The Trolley Problem

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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby SandTea » Tue Apr 14, 2015 11:57 pm

If you want to view it that way that's fine. It is a simple thing, not the outcome or consequences or inferences but the problem as it is put forth.

are avi or your dad all knowing perfect beings?
I still feel like this point is not getting across the very fucking narrow gap people are forcing to expand.
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby Marcuse » Wed Apr 15, 2015 12:04 am

If you want to view it that way that's fine.


Literally the entire point of the example given is to view it that way. That's why it exists.

It is a simple thing, not the outcome or consequences or inferences but the problem as it is put forth.


That is also precisely the point. It's meant to be simple but have broad implications that require examination.

I still feel like this point is not getting across the very fucking narrow gap people are forcing to expand.


I also feel like the point that you're looking at a Stargate and yelling "The fucking ring goes around. That's ALL it does" hasn't gotten across yet either. Sure, the ring moves around, but it does other things too. Those things are interesting.
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby Kate » Wed Apr 15, 2015 12:23 am

aviel wrote:But this isn't what anybody said, so I'm not sure with whom you're arguing.

That is the implication of saying it is morally imperative to kill someone to save five people if you are sure it wil save them. That...you know. It's morally imperative to kill someone if it's a surefire way to save more than you get kill. You asked how such a situation could be applied to the real world; those are examples of people who know how to save other people with just one or very few deaths, and it's the only way they know how to do it.

Again, nobody is making this argument.

Within the confines of this thought experiment, the answer is unambiguous: you push the one guy in front of the train. There's no argument in favor of doing otherwise...

The reason this question tends to be controversial isn't because it presents a difficult moral problem; it doesn't. It's because it's contrived in such a way that the right answer in this scenario would probably never be the right answer in reality.


So the situation with those examples is that you know you would save more lives than you take, and it's your only option. You have stated that the answer is unambiguous because you know it would work. You say that, "in reality you wouldn't know for sure you'd need to push the fat man, you wouldn't know that if you did, it would work." But I'm presenting you with people who do know it would work.




Then why not another time? Because that would result in bad outcomes; I would be contradicting myself to do it only once.

What bad outcomes? No one knows you did it, so it didn't influence anyone. If you started doing it more, it would look suspicious and people would begin to fear going to the hospital or donating organs, and you are smart enough to know that. So you only do it once. Why would you be contradicting yourself to only do it once? That's a net gain of 4 lives, even if you only do it once. Are you saying that we shouldn't save 5 people where we know we can do so without harming anyone except one person?

It's so unlikely that it wouldn't even occur in the first place.

Sure, but in the hypothetical, it did occur, so in the hypothetical, it could easily occur again. With that information, would you consider it more ambiguous?

And again, what of the unknowns? There are potential factors that make the question less clearcut. As in the dictator, you might end up doing more harm than good by saving those five at the expense of one.

SandTea, my dear, it is not just the way I view it. It is a fact. There are unknowns here. Unless you can tell me the characters of those people, or their states of mind, or the impact their deaths will cause, there are unknowns. That is part of the problem as put forth. It's not actually as simple and straightforward as you want it to be. You can be dismissive all you want, but pretending that I don't understand what you're saying isn't going to change my mind. I do understand; you don't want to think it through beyond 5>1. Despite not always thinking 5>1. To you, it is simple. You know two outcomes, and you have picked what you consider the lesser of two evils. Even given your parameters, I do not agree that it is the lesser of two evils, probably because I'm not as utilitarian as I used to be. I arrived at my re-evaluation by considering the unknowns, and by applying the standard of 5>1 to other scenarios. Logic does not tell me I should push the fat guy. Logic tells me I need more information to justify pushing him, and logic also tells me that 5*infinity = infinity. If I value a life as infinitely valuable and practically sacrosanct, I must treat it as such.

The implications of a world where we do not have the right to live if our deaths serve a useful purpose, which is essentially what you are saying, are profound. I'm not saying you haven't thought this through, I am saying that this question does not have a straight up easy answer for everyone, even within the confines of having Godlike powers (which I didn't see anywhere).
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby SandTea » Wed Apr 15, 2015 12:32 am

ho-ly shit. that's the show
dismissive enough for you
mayhap i should go

...oh hey, that rhymes too
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby OrangeEyebrows » Wed Apr 15, 2015 12:37 am

Duck-in-a-cup, I've not really been involved in this conversation, for a while, anyway, but all I'm seeing from you is that you think people are being dismissive. Why is that? Could you elaborate on what you feel and why you feel that way? Because I'm interested in what you think, but at the moment people are laying out long, multi-paragraph arguments and you're just responding by saying that they aren't omniscient and/or they're being dismissive.

I really would like to see your viewpoint laid out.
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby Learned Nand » Wed Apr 15, 2015 1:09 am

Kate wrote:That is the implication of saying it is morally imperative to kill someone to save five people if you are sure it wil save them.

Sure, but nobody said this either.

You have stated that the answer is unambiguous because you know it would work.

