which way the switch is actually pointing may be wrong. RR history has some famous (& deadly) accidents where an experienced RR employee misunderstood the situation, and threw a switch the wrong way.
Real-world, I certainly would not be touching the switch.
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#636Earlier quoted context omitted.
An extreme example: Government builds a dam. It clearly recommends people to not build in front of the dam, it may crack and a flood would be a tragedy. 100K people ignore it and slowly houses appear: it's cheaper, better land, views, etc. 1K people choose to comply with Government and build in a safe but ugly and infertile area. One day, suddenly, a huge crack appears. At the last minute engineers discovered "a leve…
It's easy if you're politician that's up to reelection. If it's your base voters, then pull it, it's 100K of potential voter. If it's not your base voters then let them perish. If you're enterpreneur, see whether 100K people is more beneficial than the other 1K. For example if you have a factory that needs many workforce and can utilize the 100K, save them. If somehow you pull the lever, make a press conference showi…
This is alarming yet accurate. One simply has to look at things like automobile recalls, the 737-max debacle, or the Camp fire, to see actual examples of the above heuristic in action.
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#637Any third choices ? Maybe pulling the lever hallfway derail ? If it is fast, that means more deaths, otherwise, you may have some injuries but everyone survives ?
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#638Wow, that was a lot of really tough decisions. Now I'm wiped for the rest of the day. Gonna have to take a nap.
Good job on the site.
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#639Earlier quoted context omitted.
Clearly not. The vast majority of people responding to this problem usually want to pull the lever, murdering an innocent who would otherwise have lived through the day - an utilitarian perspective that holds that by default it's best to maximize the amount of lives saved. It's difficult for those of us that would argue that every life is valuable, and that, not being god, the bystander does not have the right to mak…
I’ve always presumed you don’t have time to ask those sorts of questions in these problems. You have to decide that you’d let 5 people die so your action doesn’t kill one, or kill the one not knowing how they feel about dying to save five. What I find…not surprising I guess, but sad is that while a large percent of people would pull the lever only a small percent of people would pull the lever if they were the one on…
I did notice that. I'd pull the lever if I was the one on the tracks, since in that case I am not robbing someone else of their life through my decision - my life is my own to sacrifice. At that point it's best to save five.
Then again, a sizeable minority wouldn't sacrifice their life savings for lives either, which means this portion of the respondents does not think the lives of strangers have value at all, or at least that they are not in any case responsible for lives other than their own. Which is interesting!
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#640It's curious/ironic that instead or teaching us moral philosophy about ourselves, boundary testing trolley problems becomes a useful study for the purpose of social engineering.
The problem with any kind of invisible hand is that once we talk about it, it becomes visible and loses its autonomy.