Absurd Trolley Problems • Hacker News Board

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#841

Post by nonameiguess » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 5:06 PM UTC

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…

There are metasocial reasons for this that are probably best illustrated by one of the classic variants on the trolley problem. Imagine you're a surgeon in a hospital. You have a healthy patient who is under for knee surgery or something. At the same time, five people come into the trauma ward from a trolley accident down the street, all of whom will die without an organ transplant. All of them are compatible with your patient.

What should you do? If you're going to take the view that failing to save a person you could have saved is morally equivalent to killing, then clearly you should kill your one patient to save the other five.

But think of the longer-scale effect this would have. Would anybody ever go to a hospital and get elective surgery knowing they might be killed to harvest their organs? A more general form of trolley problem doesn't necessarily present that exact dilemma with such clear consequences, but at any scale, think of the consequences of being concerned with what happens because of your inaction. Do you donate blood once a week or whatever the max frequency is at which your body can regenerate the red cells? Do you still have both kidneys? Do you ever spend money on anything except bare minimum shelter, enough grain to stay alive, and every other cent going to the AMF or whatever the maximum QALYs saved/dollar donated charity is? How many people have died in your time on Earth that could have lived if you'd done something different? If we all seriously made that a primary concern in our daily decision-making, virtually all productive action would be paralyzed. Everybody would be trying to become a hedge fund manager living like a pauper and giving all their money to the AMF, but the AMF would no longer be able to do anything, because everyone would be a hedge fund manager and there would be no one left to manufacture mosquito nets.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#842

Post by jodrellblank » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 5:06 PM UTC

theptip wrote: post #804

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…

Personally I agree with you and it seems obvious to me to pull the lever. Here is my take on why there are people that believe it’s obviously the other way around: There is a fundamental branching point of ethical systems between consequentialism (eg utilitarianism, which says the outcome is what matters) and deontology (which says basically that some set of rules exist, and ethical behavior equates to following thos…

It seems overly simple to me to reduce it to "more is better". What if the five people are 100 year old dementia patients moaning in agony and the one person is an infant? Do you still pull the lever because "more people alive is better"? What if the five people are infants and the one person is an elderly convicted murderer, does that change how easy it is to pull the lever? In "more is better" neither shouldn't change your view, but they feel different.

> "(eg utilitarianism, which says the outcome is what matters)"

Speaking of the outcome - before you are involved, the person who tied six people to the tracks is attempting murder; if society finds the person it will punish them. After you pull the lever, should society try you for murder? For aiding and abetting a crime? Celebrate your rescue? A society where any individual can kill any other individual, if they think it is for the greater good, feels like it would be unable to hold together. The outcome of more people being alive but the destruction of society seems like it could be bad enough to outweigh the loss of five people.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#843

Post by colechristensen » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 5:24 PM UTC

jeremyjh wrote: post #709

strken wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you included "the trolley actually exists in a realistic world and is part of a public transport network" then sure, I won't decommission it, but trolley problems are weird zero-context questions about trade-offs and I assume they fully describe the consequences of choosing each leg when answering. It doesn't help that actual trolleys are called trams where I live, so I think of trolleys as philosophical construct…

They aren't zero-context; all the value that you attach to a human life is context. If you don't grant anything else, you are just choosing one cartoon line-drawing over another. Certainly you are free to look at it this way, but it isn't really a useful point of view in a discussion about the hypothetical consequences.

But they're not... real. What someone says they might do in a trolley problem situation vs what a person would actually do I would assume basically have nothing to do with each other.

Actively making a real life or death decision is quite a lot different than reasoning though a game.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#844

Post by mensetmanusman » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 5:24 PM UTC

dlp211 wrote: post #816

mensetmanusman wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think like you until I learned about how ethical frameworks are different when you are being extorted. This trolley problem is a class of extortion because your choices are very limited and out of your control. For example, it wouldn’t be wrong if someone forced you to steal a package of bubblegum or else they would kill your family and you decided to steal the bubblegum instead of inaction. In this case, i…

Your point is taken, but I want to point out that an ectopic pregnancy will never become a child (fetal death is guaranteed) and almost always fatal to the mother if not removed.

There have been rare, well-publicized cases where an ectopic pregnancy has been brought to term, but the 1/1000000 chance or whatever it is means it’s often not worth trying. I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually humanity has the tech to save these with artificial means.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#845

Post by theptip » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 5:25 PM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #842

theptip wrote: post #804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I agree with you and it seems obvious to me to pull the lever. Here is my take on why there are people that believe it’s obviously the other way around: There is a fundamental branching point of ethical systems between consequentialism (eg utilitarianism, which says the outcome is what matters) and deontology (which says basically that some set of rules exist, and ethical behavior equates to following thos…

It seems overly simple to me to reduce it to "more is better". What if the five people are 100 year old dementia patients moaning in agony and the one person is an infant? Do you still pull the lever because "more people alive is better"? What if the five people are infants and the one person is an elderly convicted murderer, does that change how easy it is to pull the lever? In "more is better" neither shouldn't cha…

It’s a thought experiment for studying ethics. You can modify all of the variables as you choose, but in general you want to pick the simplest form that suffices to demonstrate the point.

In this case making the people different would make the experiment needlessly complex. The problem as-stated (assuming identical individuals) already illustrates the consequentialist/deontologist conflict.

