The Trolley Problem

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The Trolley Problem

Postby PSTN » Tue Mar 31, 2015 4:02 am

If you're not familiar with the trolley problem, here's a quick introduction.

Imagine you're standing on a bridge and you see five people immobilized on a set of tracks. Nearby, a trolley is out of control and headed for the five people. But first it must go under the bridge.

Now, standing on the bridge with you is a very far man, and if you push him off the bridge and into the path of the trolley, it will stop the trolley, saving the five people, but killing him in the process.

Would you, or should you push the fat man to his death?


I've been reading a bit on the utilitarian view on this, and many utilitarians say that you ought to kill the fat man. And that ultimately, despite your personal feelings about your actions, it will be for the best for society as a whole, and thus, is the more moral choice.

After grappling with the issue for a while, I came to the conclusion that I ultimately agree with this position. However, as my town doesn't have any trolleys, and very few bridges, I figured I'd have to settle for the next best thing. So I went out, found a very fat man, and shot him.
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby DamianaRaven » Tue Mar 31, 2015 4:26 am

Couldn't I just as easily jump as I could push the fat man? Seriously, though... pushy pushy.

P.S. Pov and I have decided to refer to as you Peter if you don't provide a more preferable alternative. Four letters do not make for a good name. Plus, I can't seem to stop my brain from wanting to say it's PTSD.
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby iMURDAu » Tue Mar 31, 2015 4:46 am

Is he far or fat? And I pronounce the name as PSTN just like you'd say ESPN. Or "Postin".

I'd rather talk the guy into jumping because otherwise I'd be guilty of murder. Plus what if he moves when I go to push him and I fall instead? Actually I think the hardest part of the whole scenario is imagining myself standing on a bridge.
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby LiteralHipster » Tue Mar 31, 2015 4:50 am

DamianaRaven wrote:Couldn't I just as easily jump as I could push the fat man?


The fatness of the man allows his body to stop the trolley. Your body mass is not enough in this example to achieve that result.

I'm not kidding. Also, the problem is presented usually with a first part where you are not on the bridge but driving the trolley, and there are five people in your way and only one in an alternate route you can switch to using a lever.
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby PSTN » Tue Mar 31, 2015 5:04 am

DamianaRaven wrote:Couldn't I just as easily jump as I could push the fat man? Seriously, though... pushy pushy.

P.S. Pov and I have decided to refer to as you Peter if you don't provide a more preferable alternative. Four letters do not make for a good name. Plus, I can't seem to stop my brain from wanting to say it's PTSD.


Within the thought experiment, the reason he's very fat is so only he can stop the trolley. It's assumed that the choices presented to you are the only ones available. Basically the question is whether it's okay to kill one innocent person to save five. The same thing has been phrased in the context of a hospital. You assume there are five people who desperately need organ transplants, and then argue whether it's moral to just kill the janitor or something to harvest his organs.

My actual view is that within the moral arithmetic presented by the question it's okay to sacrifice one innocent, but in real life I probably wouldn't be able to make myself do it. I gave up on considering myself a good person a long time ago, but I still have some standards.

And, PSTN stands for "Public Switched Telephone Network". So you could just call me "POTS" (Plain Old Telephone System). Or, if you like, some of my old nicknames are "omelette", "D-RAB", and "Ssnatch" (not a typo, it's pronounced by emphasizing the "S").
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby DamianaRaven » Tue Mar 31, 2015 5:26 am

Having conferred with Justin, he says he would not even though logic would dictate that he should. By his calculations, watching the five people die would be an act of innocent bystandery whereas pushing the fat man would make him a killer. Also, he pointed out that in the heat of the moment, what kind of person would be calm and collected enough to think anything more complicated than "oh shit, oh shit, where the hell is Superman."
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Last edited by DamianaRaven on Mon Apr 13, 2015 11:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby RainyDays » Tue Mar 31, 2015 7:23 am

If I were actually in that situation, I think instinct would take over. From my (thankfully extraordinarily limited) experience with crises, a certain clarity takes over, and I would act one way or the other, in a way that would make perfect sense in the moment. Whether or not that action would be regretted after the fact is another story.

That, or panicked indecision would descend, and I'd freeze completely and be unable to do anything at all.

So my answer to these types of questions is usually, "I have no idea." Then I get annoyed (and annoying) as I try and fail to find an optimal solution:

"Make the five people move."
"You can't; they're immobilized."
"How?"
"They just are. You're too far to reach them."
"Can't I yell so someone else will notice and help move them?"
"No. No one else is there."
"Why not? And why are these people here?"
"It doesn't matter. Just make up your mind."

