Consider the lobster!
I'm an always-puller. You gotta take control of your life and make a difference. I refuse to be a passive observer in my own life. Doesn't matter if there's five people on the other track and only one on the main one - or even none at all. Someone made that lever for a reason. And I'm within arms reach of it for a reason. It's my destiny and I'm gonna answer the fucking call - I don't wanna hear shit from you layabouts who are too busy sitting around pondering the ethics to Get. Shit. Done.
12% of people will let you die if it means their Amazon package shows up slightly sooner :what-the-hell:
Lizardman constant (Warning, "Rationalist" dweebs) - at least 5% of survey responses will be nonsensical, insane, or contradictory.
Also it's the funniest option.
14% of undecided voters said Hillary Clinton might be a demon, but they might vote for her; 2% of Clinton supporters said she was & they would
Honestly though I believe those numbers.
also i imagine some people were trying to do a max deathtoll run
Your life savings will be destroyed!
Jokes on you I don't have any
Oh no! A trolley is heading towards your worst enemy. You can pull the lever to divert the trolley and save them, or you can do nothing and no one will ever know. What do you do?
I have killed Henry Kissinger
I'm kind of shocked by the number of people who don't have an "I wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire" enemy in the entire world. Some people really have no passion.
Oh no! A trolley is headed towards a rich man! He offers you...
I make sure I'm as far away from the lever as possible, so I don't accidentally fall or do anything that might cause me to accidentally pull the lever.
I cackle maniacally as I watch him get turned to tomato paste
But the " Oh no! A trolley is releasing 100kg of C02 per year which will kill 5 people over 30 years. You can pull the lever to divert it to the other track, hitting a brick wall and decommissioning the trolley. What do you do?" problem is silly because cars still produce more C02 than this, no?
Also outside the thought experiment they'll just replace it, consuming even more resources to build another. Pulling it is being a filthy Keynesian.
Every dollar we invest into employing lever pullers will create many dollars of activity in the larger economy
I didn't even get to the part where he offered me money when I made my decision.
Elon Musk is on the tracks and promises you self driving trolleys who target billionaires in two years time if you let the trolley roll over Jeff Bezos instead.
Exactly. Musk will promise stuff you want, without being able to deliver. The only just thing would be two order a second Trolley.
rich man offers you 500k to pull the lever, saving his life.
Look ma no hands wheee!
Also 81% of people do nothing when 5 people tie themselves to the tracks willingly. :brainworms:
do nothing when 5 people tie themselves to the tracks willingly.
:yes-chad:
The consequences of behaving dangerously should not be externalized to people that did not choose to behave dangerously.
Analogy - The global south suffers the consequences of climate change more than the ones most responsible for it. I think that's wrong.
That's true but the alternative to letting them live kinda feels like it's upholding the liberal value of personal choice being more important than human life.
Yes sure, but we are looking at 5 people that don't wanna be here versus somebody that fell into the tracks or is a victim of circumstance. You (not you - but the trolley problem) are asking me to rescue five people who don't value their own life enough. The problem with these trolley problems is that there isn't a follow-up. 5 people wanting to tie themselves into the tracks might require investing in safety rails, fences, etc. Same with anti-vaxxers, you would pass laws that mandate any and all businesses and govt. offices to require vaccinations - if that doesn't happen, short of force (which would have been good don't get me wrong) you are not gonna get much done.
Another formulation of this would be; Five mountain climbers free-climb up a mountainside and get stuck. They didn't bring any ropes or safety gear and now have no way to get down. They will die unless Park Rangers intervene. One of the park rangers, however, will die in the rescue attempt. Do you rescue the extreme sports guys, or leave them to their fate?
yeah i would rescue them but that feels different (to me)
I'm sure a lot of park rangers would make that call, too. I don't think it's a wrong answer.
Anti-vaxxers have mitigating social factors; They're heavily propagandized and live in a world where objective reality is being violently assaulted at all times. There's no mitigating factors in the thought experiment. The "tie themselves to the trolley line" people were presumably suicidal.
We could argue that the 5-trolley enthusiasts have been heavily propagandized, or joined a death cult. In one way or another, we are externalizing the decision of 5 + 1 (or more) into the hands of 1 person. All of the contextual information is just rorscharching your morality. I see anti-vaxxers willfully jumping into the meat grinder therefore I wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire. I do however make a point to criticize the system that got them willfully and gleefully jumping into the meatgrinder in the first place. Let them be a cautionary tale.
Think about all of the covid skeptics and anti-vaxxers whose severity of illness and time spent in hospitals could have been reduced but instead ended up taking space in our (already bed-and-staff-scarce) hospital systems. Disabled people, cancer patients, heart disease patients, etc. died because of the anti-vaxx movement. In a lot of places, hospitals activated triage scenarios where resources were diverted to "healthier" patients, leaving the marginalized and chronically ill to die. I don't have a single fucking ounce of empathy for them.
The one where they tie themselves to the track was like, maybe the hardest one.
From my perspective, their individual choice doesn't really matter as much - if I'm in a position where neither choice is good from the jump, why should their bad choices (or conversely, the single person's lack of choice) be a factor? In the original question, the solution with the least death is to pull the lever, and it still holds up here.
I thought about when the statement makes sense. If they tie themselves to the track for some bondage fun, go for it, but I will safe you. If you are suffering from annoying diseases and are in a clear state and socio economic situation etc. I will not take away your agency.
Though in real capitalism pretty many people are only depressed cause of the shit circumstances they are in and the after effects of those.
I let the extreme trolley sports guys die. There's no compounding societal factors in this one, they chose death. For one, I respect people's decision to self terminate, and for two I don't really have any sympathy for people who free climb then fall off mountains.
For me it matters a lot who the five people are. If the G7 are in a burning shed I would consider self preservation to tell people about that moment in history.
They might be a little cold so I'd add some fuel to the fire :comfy-cool:
IF none of them are communists, its not worth it. The 5 people are highly likely to be shitlibs. Better red than dead.
the correct answer to the trolley problem is that the trolley problem is stupid, and bears almost no relation to the actual moral problems we encounter at personal and public policy levels.
High score! Can anyone beat 102?
(I feel compelled to say that I already played this yesterday, and made reasonable, pro-human decisions that time.)
Killcount:36
I don't get the last one. How does a deterministic universe mean you're not really making a choice?
Is there some definition of choice that means "selecting by true randomness" as opposed "selecting based on personal conditions and history"?
Unfortunately even some people who've spent the majority of their life studying philosophy still don't get that there's a difference between determinism and fatalism
The wording of the question doesn't use either of those terms, but it describes a fatalistic universe:
Oh no! A trolley problem is playing out before you. Do you actually have a choice in this situation? Or has everything been predetermined since the universe began?
:shrug-outta-hecks:
It doesn't - "predetermined" implies deterministic, not fatalistic. It's completely possible to envision a deterministic universe in which choice exists. That's the premise of compatibilism.
I mean there's a limit to how much of a debate I want to have about this, but the wording is not simply that outcomes are predetermined, but that all outcomes have been predetermined since the universe began. That's a more extreme case than determinism, that's a description of fate.
And the question is agnostic about how that affects free will, that's what you're being asked your opinion on.
I think embedded in the word "choice" is an implication that the chooser could select either option. If the universe is predetermined they couldn't do otherwise, so they may experience a feeling of empowerment that they ultimately lack.
