I will not act as a god and divert the fate, thus I always choose not to pull the lever
maybe God put you there to save someone?
Then they put in the wrong person :D
Absurd Trolley Problems
681–690 of 951 posts
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#682I found myself following a heuristic that is basically Asimov's laws: - whenever possible, do no harm - do not let harm occur due to inaction - when given a choice, preserve the most amount of healthy lifespan in aggregate - higher lifeforms are more valuable than lower ones (cat vs lobsters) - deferred consequence is better than immediate (since it opens the door to other later interventions) It kind of really bring…
There's a (famous?) quote from a google engineer Andrew Chatham who worked on self driving cars. When asked about the trolley problem, he said "It takes some of the intellectual intrigue out of the problem, but the answer is almost always ‘slam on the brakes’” [0]
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/22/self-driv...
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#683always do nothing who really knows what will happen when you pull the switch
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#684Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except it's not up to you to decide which of these two will die, both lives are equal and you must perform action to kill the littering guy, if you do nothing someone will die anyway, it just won't be the littering guy.
What if the problem is rephrased and inaction would mean death for both?
if inaction has same result as action then it's better to stay away from any responsibility caused by action
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#685Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know, that's a very good question... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
I'm kind of shocked that 2020 vs 2019 is a 7.1% INCREASE. Most people spent a lot of the year indoors traveling much less than usual. Curious.
Much has been said about this: https://www.vox.com/22675358/us-car-deaths-year-traffic-covi...
The gist is that we design our streets in such a way that people drive dangerously fast on them when they’re not slowed down by congestion, and during the pandemic that’s exactly what happened. Some other countries (particularly in Western Europe) take a safe systems approach to street design and did not have the same uptick in fatalities that we did.
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#686> Oh no! A trolley is heading towards 5 people. The lever just speeds up the trolley, which might make it less painful. What do you do? I voted no, cause really? who the hell would SPEED UP a train to hit someeone because it 'might' make it less painful. Disregarding the million other mights that could be assumed. The logic here is astounding & yet. 33% of people agree with you, 67% disagree (20,485 votes) I guess th…
Also voted no, felt like pulling the lever would mean I took part in the inevitable killing, even if the outcome was the same. It would also remove precious time needed for the victims to recount their lives and come to terms with their situation before dying.
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#687I found myself following a heuristic that is basically Asimov's laws: - whenever possible, do no harm - do not let harm occur due to inaction - when given a choice, preserve the most amount of healthy lifespan in aggregate - higher lifeforms are more valuable than lower ones (cat vs lobsters) - deferred consequence is better than immediate (since it opens the door to other later interventions) It kind of really bring…
> - higher lifeforms are more valuable than lower ones (cat vs lobsters) Choosing between preserving the life of one cat vs one lobster seems straightforward enough. But the trolley problem was asking whether one cat was more valuable than five lobsters. According to the stats, many people agreed, but how about one cat vs a million lobsters? Or one cat vs all the lobsters on earth? Most people would think that making…
I chose to kill the cat, because there are too many of them and they devastate natural ecosystems, killing birds for instance. Lobsters on the other hand are badly depopulated. In both cases undoing a wrong committed by humanity.
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#688From 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 "did nothing" - because I don't want to play god 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 framin…
The core ethical point of the trolly problem is that you have to take an action.
In real world scenarios there are most often significant distinctions between taking an action and refusing to take one.
Re: Absurd Trolley Problems
#689Earlier 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…
You go from passively letting someone die to actively killing someone. Which is a major difference. Now, you might think that it isn't given enough time, but it's easy to argue that you're currently letting kids die in Africa by your inaction (or Ukrainians or homeless people etc.). Being slightly at fault for someones death is basically a permanent state of affairs, whereas actively killing someone is something few…
>Being slightly at fault for someones death is basically a permanent state of affairs, whereas actively killing someone is something few people would be willing to do. It definitely makes a difference
It only makes a difference in the eyes of the beholder, not for those actually dying
Not thinking too hard about reality because reality is nasty is something of a huge bug in the human cognition. Trying hard to not know anything is even desirable from that point of view: it's not neglect if you never bothered getting to a state where you are capable of being responsible for anything