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Absurd Trolley Problems

neal.fun

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Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#941

Post by ASalazarMX »

llimos wrote: post #927
ASalazarMX wrote: post #800

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's the beauty of the trolley problem: you decided who was going to die, because it was in your power to change the outcome. Some people will accept the moral responsibility, while others will say their inaction absolves them of legal responsibility.

It's two different things. Yes, it totally is a question about moral responsibility. But it's still not called "killing" by any reasonable definition of the word. It'd be fine if it said "death count" or even "you oversaw x deaths". But not "you killed" or "you caused x deaths", because you didn't.

I think it's a problem that invites our cultural biases more than we realize. If you see a baby falling from a second floor, and you can easily catch it but don't because you dislike babies, is the baby's death your fault?

Different cultures would probably have different answers to this question.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#942

Post by runeks »

tmlb wrote: post #30
JonathanFly wrote: post #21

>Oh no! Due to a construction error, a trolley is stuck in an eternal loop. If you pull the lever the trolley will explode, and if you don't the trolley and it's passengers will go in circles for eternity. What do you do? 50% of people pull the lever?!? I hereby declare that if I'm ever going to be stuck in a trolley for my entire life, I do NOT want the lever pulled. Toss me a smartphone charger and my life wouldn't…

Would your answer change if you were stuck on the trolley quite literally for eternity, rather than just the remainder of your biological life?

Why would I kill myself (or someone else) just because I’m granted eternal life? Seems absurd to me.

50 more years to live? Okay. 50+? Kill me immediately!

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#944

Post by TrapLord_Rhodo »

epgui wrote: post #261
TrapLord_Rhodo wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I don't really buy the whole fertility rate, depopulation stuff that Elon and the like have been disputing. I truly believe that was him signaling support for abortion ban without him signalling support for it. One thing has been constant through history, population growth. I have seen no evidence that this is slowing, only that 'Developed nations' are having less kids. People seem to forget that develop nations…

Regardless of what Elon is saying, it makes no sense to assume that exponential growth will continue forever. At some point (rather quickly), you run out of resources. Population growth at the global scale has begun to slow down. I don't know when it dips below 2.0 or gets to a stable state of 2.0, but it will eventually happen.

Why not? Exponential growth is all that i see around me. Exponential growth is the universe & all signs point to infinite.

We have an unbelievable amount of resources in our galaxy alone. I don't see anything slowing down in the near future.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#945

Post by nurettin »

uoaei wrote: post #863
Sebb767 wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The trolley problem is set up in a specific way for a specific reason: the person standing next to the lever has no barriers to action, and comprehends the immediate consequences of their choice . This is not so for the kids in Africa example you give. The trolley problem does not extend readily to systems involving incomplete information or some kind of inaccess to enacting a solution. That is why moral philosophers…

Can this person pulling the lever with no barriers to action ask if the lone victim wants to sacrifice themselves?

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#946

Post by karategeek6 »

mcv wrote: post #402
_nalply wrote: post #319

This was quite easy for me. The principles: 1. Only pull the lever if you are sure. With an action you assume responsibility for the outcome. 2. Don't believe everything what you see or are told. If you doubt do nothing. Imagine you killed many people because you have been lied to and pulled the lever. In this case it is better you did nothing. 3. An action of yours might kill someone. This is a very heavy responsibi…

I noticed I kept switching between several principles. Possibly triggered by the details of the problem. Some of the principles: 1. If you're able to act, you are already responsible for the outcome. Inaction is a choice too. There's no intrinsic moral difference between pulling the lever or not. 2. Acting from a position of ignorance is irresponsible. Better not to act than to take the risk of making the situation w…

Not sure why you state #2 contradicts #1. If you are in a position of ignorance, choosing inaction (unless and until said ignorance can be rectified, anyway) is the correct action.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#947

Post by Lornedon »

Helmut10001 wrote: post #547

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 think I just found an answer to "If god is all good, all knowing and all powerful, how come there is still evil in this world?"

Maybe he would have to do something to prevent evil, but he doesn't want to play god.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#948

Post by rcoveson »

nocturnial wrote: post #940
rcoveson wrote: post #906

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This really disturbs me. You have no problem when someone decides to kill someone and thinks the laws doesn't apply to them. To make matters worse, you think someone who tries to obey the laws makes a terrible decision by not killing anyone. If killing someone doesn't give you a pause, I would be afraid to be a minority in whatever society you live in. The laws, which you so easily dismissed, gives some rights to min…

> This really disturbs me.

Oh save it, it's a disturbing hypothetical.

> You have no problem when someone decides to kill someone and thinks the laws doesn't apply to them.

This is the most dramatic mischaracterization I've read in recent memory. Who has "no problem" with either outcome of the trolley problem? "Oh, one person died? No problem!" Did you consider how strawmannish that sounded before you wrote it? And as for the law "not applying", that's not part of the conversation either. The law will certainly apply, as it must to preserve societal order. But the pragmatic application of the written law is not always aligned with what is right, and when multiple lives are at stake, the legal consequences themselves are not especially, well, consequential.

Take this euthanasia hypothetical as another example of the point I'm making:

Your spouse is experiencing horrific, constant, neurological pain. It is a given that they will die in the next 48 hours. The only treatment available to you is ineffective at treating the pain, but at high doses it will cause immediate death. Your partner is aware of the situation and has requested euthanasia. Do you euthanize them?

It's a highly contrived situation, but then so is the trolley problem. I believe that people should have an opinion on this problem that is not swayed much by the possibility of legal consequences to themselves. The consequences either way are so incredibly dire that the opinion of some disinterested court referencing a law that was absolutely not written with this situation in mind should be practically ignored. If somebody said to me that they would have euthanized their spouse if the law in their state hadn't said they couldn't, but since it did say that they just watched them suffer, then I'd say that person is a coward. I'm not saying they should have done it and then tried to avoid the legal consequences, I'm saying they should have done it and then accepted the legal consequences, because the consequences to the other party are so much more drastic.

That's all I'm saying about the trolley problem. If you believe in switch-pulling the trolley problem, you should switch pull without considering your local laws, or how much you could spend on a lawyer. If you don't believe in switch-pulling that's fine as well, unless you are somebody who actually does think switch-pulling is the right thing to do but not if there are legal consequences to yourself. Again, that's a terrible reason. Believe one way or the other and act on that. Don't outsource your morality to the legislators when you're faced with a once-in-a-lifetime moral dilemma where people are guaranteed to die at the end.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#950

Post by mitchdoogle »

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 think you have it backwards. This kind of reasoning is actually why people do thought experiments. If you don't consider anything else, then the answer to the original problem is an easy math problem - one person getting killed is better than five people getting killed. It's only when you start making considerations that the thought experiment starts to gain value as a tool. Do I have more responsibility for acting rather than not acting? Who are these people anyway? Why are they there? You start asking yourself these questions and thinking about how your answer to the problem changes with them and it helps you to understand how you (and others) actually make ethical choices in the real world, which is the whole point, in my opinion.
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