Trolley problem thread? Trolley problem thread

... You'd have saved five lives at the cost of one life.

This is a common reaction. Trolley problem studies usually go like this:
People are presented with the regular variation (OP), people are presented with the fat man variation (pic). Even though the problems are the same exact thing, majority of people will approve of pulling the switch to save a net of four lives, but will disapprove of pushing the fat man to save a net of four lives.

"You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by putting something very heavy in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you – your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?"

Shit, looks like I solved the trolley problem. They'll have to update the textbooks.

If you're not constantly out feeding starving kids in Africa, your inaction is causing the death of others. So why aren't you, you track-switching pleb?

Okay. You're driving your new self driving car, when 5 little children suddenly (and illegally) run to the open highway. The only options that the self driving car has are:

a) kill the five children (who broke traffic law)
b) or kill you

Don't act as if utilitarianism is somehow "obviously" the right choice.

Then, let's pose a second question.

You are a doctor in a hospital, and you have 6 patients, all in dire need of working organs - one a heart, another needs kidneys, another a liver etc-, but otherwise healthy people, who will die if they don't receive the functional organs they need.
Now a healthy man walks in for a checkup. You could bring him under, and then transplant his working organs to the 6 recipients. This will save 6 lives for the cost of one. You could also just do the check-up.

What would you do?

You're saving a net of five lives, surely?

The problems aren't exactly the same - in one, the death of the man is predetermined by someone else's having placed him on the track. If I drop the fat man onto the track, then I'm not making the best of a bad situation, but proactively deciding that it's right to use a human that way. Not the same thing at all.

You're talking there not about a thought experiment, but about a real-world scenario, discussing which would derail (ha!) the thread.

6 to 5 obviously.

>the death of the man is predetermined by someone else's having placed him on the track
What? And this justifies your murdering him because.....

It is the exact same thing. You murder someone, to save 4 lives. You don't murder someone, and 4 other people die.

What? But my preferring to kill the five children there would be self-interest, an entirely different issue.

I'd just do the checkup. Why do you think this is analogous?

Because it's the only choice open to me in the circumstances. I save five lives if I switch, not four. Everyone is of value, they're not just figures in a math problem.

So, you only uphold utilitarianism if it doesn't affect you?

You think it is okay for you to murder someone to save 4 lives, but it is not okay for you to die to save 5 lives?

Yes, of course.

it's not really a choice between murder or accidental death or even the numbers
this is a no choice because the effect is the same other than 4 or 1

basically it is a hypothetical without context, an incomplete situation without explanation

it's only a dilemma because there is nothing to go on other than the difference between 1 and 4

... And again, I'd be saving five lives, not four.

>Because it's the only choice open to me in the circumstances
No it isn't.
>I save five lives
? There is no scenario where you save five lives.
>Everyone is of value
So, you're an utilitarian. So I am going to assume that you'd agree that you should be killed in because more lives saved = the better.

But why does anyone find it a dilemma? The solution is obvious, in the absense of anything else to go on.

it's not a solution because there is no question or rather the choices makes no difference

Yes, in this scenario I save five lives, unless you believe that human beings have no intrinsic value, which may be true for the purpose of the exercise, but doesn't map onto real-world ethics usefully in my view. Five people are saved. You don't subtract the guy who died, I don't understand how that view of the situation would be arrived at.

Of course I wouldn't agree that I should be killed, my survival is of paramount importance to me. Survival first, then ethics, to paraphrase Brecht.

But there is one obviously preferable solution.

It appears that thought experiments in ethics classes are like specious versions of Zen koans, and the students are meant to just nod a little and look impressed. In reality, once you add in the emphasis the police and the media would place on your action, you might have some tense moments but you're not going to be charged with manslaughter in those circumstances.

hence why it is only a picture with no background and no words nothing recognizable except the immediate

it's not an exercise in ethics or value of humans or guilt because it would have been presented in another way, what if it was 1 man on the trigger and baby seals on the tracks, the emphasis at least I see it is not man versus man but 1 versus 4

then again there is the obvious answer sure but it's only to minimize the action, not because it's better to kill less

Surely it is an exercise in ethics? I thought it was an ethical thought experiment?

Why is everyone changing the five to four? Five people are on the track you're changing from, five lives are saved.

it seems like an ethical thought experiment or you want to make it into an ethical thought experiment by adding things that's not in there
that's what i am saying at the purest it is not killing because they didn't die, you assume they died because of tracks and being tied and and so forth but that's not what it shows it's hypothetical to the point of letting you decide what this problem is about

Let's say you're a surgeon, a very talented and skilled one.

A terrorist releases a biological weapon that randomly destroys people's vital organs. Thankfully it is stopped quickly but 5 people were infected by this terrorist, all down a different organ each.

Let's say theoretically you have a patient in your care who has the 5 organs you need and is a perfect match for these five people. You will not face any trouble, legal or otherwise (the media, etc) for your action.

Is it morally justifiable to kidnap this backpacker and take his organs to save these 5 victims of a terrorist attack?

And if not... why kill the fat man?