Because I know it will work and there are no other options.

What bad outcomes?

A number of otherwise curable people die to save people who might otherwise have been okay. And people in my practice who are comatose keep dying then I'm probably not going to get more of those patients regardless of why this is happening. Again, you're either proposing an unrealistic scenario in which I have total certainty about the transplant list, the health and compatibility of everybody's organs, the status of patients after the transplants, the recovery of the braindead patient etc., or a realistic scenario in which uncertainty creates a moral grey area.

Sure, but in the hypothetical, it did occur, so in the hypothetical, it could easily occur again. With that information, would you consider it more ambiguous?

In a hypothetical world where this kind of thing consistently happened? Yeah, that would probably be a more difficult problem; but nothing about the original trolley problem suggests this is a common occurrence.

If I value a life as infinitely valuable and practically sacrosanct, I must treat it as such.

See my previous post about not putting a value on life;it has no utility and is practically untenable.
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby Kate » Wed Apr 15, 2015 3:05 am

aviel wrote:Sure, but nobody said this either.
...
Because I know it will work and there are no other options.


AH! Okay, yes, I forgot to add that parameter, but I was working under it for most of them (though not Patient 0).

A number of otherwise curable people die to save people who might otherwise have been okay. And people in my practice who are comatose keep dying then I'm probably not going to get more of those patients regardless of why this is happening. Again, you're either proposing an unrealistic scenario in which I have total certainty about the transplant list, the health and compatibility of everybody's organs, the status of patients after the transplants, the recovery of the braindead patient etc., or a realistic scenario in which uncertainty creates a moral grey area.

I addressed this already; you are specifically only doing it one time, precisely because if you do it more than once there are bad outcomes. But if you are only doing it once, you have still saved a net of 4 more people than you would have otherwise. It is a one-time shot, no one will know about it, so only 1 curable person is going to die, to save 5 people who will die soon because they are in urgent need of them and there's no way they'll get to the top of the lists before they die. You are relatively certain that the organs are a match. Your transplant team is the best in the country. The likelihood of all five of them dying is extremely low, though admittedly still there. They're 1-2 days from death's door. There is literally nothing else you can do to save them.

One comatose person dies at the hospital, which is a regular occurrence and won't be looked at too closely. I mean heck, there has been at least one case where a patient was declared brain dead and non-responsive despite nurses reporting that she was wiggling her toes, and the only reason they didn't cut into her is because she opened her eyes right as they were about to.

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In a hypothetical world where this kind of thing consistently happened? Yeah, that would probably be a more difficult problem; but nothing about the original trolley problem suggests this is a common occurrence.
But nothing suggests that it is a one-off, either. If you have no knowledge about whether this scenario can occur again, does that change things?

See my previous post about not putting a value on life;it has no utility and is practically untenable.

That's okay, but I do put value on life. I value my own life, I value my husband's life, I value my nieces' and nephew's lives (in fact I would die for any of those people, no hesitation). I value Marcuse's life, I value Bert's life, I value Orange's life, I value GG's, I value avi's life ;)

And so, I must value life. If I am going to hold those lives as infinitely valuable, I must hold all lives as infinitely valuable, and I would so will it. If I had my druthers, there would be no draft. There would be no executions, no war. Everyone would have the right to live. Kate has four letters, and Kant has four letters*. COINCIDENCE? I think not. The only snag I really hit here is I have a hard time reconciling that with my belief that you can kill someone who isn't innocent in self defense or defense of others if you have no other recourse. So I'll have to work on that.

I think there was a planet money thing about how if something has a value of infinity, it essentially becomes worthless because you can't actually sell it for infinity because no one has infinite money. I certainly see the argument. But for now I'm going to keep valuing life infinitely. ...maybe some people have a different cardinality of infinity to me.

*I haven't actually read much Kant, it might be wildly inaccurate to link what I'm saying back to him, but it was too good an opportunity to not say it. I am aware that the categorical imperative doesn't equate to the golden rule.
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby Learned Nand » Wed Apr 15, 2015 4:57 am

Kate wrote:I addressed this already; you are specifically only doing it one time, precisely because if you do it more than once there are bad outcomes.

Then I've created an inconsistent rule. If I have the opportunity to do it more then it is precedential, and so I must consider the precedent when forming the principle. This is not true of the trolley situation. "You're not going to do it again" is handwaving this away, so either you have a realistic scenario in which the answer is "no, don't kill him" or an unrealistic scenario which has no implications. You're running to this in every example you give, which kind of proves my point.

But nothing suggests that it is a one-off, either.

The situation itself is incredibly unlikely; we don't need the problem to tell us this specifically.

If you have no knowledge about whether this scenario can occur again, does that change things?

If there is legitimate uncertainty about whether it could happen again, maybe. Because then you need to make systematic changes to how trolley's function, for example, and if that's not happening then there is moral responsibility to be placed elsewhere. It definitely complicates the problem if there are somehow potentially regular trolley crashes in which bystanders have perfect information about the kinetic energy of the trolley and stopping power of nearby pedestrians.