"Isn't there anything other than a person to push in front of the trolley? What about a garbage can?"
"Not heavy enough."
"What about a statue?"
"How are you gonna move a statue? Look, it's easy -- the five people on the tracks, or the dude on the bridge?"

"Okay, I'll get a car, drive it into the tracks, get out, and let the trolley hit it. That'll stop it, and nobody dies."
"You don't have a car."
"I'll get one."
"There's no time."
"Can I jump in the trolley and bring it under control?"
"Seriously? No."

"Wait -- what's the fat man doing, anyway?"
"He's just standing. Do you have to overthink everything?"
"Why is he not doing anything or reacting? Why is he around when no one else is? Is he the mastermind behind the runaway trolley and the mysteriously immobilized fivesome? Is he standing on the bridge to gloat over his victims' demises? That's it, isn't it? That's the twist."
"No, he's just standing. He doesn't know what's going on. He doesn't see the trolley or the people."
"Why not? Is he blind?"
"Make up your mind!"

"Blow up the trolley."
"With what -- you know what, forget it. You waited too long. Everyone's dead."
"Except the man on the bridge."
"No, he's dead, too. They're all dead. Everyone is dead. Worldwide annihilation. The human race has ended. I hope you're happy now."
"So what did it even matter what decision I made if the crash was powerful enough to--"
"Go away and never speak to me again."
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby Tuli » Tue Mar 31, 2015 8:46 am

I was leaning toward no already, but when the question is presented in the hospital scenario, it becomes a much clearer no. My reasoning is this: five people need transplants, well shit happens. Diseases happen. We can't simply kill the janitor for organs because that is violating his right to life. I also think this kind of behavior would be destabilizing in our society, presuming that anyone's life could be taken to save five others. Our system is built on individual human rights, and that means human life cannot be reduced to simple arithmetic. Both the janitor and the fat man are innocent bystanders in no way responsible for what is happening to those 5 people, and taking their lives for it would be unjust.

We have a real life example of this, sort of: China performs the most executions in the world, and the organs of those executed are used as transplants. Now those are all convicted criminals, but the Chinese judicial system being what it is, there's undoubtedly not a few innocents among them. Is the execution of a wrongfully convicted (perhaps only on a confession extracted through torture) person moral if his organs end up saving 5 other people? Perhaps part of the reason there is such a push for executions in the first place is the huge demand for organs?

I argue that it is not the moral choice, not if we accept individual human rights as something worth protecting.
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby Learned Nand » Tue Mar 31, 2015 8:57 am

Tuli wrote:I was leaning toward no already, but when the question is presented in the hospital scenario, it becomes a much clearer no. My reasoning is this: five people need transplants, well shit happens. Diseases happen. We can't simply kill the janitor for organs because that is violating his right to life.

This isn't analagous; the train situation is non-precedential. Also, there are better ways to ensure everyone has enough organs, like mandatory organ donation upon death.

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. But people sometimes intuitively feel that that would be bad because of how contrived this situation is; 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. As rainy points out, there could easily be options that allow you to save everyone.

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.
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby CarrieVS » Tue Mar 31, 2015 10:31 am

"More of us might die this way, " J- said. "We should just-"

"You would make the cold accounting?" M- cut him off. "Add up the good to all and the harm to all, all our lives the income and expense in the ledger of the world? Don't say it, don't think it: it's enough to drive a man mad. Don't think I'm blind because I refuse to look. Once you add those cold totals, the only thing more unthinkable than balancing the account is not doing it."



I'm not saying either J- or M- is right, I don't know. Also I suck all the balls in the world when it comes to thinking up names so they only have letters. It's just thing I made up in my head a while ago. I don't even know what it is they're having to choose between.



Unrelated: I always deinitialise your name to Piston, PSTN.
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Last edited by CarrieVS on Wed Jun 03, 2015 10:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby Qinglong » Tue Mar 31, 2015 2:05 pm

This is ridiculous. Even if I was in such a contrived situation, it would never even occur to me to "Push the fat man off of the bridge." I don't know how I'd react in a real crisis, but I seriously doubt that "Kill a stranger" would be my go-to plan.
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby Tesseracts » Tue Mar 31, 2015 2:23 pm

I don't like this question. Why does it have to be a split second decision that might not even work? It doesn't take a genius to figure out that one fat man, no matter how fat, probably won't actually stop a moving vehicle. It's also possible for the people to see the trolley and move out of the way. Why can't it be a problem that makes more sense, such as killing the first person to get AIDS so nobody else gets AIDS?
aviel wrote: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.

