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Absurd Trolley Problems

neal.fun

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Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#831

Post by dwringer »

jodrellblank wrote: post #829
dwringer wrote: post #821

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly the website poll indicates two thirds of people would not pull the lever to have the train run over themselves to save five people. So if you ask the guy on the other track, he seems unlikely to assent to pull the lever in time to save the other people.

Well, right now a surgical team are able to kill you and transplant your organs to save five people. Do you consent? (Do you 'pull the lever' and instruct the surgical team to kill one stranger to save five strangers?)

No, but I almost never pulled the lever anyway and it cost 80 souls to "solve philosophy". It was almost more but I didn't quite save the sentient robots because I didn't believe they were really sentient.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#832

Post by lern_too_spel »

kortex wrote: post #623

I 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…

Soock was wrong — this is not how rational people behave. Rational people preserve their own life. If they die, the consequences of their choices can no longer matter to them. A cat isn't going to affect my longevity, but a cat is more likely to be a pet than five lobsters, and the emotional distress of the owner will have some greater expected impact on my longevity than the lesser distress of the lobster fisher who lost $60 from their catch.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#833

Post by wardedVibe »

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…

Morality is an evolutionary adaptation to improve group cohesion. It is much easier to attribute blame/praise to active behaviors rather than passive ones, since it's plausible the passive person isn't there's a problem in the first place.

That said, if you do actually care about consistency and the consequences, and don't care about what others think of you, then active/passive makes no difference.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#834

Post by Hedepig »

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…

We could also sacrifice a single person and harvest their organs to save five others.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#835

Post by lumenwrites »

_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…

> Only pull the lever if you are sure. With an action you assume responsibility for the outcome.

Letting people die just because I don't feel super comfortable assuming the responsibility sounds pretty close to the definition of evil to me.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#836

Post by haroldp »

Hasu wrote: post #725
grog454 wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I always took it that the point of the Trolly Problem was to demonstrate that moral problems can be difficult, or perhaps even inscrutable, in a way that confounds things like ethical clarity and consistency.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#837

Post by zamadatix »

zamadatix wrote: post #142
ConstantVigil wrote: post #117

Kill count: 84 Apparently I solved philosophy? Im gonna assume that title stays the same for everyone lol. So, explanation for why so high. Simply put; I don't believe 5 people really got tied to those rails each time. They are in on it somehow. If so, that is sick and twisted they would tie someone else to the rails purposely. So they deserve the trolley instead. Now on the chance that they really are all innocent;…

Yeah it says that for everyone. The trolley situation is just meant to frame the "you have to choose" type decision without starting back and forth "whatabouts" that avoid looking into the actual question like "I simply wouldn't get into such a situation" or similar. It's impossible to make some scenario 100% of people will find bulletproof so people just use the trolley scenario to convey the concept the question is…

Can't reply to the sibling directly so in reply to it:

The simplicity in the scenarios and the ambiguity of the scenario in this type of question is desired not a fault. The goal is to set up a stage for exploration of that nuance and "shades of gray" space just as you started exploring it in your comment. The goal is not to set up the question in some way that makes it so one of the answers or reasonings is right or appropriate. As such the stats only talk to which lever was pulled, if the question could have all of the reasonings laid out beforehand in a single page then it wouldn't have been a very good trolley type question.

As for talking about the reasoning freeform that's why it was posted here! For your particular example I chose the old people because of QALY. 5* is fewer QALY than 50 years of life starting at a young age. There are probably a half dozen other reasonings I could think of and many more I can't and that's exactly what the goal of the question is, not about actually finding a most correct answer via rigid framing.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#838

Post by [deleted] »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #720
sneak wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems to assume that the action to save the mother is the assumed preferred outcome, and the one that would be chosen? I am saying that it isn't wrong to choose inaction, either.

It’s true it’s context dependent. E.g. the mother may only have 1 day of life remaining for other reasons, in which case saving the child might be preferred.

[deleted]

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#839

Post by FFRefresh »

NineStarPoint wrote: post #783
FFRefresh wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now, non-hypothetically, would you be willing to donate your internal organs to those who will die without them, even if it meant you will not survive yourself?

A perfectly moral person might? But I also think there’s a difference of kind in dealing with tragic one-off events (Such as someone getting run over by a trolly) and dealing with normal course of life problems (illness and bodily degradation over time).

To explore the idea being brought up here, what type of death causes are considered 'tragic' or 'one-off'? Is it the improbability of the cause which will influence the decision-making? If so, wouldn't how the cause is categorized/labeled directly impact our perception of the improbability of it?

For instance:

- Being run over by a trolley is a highly improbable event

- Being run over by a vehicle (higher category in which trolleys are a part of) is a less improbable event

- Dying of a very specific form of cancer which destroyed an organ is a highly improbable event

- Dying of cancer is less improbable

In the scenario for organ donation, what if the recipient had an improbable reason for needing the organ?

As far as my own views, I don't know if the tragicness/one-offness/improbability of the cause of death factors much in my decision-making. Though, I do think there's probably a good argument for reducing active suffering (that I haven't fully thought out).

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