And so, I must value life. If I am going to hold those lives as infinitely valuable, I must hold all lives as infinitely valuable, and I would so will it.

Holding lives as infinitely valuable is the same as refusing to put a quantifiable value on life, which as previously explained, is practically (and ultimately logically) untenable.
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby Jack Road » Wed Apr 15, 2015 5:39 am

Question.

What if the fat man is an accomplished heart surgeon in the prime of his career? And the potential trolley victims are all 95 year old child rapists with terminal lung cancer?

These mental exercises are fun, but the answers all boil down pretty simply because they are forced simulations with limited data. Some don't intervene because they don't think they have enough data. Some make the simple 5 is greater than 1 calculation. Some try to find loopholes. Some make jokes.

The reason these are fun is because they are simple, unlike reality, or even realistic simulations. But they still engage the parts of our mind that would and do make these choices of risk vs. reward every day.

Philosophy doesn't have much of a place here in the everyday unless you are arguing against the idea that the highest potential value for the greatest amount of people is the goal. If you aren't arguing that, it mostly falls to using science to determine the values and risk. But above that, on politics.

While my joke about the city manager was, in fact, a joke, the point remains. In any more than one person deciding what is best for them, politics is involved. Take the medical director of my county for example. He has started a project to collect data on what causes sudden unexpected death. Like trolley accidents. Science is fueling this endeavor, but politics is running the show.
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby Learned Nand » Wed Apr 15, 2015 6:04 am

Burn Inflict wrote:What if the fat man is an accomplished heart surgeon in the prime of his career? And the potential trolley victims are all 95 year old child rapists with terminal lung cancer?

Without additional information, we have to assume the same probability of all possibilites for all people, so we count each individual equally.
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and now we'll have peace for a spell.
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby Jack Road » Wed Apr 15, 2015 7:10 am

Exactly. But you see how this environment only exists in this simulation?

Even to suppose such an exact circumstance happened in realty? Do you truly believe you'd receive the same court ruling if you killed an obese congressman versus an obese mailman? Or even an owner of a small successful business versus a homeless man? Or a jobless man with wealthy well connected family versus a friendless but successful middle class working man?

And what would adrenaline have you do? That boils down to preconceived motions.

These thought experiments are really just about what ethically you'd be willing to do to achieve what you perceive is the greatest good. That is their only value. They are not suited towards discussing anything else.

They are extraordinarily limited. Hence why they generate such fierce debate.
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby Learned Nand » Wed Apr 15, 2015 7:41 am

Burn Inflict wrote:Exactly. But you see how this environment only exists in this simulation?

Yeah, that's been my point this whole time. No scenario realistically occurs where you have exactly two options and 100% certainty that one will result in n deaths and another will result in >n deaths, and also this situation is unlikely to recur.
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his circuits fried during,
and now we'll have peace for a spell.
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby Jack Road » Wed Apr 15, 2015 7:46 am

Of course. I'm not debating you. I am debating those that declare this is a philosophical question. It is not. Not specifically. Of course if you describe philosophy as the study of general and fundamental problems, broadly it falls under it. But in reality this is a political question. The exception being, as I said before, if you deny that the the ethical goal of society is to to allow the greatest good to the largest number of people.
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby Marcuse » Wed Apr 15, 2015 1:19 pm

Of course. I'm not debating you. I am debating those that declare this is a philosophical question. It is not. Not specifically. Of course if you describe philosophy as the study of general and fundamental problems, broadly it falls under it.


So, it's not philosophy, unless you consider it as such, and you do not. Sure, that's fine. But here's the thing, your assessment of this question and what it can be used for isn't an objective statement of fact about the question. It's an opinion based on what you choose to see the problem as. All this time I've not been arguing against the idea that the problem can be seen in a somewhat limited way as a question with a simple answer, but that this is the only way one might see the question and any other interpretation is both wrong and illegitimate.

My response to that is that this is an example of the method of cases, designed and crafted to provoke an immediate intuitive reaction that then bears further examination. Several people in this thread have shown how it is possible to use this as a basis for philosophic enquiry, and thus far the complaint in response has been "it is not".

The implication of 5>1 is that the statement is both objective and must hold true in every case for it to be meaningful. Mathematics does not allow 1 to be any more or any less than 1, it is in this sense objective. So when one answers the trolley problem with 5>1, one makes an objective statement of fact that must hold true in subsequent examples in order to be meaningful in this. If one tries to state that 5>1 in a subjective sense, then this is an even more interesting example of a solution to the trolley problem because one is also challenging the concept of mathematics at its very core of objective value of number.

The simple fact that the debate surrounding this question has led us to question the foundation of mathematics isn't philosophy? What is then? Because from where I stand as someone trained in it, and qualified in it, this is looking a shitload like philosophy to me.
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby Matt the Czar » Fri Apr 29, 2016 6:31 am

Image

This is one I made. What's your answer?
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