I think you are perhaps engaging on a different level than intended; “what are the legal consequences of this action” is downstream of the problem. In other words, we should make our legal system conform to our ethical system, not take the legal system as some fact that must guide our ethical principles.

This is not intended as some legal case study to test law students’ understanding of culpability in homicide. (Although that might well be an interesting discussion in its own context).

> It seems overly simple to me to reduce it to "more is better".

No consequentialist would claim this, and to be clear that’s not what I claimed either.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#846

Post by teawrecks » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 5:26 PM UTC

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…

My dad never grasped thought problems either. Same for riddles. He would always try to find a crack in the description or wording that he could exploit to find a solution you didn't expect, when in reality it just subverted the thought problem, transforming it into a different one that was easier to answer, but not useful to anyone.

If the choice was between 3 deaths over 30 years and something more than that, then the problem would have stated as much. But it didn't. You don't add extraneous details that you thought of to bend the problem to what you want it to be, you make the choice between two sides as they are presented.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#847

Post by agentultra » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 5:27 PM UTC

323 wrote: post #820

agentultra wrote: post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enough context is lacking. That's kind of what makes it all absurd. Take the cat vs. lobsters. Did you know felis catus is responsible for the extinction of some 37 species of birds world wide mostly due to colonization. They're not indigenous predators to the North Americas and enjoy the protections and long life afforded by their proximity to humans while killing for entertainment. Lobsters on the other hand? Usefu…

If we are to judge ethically, one particular cat should not be punished for the sins of the cat species. As far as we know this particular cat didn't do nothing. Then we need to talk about criminal liability. In the sense that a cat can't stop itself from killing birds. We don't punish toddlers if they kill a bird, because they don't understand that they shouldn't. Also, the whole idea of "native species" is highly s…

You're probably doing the local fauna a favour by eliminating the cat. The cat will kill other animals purely for amusement (by killing it and not eating it). It enjoys a longer lifespan than most local predators due to their proximity to humans that care about their well-fare, enabling them to kill more and for longer than any local predator. Stray cats are estimated to be the largest contributor to declining bird and mammal populations [0].

Also, in the city I live in, outdoor cats are illegal regardless of registration (which is also required).

The lobsters on the other hand, if you live near a coastal city to their native habitat, could be reintroduced and improve the local ecosystem.

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#848

Post by Dylan16807 » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 5:27 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #115

divbzero wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the alternative could be more car driving which “emits CO₂ killing 12 people over 30 years”.

Or people walk instead, emitting no carbon and killing zero people... This is what's fascinating about the Trolley Problem, and philosophy in general, and how it applies outside of philosophy - most people struggle to answer questions based on the evidence available without bringing in some external justification for their answer. People wamt a 'logical' reason to justify their choice. They can't say "I don't know",…

It's a pretty huge assumption to say that walking is fast enough.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#849

Post by teawrecks » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 5:29 PM UTC

xrisk wrote: post #460

ptsneves wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 think it’s certainly a myth that an engineer’s profession is “inherently harder” than a coffee brewers. In my opinion, people who would like to study engineering would do so not so because of what they are paid (the situation today), but because of their genuine interest. On further reflection, it seems ludicrous to believe that that hardest professions are the most paid. The average CS job pays obscenely well, but…

Is an engineer's profession harder than tying your shoes?

I understand the willingness to not discredit someone's hard work, but some skills are legitimately more complex than others.

Re: Absurd Trolley Problems

#850

Post by a_wild_dandan » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 5:30 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #272

pluijzer wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that it is a question about responsibility. In the trolley problem it is my responsibility to pull the lever or not. If I don't lose my money people will die. In real life it is the responsibility of everybody. Maybe still very egocentric not to donate but at least your conscience can let you sleep at night. An interesting take on it is that if, for example you have 90.000 in savings you could choose not…

There's also a matter of proximity. In many of the other problems, people chose to sacrifice more people that they didn't know well over sacrificing someone (best friend, cousin, yourself) that you do know well. The charity problem isn't quite the same as the trolley problem, because it's saving someone outside of your tribe in a faraway land, vs. saving someone who is presumably local to you and about to die in fron…

The charity problem is also unimaginably complex. What if I donate my entire (literal) life savings...then lose my job, go homeless, and consequently die? I've thus saved a handful of lives, lost one (myself), and doomed maybe dozens or hundreds of other lives I could've later saved! Uh, whoops. :|

Every moment, every (in)decision you make comes at the opportunity cost of many other choices, and their exponentially multiplying secondary/tertiary/etc consequences.

These thought experiments feels like (#0) solving an optimization math problem where you're:

1. Stumbling through an unimaginably large solution space and

2. Latching onto local minima (heuristics like "choose the fewest trolley deaths"), which are probably bad answers, only to realize

3. We don't even precisely know the objective function we're optimizing. So the problem has gone "up" one level. We first need to solve that optimization problem. GOTO #0.

The whole thing feels farcically hopeless and is maybe even a recursive or self referential minefield. Yikes. So the idea of avoiding it entirely by just winging it through life using your gut, or checking out entirely, doesn't seem like such a bad idea. Hell, it might be the only way to keep your sanity. It's an unsatisfying heuristic, but...oh look, we're back at step #2... :))))))