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Absurd Trolley Problems

neal.fun

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Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#721

Post by Etherlord87 »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #664
rax0m wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I take exception to the idea that the legal choice implies it being the moral one. Legality seems to me to be more of the bare minimum expectations and actively avoiding doing the wrong thing (don't kill people) rather than doing the right thing.

If legality is supposed to be based on morals (not sure how many people agree with this?) then wouldn't basing morals on the law be a circular reference?

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#722

Post by Dudeman112 »

sneak wrote: post #615
capableweb wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You could also leave the room, put on a movie, get accidentally distracted, et c. Do these all carry the same weight to you?

>Do these all carry the same weight to you?

Yes. Alas, we humans ( including myself ) are quite good at not feeling responsible if the issue isn't staring us in the face

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#723

Post by mcv »

sethammons wrote: post #665
mcv wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn’t choosing not to interact when you were able to still a form of interaction? It is. If you can't act, then it's not your responsibility, but if you can and choose not to, then it is. In many countries, this is codified in the law: if you see someone drown or otherwise in lethal trouble, you're expected to do what you can to save them. You can't choose not to interact in order to avoid responsibility; if you're…

Curious which countries. Fwiw, in the US, you can pull up a lawn chair and watch someone drown instead of offering them any assistance (not saying that is moral). Legal liabilities have been explored including the case where a person is pulled from a burning auto accident and the act of saving them caused back injuries and paralysis. Cue Good Samaritan laws to protect would-be do-gooders but also the acknowledgment t…

I don't have an exhaustive list for you, but I know it's the case in Netherland. I suspect we're not an exception in this.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#724

Post by horsawlarway »

Hasu wrote: post #691
grog454 wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never gotten why so many people think that the physical act of pulling or not pulling makes so much difference. One reason could be because your presence at this railroad switch is exceptional or at least unusual in some way. Maybe its worth considering what would happen if you weren't there at all. When working in a new codebase, it's generally better to assume that something odd is the way it is for a reason…

> How do you know how they got there? That implies so much prior knowledge and background that isn't really considered in the oversimplified "choices" in the website. Maybe they were forced to tie themselves to the railroad at gunpoint, or maybe it's a weird death-by-train suicide cult. This kind of reasoning really defeats the point of the thought experiment, which is to construct a scenario where those consideratio…

I disagree - I think that "reasoning about moral intuitions" is completely useless if you're attempting to reason about them in utter isolation and with the assumption that the subject is omniscient.

It's like economists assuming perfectly reasonable actors in markets, or physicists assuming a perfectly spherical object that ignores wind resistance.

They're toy problems that don't match reality at all, and the value is dubious at best as anything other than a very gentle intro to the subject.

Here's a thought experiment - How many people do you think would actually make the choice they state they will make if you present them the trolley scenario in real life with no warning? People who say they will pull the lever are fooling themselves.

1. They won't know how to read tracks

2. They won't know how the lever works

3. They don't know for sure that anyone will die: those five people might be able to move off the tracks just fine themselves

4. If they do pull the lever they're almost certainly going to get arrested or troubled by the legal system, because they fucked with shit and someone died afterwards (the courts won't give a shit that "they thought five other people might have died!").

5. For all they know the trolley operator can stop just fine, why would anyone be about get hurt?

6.... on and on.

Basically - you're setting up an impossible framework, the results (even if you get them) are useless because they're only valid in that impossible framework.

If the results of the real world never match the results of the framework you've set up, what is the value of that framework? It's just a shitty model with bad reproducibility. We have lots of those.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#725

Post by Hasu »

grog454 wrote: post #698
Hasu wrote: post #691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you know how they got there? That implies so much prior knowledge and background that isn't really considered in the oversimplified "choices" in the website. Maybe they were forced to tie themselves to the railroad at gunpoint, or maybe it's a weird death-by-train suicide cult. This kind of reasoning really defeats the point of the thought experiment, which is to construct a scenario where those consideratio…

What is the value of ethical and moral intuitions that can't be applied to real-world situations?

The value is in training your ethical understanding so you can make better choices in real world scenarios. If you can't answer trolley problems and other thought experiments in a way that is ethically consistent, how can you hope to make ethical choices in the real world with all its complexity?

It's really very similar to the reason physicists use simplified models, and the value of physics, even when it assumes a perfectly spherical cow, shouldn't need to be stated.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#727

Post by mcv »

Ensorceled wrote: post #575
eurasiantiger wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine being at a railyard at the time of a crash and being seen throwing a switch in front of a moving train. There’s no real-world case where that person is not considered responsible. Not to mention that trains really cannot go over switches at speed. A runaway trolley would probably derail at the switch if it was set on the side track.

> Not to mention that trains really cannot go over switches at speed. As someone who used to work on the railway (Maintenance of Way Workers Unite!!); in real life ... I'd throw the switch hoping to derail the train!

Exactly. In real life, I'd try to derail the train, and then call the police so they can figure out who tied these people to the track. The problem is a very artificial situation, and therefore hard to apply to real world ethics.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#728

Post by smeej »

kitkat_new wrote: post #650
smeej wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> There's no moral obligation to try to extend life as long as technologically possible. For me there is, if there is something to save (i.e. not brain dead).

Even if someone isn't yet brain dead, if there's no hope of recovery and it's just going to be a long slog of supporting more and more organs artificially until either the brain gives up or we hit an organ we can't save, I have no problem with allowing death to come because we stop supporting at least one organ, without which the person cannot survive.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#729

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

Etherlord87 wrote: post #721
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take exception to the idea that the legal choice implies it being the moral one. Legality seems to me to be more of the bare minimum expectations and actively avoiding doing the wrong thing (don't kill people) rather than doing the right thing.

If legality is supposed to be based on morals (not sure how many people agree with this?) then wouldn't basing morals on the law be a circular reference?

That's what I'm arguing against - legality isn't morals, but the original quote:

> Implied legal (and moral) liabilities made a difference in my choices.

Serves to muddy the two. I'm saying if we want to consider the moral option the legal isn't relevant.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#730

Post by smeej »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #610
smeej wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a total bias against intervening to change the path of the trolley toward one or more people (regardless of what was on the other track), but also a bias toward action if something other than a person could be run over instead, and I only got 69. I'm surprised that "saved" 15 people compared to a bias toward inaction in general.

The bias wasn't absolute. I sacrificed the 5 people to save best friend for instance.

I thought about doing that too, but then I realized my best friend would never forgive me for choosing his life over theirs. He'd unquestionably wish to sacrifice his own life instead, and it felt appropriate to honor that desire.
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