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A trolley barrels towards a bunch of construction workers stuck on the tracks.
- If you pull the first lever it will divert and only kill one person.
- If you don't pull the first lever it will kill 100 people, including that one person from before - he's standing before the track change.
- But, and now this is key, there is a second lever to the right of the first that says "Display lever only, does nothing." It does nothing.
What do you do?You blame someone else. It's definitely not your fault, it definitely cannot be that.
I couldn't possibly pull either lever, that would put blood on my hands! Instead I spend all day on Lemmy urging everyone to pull the display lever. This is different from me touching any levers directly, because reasons.
Get on the tracks with them. We die together.
You pull the first lever. I dunno why nobody is answering.
Is doing my Jason Russell impression an option?
The trolley problem does not have a correct answer, and a very popular way of thinking is that “if I do not engage the lever, whatever happens next is not my responsibility. If I divert, I will have killed that one person.”
I’m not American, not here to tell anyone who to vote for
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Why should I accept the assumption that a trump presidency means 100 times more people killed, whether involving American weapons or not?
You don't have to. It's a tongue-in-cheek scenario. I'm not actually comparing real numbers of people who would die. The killing of construction workers in this thought experiment just embodies any negative outcomes, not necessarily just the amount of people who will die, and you can internalize whatever ratio you want to it. Or don't, idc.
I said throw shit onto the track to try and stop the trolley once.
The philosophy majors did not like me pointing out it was ridiculous to imagine the problem existing in a void with an absolute limit on possible courses of action.
They liked it even less when I reminded them that the problem was invented to make fun of them by a philosopher who was arguing that both courses of action were ridiculous conclusions to reach given the broader context of a trolley crash not existing in a vacuum.
Thought experiments in the void is how we got the declaration that feathers and lead weights were affected by different rates of gravity.
The philosophy majors did not like me pointing out it was ridiculous to imagine the problem existing in a void with an absolute limit on possible courses of action.
Holy shit you did it! You beat philosophy! ^^^/s
If reminding a bunch of people that trolleys are typically built in places with a lot of stuff that can be thrown on the track is all it takes to "beat" philosophy, then maybe the philosophers didn't have anything to say worth listening to in the first place.
Especially when they're trying to ask questions to determine a moral course of action, why does anyone have to die when some property damage would do the trick just as well?
That's why the question was devised in the first place, to illustrate how ridiculous the two schools of thought represented by either decision were when taken to their logical conclusion.
The original correct answer was to do something more productive than just standing around with your thumb up your ass debating utilitarianism vs not taking a direct action to kill someone.
The point of a thought experiment isn't to creatively invent your way out of answering. It's to give you a lens to examine your beliefs. The trolley problem can be a train problem or a giant falling safe problem or a two-bombs-with-a-button-to-switch-detonators problem. The specifics aren't there for you to fantasise they're there to give context to one of the most entry-level problems in ethics.
You didn't impress your philosophy buddies by refusing to engage with a hypothetical. You made them groan and then they laughed about you when you left the room.
If such a faulty experiment is the basis of our ethics it's little wonder why the world has become such a cynical and nihilistic place.
Suggesting an alternative isn't refusing to engage with the hypothetical, it's engaging in the hypothetical in a way that someone who thinks they're so smart for studying philosophy should really fucking know how to entertain.
And again, the whole question was devised to point out that both answers are horrifying, morally bankrupt, and a logical conclusion of a faulty school of ethics, so insisting the question is "basic ethical philosophy" is just damning the entire foundation even more.
You're not making a case that I should feel embarrassed about a snafu in philosophical thinking, you're making a case that the real trolley problem is whether I should have gone back and shot the philosophy majors you think were snickering behind my back before they could do any actual damage by indoctrinating someone with actual deciding power into their effective death cult school of ethics where never thinking twice about "someone dies anyways" outcomes is perfectly reasonable.
Your "foundational ethics question" is equally as ridiculous as asking if I'd cheat on my SO if it would cure their cancer and also they wouldn't forgive me for it. That's not how anything ever works and insisting there's some deep meaning in it is a farce, and the author of the question itself intended for it to be a farce, and trying to defend it as anything but a farce just makes you a farce
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says philosophers should exercise more intellect
gets called anti-intellectual
There's weapon's grade something in this discussion but if it's anti-intellectualism I ain't the one bringing it son.
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The quote was a hyperbolic answer to someone sarcastically suggesting I was trying to act smarter than everyone else because the question is an infamous example of self styled philosophers simultaneously over and under thinking questions.
Overly obsessing the meaning they've read into what was originally posed as satire, and yet underthinking the details and implications of the scenarios they're describing.
We are expected to take the question as if we were there in person and yet they are not expected to adhere to a setting in which we could be there in person.
It's very "rules for thee..." and the fact that self proclaimed philosophers go so out of the way to insist on this supposed deep and foundational question really shoots the credibility of the profession to pieces if such a faulty question is actually as important to the lot as the people trying to insist I'm some uneducated ape for pointing out that "someone will die anyways" scenarios are inherently suspect.
I'm being completely serious here: if you have trouble understanding the concept of a hypothetical situation, you might be on the spectrum.
Dude wants to de-rail the trolley. Hes so worried about the people on the tracks he forgot about the people on the trolley, and he's the one saying the trolley problem can't exist in a vacuum. Well motherfucker, why have an empty autonomous trolley?
Cool, so if you dont vote for Harris, you're wasting your vote.
I also think philosophy is mostly dumb. But there is a vacuum here, shitty democracy or fascism. You can throw shit on the tracks, that just means one less vote against fascism
I was talking about the philosophy problem itself not the FPTP vote. As you could probably guess from the context of me dunking on the philosophy majors so much.
I said throw shit onto the track to try and stop the trolley once.
So you think the right thing to do is would do something that everyone knows wouldn't make the slightest improvement to the situation?
https://www.ncesc.com/geographic-pedia/what-can-stop-a-train/
Fair enough.. It would have been better started as a train problem than a trolley problem. But I personally wouldn't doing the philosophy majors too hard for that.
Trolleys aren't trains
Fair enough.. It would have been better stated as a train problem than a trolley problem. But I personally wouldn't ding the philosophy majors too hard for that.
And still, I have no idea what you could throw in front of a trolley to slow it down appreciably with only a few seconds to think.
Anything not bolted down, benches, trash cans, hell if it's small enough you could try throwing stuff at it directly to tip it off the track