Absurd Trolley Problems • Hacker News Board

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#901

Post by e_y_ » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 7:48 PM UTC

darkerside wrote: post #515

epgui wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrary to popular belief, there's nothing unethical about attaching a price to a human life: it's a very uncomfortable question, and I think there ought to be some disagreement on what the number should be... But money is fundamentally just a unit of value. We use it to compare the value of different things. We can use it to convert between labour (someone's time, which is a fraction of one's life) and goods and se…

Thanks for the thoughtful comment. A lot of this thinking does line up for me, but it seems like there's something missing. Why do we all feel a little bit sick when we hear about car executives doing calculations to determine whether to perform a recall or not? Isn't it because we're putting a financial price on life? Or is it just that the price we're hearing is too low?

The most infamous recall was the Ford Pinto, and it was particularly bad because they knew about the problem before the car ever shipped, and once the problem was known didn't fix it for years even though the cost would have been $11/car.

Less directly, there's the fact that new safety features often come to luxury vehicles first, and might eventually trickle down to cheaper cars due to competition and regulation (backup cameras, automatic emergency braking).

I think mostly we don't like to think about it. This comes up particularly in the health care industry. There was the (manufactured) furor over "death panels" but there's also the very real challenge of deciding whether it's worth paying possibly millions of dollars on a drug that might have a marginal-at-best improvement in someone's survival odds. And it's not just about some corporate executive's pockets; these costs get passed on to regular people through increased premiums and may cause people to drop their health insurance entirely.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#902

Post by dr_orpheus » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 7:53 PM UTC

ryukafalz wrote: post #685

loufe wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 uptic…

Thank you for the interesting article. I started skimming it after a little bit though and my eyes happened to pick up this line out of context. What a name to go with that quote:

"“They were just sick and tired of kids being killed in the streets,” says Jason Slaughter"

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#903

Post by dr_orpheus » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 7:57 PM UTC

praptak wrote: post #439

mcv wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People also cause pollution, so it might be less polluting in the long run to keep the trolley. But more seriously, I just realised that this is actually an argument that's often used against various environmental measures. People argue against wind turbines because they kill birds, ignoring the fact that pollution from fossil fuel kills far more, and birds are killed in larger numbers by other causes (cars, windows,…

If I remember correctly the original trolley problem was actually two problems. One was "pull the lever to kill one person instead of five" the other was "push someone onto the tracks (killing them) to stop the trolley and save five people". More people were in favor of pulling the lever than there were in favor of pushing someone onto the tracks. This indeed hints that the more direct action, the harsher the judgeme…

Yep, the original is "pull the lever to kill on person instead of five" and there are many many more variations with more direct action. The pure utilitarian will still choose the "kill one instead of five" no matter the situation. But some variations come up with things like: "you are a doctor with 5 patients who need 5 different organ transplants and are going to do die, do you kill the hospital janitor to harvest their organs to save 5 people"

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#904

Post by laputan_machine » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 8:00 PM UTC

wruza wrote: post #481

laputan_machine wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A clone of you, isn't you , it is by definition a copy. You do not possess their memories when they do something else, you do not control them, you do not have their consciousness. It isn't you. When you cease to exist you do not "live on" (in the physical sense) through them, you are dead.

The idea I mentioned is hard to explain in a comment, but I’ll try to message the essence, at least what works for me. Which is, there is a chance (and further reasoning bases on it) that we all don’t feel as a single entity only because we are physically separated by low-bandwidth channels, e.g. visual, auditorial, text. Opposed to parts of our brains, which are connected by high-bandwidth links. This creates an ill…

Yeah it'd be cool if we could live as a super organism like ants or bees.

As to your question:

Yes, to me, logically, your body is atomised and then remade. You die, then a clone appears.

To everyone else. you are the same, but you, the original you, is dead. Pretty harrowing when you think about it

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#905

Post by tromp » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 8:13 PM UTC

rax0m wrote: post #396

jgerrish wrote: post #363

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…

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.

Ideally, the problem would require two possible actions, and not allow inaction. Two possible avenues for such a formulation are

1) The lever is in an intermediate state, that will cause the trolley to set into effect some global catastrophe, and therefore must be pulled in one of two directions. This may be a rather unconvincing scenario.

2) Have two trollies, each running down their own track, and the operator has a choice which of two levers---only one of which can be reached in time---to pull to detour a trolley to a harmless side track.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#906

Post by rcoveson » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 8:27 PM UTC

nocturnial wrote: post #326

rcoveson wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

And I wouldn't critcise someone for not pulling the lever... unless the primary reason they didn't pull the lever was the legal consequences they would suffer. That's a terrible reason.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#907

Post by cortic » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 8:39 PM UTC

Brendinooo wrote: post #703

cortic wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [I] would easily break the law in order to sacrifice one person in trade for five people. This is a quite disturbing statement. So many psychopathic examples; If you were a doctor would you randomly kill healthy people with compatible organs to multiple patients? Or a researcher inflicting gruesome deaths to thousands of innocent healthy people to save millions later... In fact we could simplify your statement furt…

Seems like textbook overthinking. We’re talking about a specific situation here: a trolley. Doesn’t have to extrapolate to other scenarios.

I was responding to someone who was generalizing, its not in any way pedantic to put a generalization to the test.

I'm also quite surprised that someone could imply overthinking as a negative on HN. Gaining a deeper understanding of something, even modern philosophy, is intellectually useful. You should not under-think things, it does you a disservice to skip over the flaws and paradoxes in the world.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#908

Post by dr_orpheus » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 8:52 PM UTC

dorgo wrote: post #801

synu wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could adjust the question to be “the brakes have failed and..” to avoid that out.

I know, you try to save the trolley scenario. But if brakes fail then it doesn't matter what the AI (or driver) decides. To blame is the one who is responsible for the brakes not to fail.

But there are still plenty of either/or scenarios with a perfectly functional vehicle because there are other people on the road. Some of the interesting ones involve whether it is the AI car's responsibility to the drivers/passengers in the car first versus everyone else.

For example, a car swerves in front of you (or runs a red light, or whatever) and the car hits the brakes but knows it will not be enough to stop running in to the car. Do they swerve off the road where they might kill a pedestrian, but will definitely save the driver or do you continue to crash in to the other car which may kill the driver of one or both cars.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#909

Post by mmcnl » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 9:00 PM UTC

jgerrish wrote: post #363

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…

Also a part of the trolley problem is that your action space is limited to two actions. In practice that's never the case.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#910

Post by lacerrr » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 10:08 PM UTC

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #397

I do not understand why so many people would let the trolly destroy their fortune to save 5 random people. Why would I ever care about 5 random people?

Because of empathy I guess? I can go on living perfectly fine without my savings ("fortune"), without losing any quality of life really. So if I can make the lives of five people's families and loved ones better, why wouldn't I?