Yeah, pretty much this. Everyone always acts like this question provides some insight into morality, it doesn't. Most people, if you ask them any sort of question about their morals, won't act the way they claim they act anyway. They probably don't know themselves what their morals are.
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby sunglasses » Tue Mar 31, 2015 2:25 pm

Seeing as how I cannot physically push a large man, I don't think in real life I could push someone in front of a trolley. I'd be more likely to push the others out of the way at the expense of my own life. What if that fat man was really Santa, huh? WHAT THEN!?
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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby Australia » Tue Mar 31, 2015 2:37 pm

Does there have to be an emergency for me to shove the guy off the bridge or can I just do it anyway?
Image
Knowing me, I'd be too weak to push him off immediately anyway and by the time I did, he'd miss it completely and I'd have to tell the cops he jumped after witnessing such a horrific scene. Like you said, no other witnesses so they'd have to take my word for it.

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Re: The Trolley Problem

Postby Marcuse » Tue Mar 31, 2015 3:02 pm

Hmm, I think the problem here is that the trolley problem, or any other "kill one to save many" thought experiment isn't to ascertain what you would physically do or not do in a particular situation, but is intended to be an examination of the relative ethics thereof.

A utilitarian would, of course, say that you are justified and right to sacrifice the one to benefit the many. Spock agrees with that logic. However, it's not the whole story, and there are value systems that offer alternative viewpoints that are worthy of consideration.

For example, several people here have indicated that they would be uncomfortable with being responsible for the death of one person, even if this resulted passively in the death of five. This may result from a few ethical systems. The primary one is one of sentiment, that one doesn't wish to be responsible for a death, even to save life. This might stem from the idea that life is sacred or otherwise valuable and shouldn't be deliberately ended wherever possible. Of course the utilitarian may respond that if one considers life valuable, then one should act to preserve as much of it as possible by saving the five people.

But many ethical systems consider the wilful ending of human life to be immoral in and of itself, and cannot consider that ending a life to save a life is justified because it would require one to break an absolute prohibition on killing. This would be common in deontological ethical systems, and it makes sense to express this in the context of the situation being pre-arranged and unchangeable. One is not responsible for the people on the track, one is responsible for the life or death of the fat man, and if his life is not valuable, then why are the lives on the track valuable? One cannot consider life to be sacred, and then throw one of them away in favour of others. Numbers seems like a poor metric to commit murder.

Indeed, what is it about life that is, itself, valuable? This is an important question the example raises. Should one act to preserve life at all? Self preservation leads us to the instinct to preserve life, but in the context of the situation presented by the problem, it is assumed that one will act in the most moral fashion, and that one will presumably act to preserve the maximum life possible. However, what value does this additional life have?

The concept of valuing lives is interesting because when one considers that one life is moral to sacrifice in favour of five, then what objective value does life have? It only has relative value to the surroundings. If, for example, no people were on the tracks, one would never consider it moral to push the fat man in front of the trolley. No lives would be saved by this action, so the value one places on the fat man's life is relative to the situation. What value then, can we place on the life of the fat man when his life's value is negated by the plurality of the five prisoners?

If one takes the opposite tone however, and claim life does possess some objective value, then said value cannot be negated by the presence of any number of lives in the balance. In that context, we cannot feel that the killing of the fat man has no moral weight. There is value there that has been lost. It may therefore be preferable, useful even, to kill the fat man, but it is very difficult to refer to that as moral.

By contrast, failing to act to save the lives of the five prisoners is an indirect moral question. You didn't put them there, you are not responsible (morally) for their predicament. In the context of the example, you are merely in a position to prevent their death by causing another. Failing to act is a different situation to acting to kill. In the former situation one either wills no action or does not will at all. In the latter, one wills to act to kill. If one considers life to have relative value then willing to kill the one man holds no moral weight, but one must question what motivation one has to act. Those five lives have no weight compared to ten lives.

Again, considering lives have objective value means that one has clear motivation to act to save the five prisoners. However, one also has strong motivation to not act to kill the fat man, as his life also has objective value. In this context, numbers might be the only metric we have to differentiate between the two. Even then, a system claiming objective value would equate the one with the five as equally valuable.
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