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Absurd Trolley Problems

neal.fun

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Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#761

Post by frenet »

ptsneves wrote: post #355
jedberg wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always assume trolley problems are in a vacuum without context. Otherwise for every one of them you have to ask, "what is the background of each person on each track" to make a proper choice. I assume the information they have told me is the only thing relevant and everything else is equal.

In philosophy Kant would disagree with you with his Categorical Imperative[1]. Rawls also went that way, with the veil of ignorance[2]. The lack of state or context is not only desirable but is the whole foundation on why their theories are rational. Of course many philosophers disagree and arguably terrible things were done with such mindset[3]. The point I am trying to make is that if you need context then you cann…

I don't see how minimum wage is the problem. Engineers aren't better compensated in other markets because of low minimum wages but because they are expected to deliver more value. The Internet tells me that the minimum wages in Portugal is 823€ a month. That isn't a lot compared to many other markets. Sounds more like a productivity problem. Or that someone else is capturing much of the value.

High minimum and median salaries are usually good for engineers as it requires more productive companies which requires more engineers. When workers are cheap few wants to pay for expensive systems.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#762

Post by HALtheWise »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #522
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.

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…

The trolley problem is usually phrased with a "bystander" making the decision, but is simplified to the point of ignoring most of what is important about being a bystander, in ways that makes people's moral intuitions look unnecessarily silly precisely because it's an artificially simplified scenario. In particular, typically bystanders in the real world are both numerous and uninformed. As a result, assuming that each bystander has a randomly biased estimate of the truth, if everyone followed the simple logic of pulling the lever iff they believe doing so will net save lives, the lever is likely to be pulled far more often than it should be, because the person with the most extreme belief will conclude that doing so is worth it. In the real world, it's typically the case that "action" is much more difficult to reverse than "inaction".

There are other thought experiments that elucidate this more clearly, like a soldier deciding whether now is the right time to fire the first shot to start a battle.

People's moral intuitions have heuristics that attempt to deal with this ("bystander effect") although they definitely can be poorly-calibrated in the real world, and are almost always badly calibrated in artificial thought experiments because that's not the environment they were designed for.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#763

Post by stared »

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…

This action/inaction is done nicely in Trolley Problem Inc (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1582680/Trolley_Problem_I...).

As long as the trolley moves, you can switch back.

While I have mixed opinions on the game (literally mixed, i.e. both good and bad, not a euphemism for bad), it provides more uneasy emotion than any other trolley problem game I played.

The "bad" part is that it is a paid game, working only on Windows, while at the quality of a Flash game from the 2000s from Newgrounds. The good part is that it is at the creativity level of a Flash game from the 2000s from Newgrounds.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#764

Post by horsawlarway »

Hasu wrote: post #731
horsawlarway wrote: post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So what's your alternative, throw your hands up and proclaim ethical reasoning to be impossible, nothing is true, everything is permitted, and it doesn't matter what you do? All models are wrong but that doesn't make them useless.

I much prefer: "All models are wrong but some models are useful". For example - Flat earth is a model that is both wrong and useless.

My claim is that the trolley problem is useless. It asks people to make a guess about how they would behave, but that guess is predicated on a set of initial conditions that are impossible to fulfill (omniscience is a bitch to get in real life).

How does gathering all that incorrect data help you? What ethical reasoning are you trying to tease out here?

Here's one you might love - "if the earth is flat and you reach the edge, would you jump?"

Now lets just categorize everyones answer to the that question.... and: Hold the phone! The earth isn't flat? It doesn't matter? It turns out this question has basically no relevance to anything!

Is it fun? Sure. Is it useful? I have doubts.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#765

Post by pkulak »

Anyone who chose to destroy their life savings (like I did) is totally lying. I could also choose to save hundreds of lives and destroy my life savings by buying bed nets, but I don't pull that lever.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#766

Post by hackerlight »

pawelmurias wrote: post #688
hackerlight wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The physical action is a red herring under a moral system that takes consequentialism seriously. The trolley problem shines a light on this red herring.

Firstly, whichever decision you make, you have to take a real physical action. Suppose you decide not to pull the lever. You still have autonomic arousal, neurons are firing, your prefrontal cortex is inhibiting you from pulling the lever just for laughs, and so on. Lots of atoms had to move around to come to that decision, which you would label as "inaction". I disagree, it is action. Only a minority of caloric expenditure is associated with the actual lever being pulled. Not that this really matters, anyway, given that the outcome is what's ethically important.

Secondly, you should consider the consequences of thinking that pulling the lever somehow matters ethically. That means that in certain edge cases, you're surrendering the choice of who lives and who dies to the arbitrary whims of the experimenter. If I was a malicious experimenter, I could maximize the number of dead people by just jury rigging the allocations. If your ethical framework leads to a situation where a maximum number of people die, I would argue that there's some faulty ethical reasoning there.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#767

Post by LtWorf »

HeavyStorm wrote: post #662
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #522

Earlier 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…

Morally is different but it's also the gist of the problem. Inaction makes you exempt because you didn't took part. People choose inaction all the time. When we see a bully abusing a colleague... A homeless person on the street... A car aciddent. This is the metaphor.

But it's different. Facing a bully is more like jumping in front of the train to stop it.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#768

Post by littlestymaar »

darkerside wrote: post #494
littlestymaar wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 4. If my life is at stake, I pull the lever to save myself. I find this answer really interesting, because in the entire corpus, this was the most morally unambiguous question of all, and the answer is diametrically opposed to yours. Would have I the courage to do so in real life, I don't know, and it's probable that I would not. But from a moral perspective it's damn clear: the only people I am unambiguously allow…

Interestingly, I had almost the opposite reaction. In the absence of information, I don't know how these people got here or why. Maybe they're being executed as criminals, maybe they are suicide attempts, maybe they are truly heinous people in the hands of a Just God. But, I do know, if it's me on the track, I don't want to die. It's almost the only truly inarguable choice. With everything else, you think you know be…

I think you're mixing up two things: willingness to die, and the morality of the sacrifice.

Most of us will be scared shitless if we were in that situation, and I'm pretty sure the majority (me included) will act as a coward. But nobody would blame them, because we all know we would likely have done the same.

But on the other hand, we praise the heroes who sacrifice themselves because we recognize that they did the right thing, no matter how much it costed them.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#769

Post by Kiro »

mcv wrote: post #364
paxys wrote: post #12

Level 20 was weird. It was a choice between letting a trolley run as normal ("emits CO2, kills 3 people in accidents over 30 years") or running it into a brick wall and decommissioning it. For some reason more people picked the latter. So, they just dislike public transit? What about the emissions and death rate when everyone switches to cars instead? Goes to show how easily the context and exact wording of a questio…

Yeah, that one made it clear how much context matters. These problems pretend there's no context, but we always look at them with some subconscious context in mind. In this case, I did pull the lever, because it could be replaced by an electric trolley. But if killing the trolley means more cars and more car accidents and CO2, then of course we should keep the trolley. But if we ignore context and just look at kill 5…

Easiest one IMO. Spare an evil baby who would gladly sacrifice every single person on this planet for some ridiculous thing they feel entitled to or spare five diligent elders?
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