Then why does my answer to it classify me as a utilitarian?

you have to show me

No, it isn't. I wouldn't proactively kill anyone, which this would involve. If you look back, I was also against killing the fat man.

>Being this plebeian

All you are doing is actively ending someone's life

>Implying this user knows the vaguest thing about Utilitarianism

My action is saving five lives.

The real problem is how to kill all six at once.

/thread

Ah, my mistake.

One could remove the organs without killing them first. People can live for long without heart and kidneys. Then the death would become an unfortunate byproduct of saving the five, and not something intentionally done

>autisan

>People can live for long without heart and kidneys.

I think this is probably inaccurate.

> Just roll the dice.
> roll

0-4 you pull the lever
5-9 you don't
Dubs and everyone get killed

>implying random innocent people dying isn't inherently bad rendering any decision irrelevant

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Would you rather kill five commies or one proddie?

>Treating human life as a means to end
Kant would like a word with you

Definitely the proddie, we need all the men we can get for the revolution.

This was an ethics discussion, not a philosophical discussion. I have no interest in philosophy except as literature.

What if they are mensheviks?

And conveniently enough Kant created his own ethical system

As stated earlier, this argument makes no sense. You're not in a position of power to save those kids in Africa, while you are very much so in a position to save those 5 people.

Now, imagine that instead of 5 people you're letting die 500 instead of 1 and that's where your logic hopefully stops making sense to you.

Came here to post this

Kant is a bitch nigga who can suck my nuts.

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You are in position to save kids in Africa. There is nothing stopping you from joining the red cross and going to Africa RIGHT NOW.
They will accept any halfway useful volunteer.

It's immoral to take part in it. You can't with clear conscience pull the lever. How is that so hard to understand?

They're not really exactly the same. The fat man one doesn't offer certainty of outcome for one thing.

You can't with clear conscience not pull the lever either.

There's not certainty of outcome in that matter, and just volunteering willy nilly can wind up costing them money in the long run.

I didn't set this up. Those people are in God's hands now.

Nah, they're in your hands.

There's also no guarantee that that particular choice will be more beneficial in the long run compared to an alternate career path.

In that situation the only potentially moral answer is to do nothing or sacrifice yourself. Hell, there's no real guarantee the fat man will stop the train, so you potentially just murdered a person and, hell, could even have injured or killed the people in the trolley in addition. And what is to say you can even push the fat-ass? Maybe he weighs so much you wont be able to budge him? Maybe he takes offense and throws you over instead? Maybe there are emergency break sensor on the trolley that stop it before reaching the five people. Maybe the five people are suicidal cultist that might go on doing more heinous things by saving them, etc.

I agree it's okay to not pull the lever. But what do you think about accidentally pulling it, is it okay to pull it again to get everything back to how they originally were?

I think it's acceptable to pull it again, do you agree?

>alternate career path
Are you talking about your benefit or the benefit of the needy?

>There's not certainty of outcome in that matter
Sure there is. You can guarantee that your aid will help someone. It's entirely possible that some other event will kill them later, but that is true for the trolley problem as well.

>volunteering willy nilly
If they accept you then they will find a use for you. You might just wind up passing out pamphlets, but you're doing something to further the cause. You could also volunteer a soup kitchen or some other place like that.

This is a thought experiment. The fat man WILL stop the train. Any extraneous circumstances are avoiding the point.

In this context, the "greater good" or "society".

An engineer or scientist is better of researching shit than being a random volunteer.

Research takes quite some time. You cannot guarantee that your research will save anyone. Thousands could die before your work bears fruit.
You can guarantee the survival of specific individuals by passing out rations etc.

Fine, I won't be reading him.

This is the thinking that leads to the bloat of Big Charity, where everyone is expected to throw reason aside and randomly throw money. Africans have pointed out the flaws in these plans. Europeans have pointed out the flaws in these plans. Americans have pointed out the flaws in these plans. But still, they always attract plenty of well-meaning idiots.

Killing vs letting die is retarded because you're implying the person pulling the lever matters

Detach your ego

So what you're saying is that it's not wrong to leave the people on the track alone as long as you decide to research automated trolley braking systems? Interesting.

I'm not entering into the thought exercise thing, I'm talking about the real world.

Last thread this one was posted and no one solved it. Can we do better this time and get a real solution?

pull right

>random anime song
What's the point if i cant really chose my own beats?
All star all the way.

Kek

All Star of course. Hopefully it'll be playing the first line of the song when it hits the people on the track.

clever

anybody got a link to the last thread, I love these

But any extraneous circumstances is the point. A limited thought experiment like that is of no inherent value, because it fails to account for just as valid nuances that are more common in real life than an absolute decision between two evils.

the trolley has now become an unstoppable trolley mech

you can choose not to pull the levers but you’ll miss out on the opportunity to hit stuff with your sick-ass robot arms

1. That would literally be choosing the one instead of the five

2. There's no guarantee you'll be a good enough volunteer. You may be less efficient than another volunteer who would have taken your place, or you may be incompetent enough to jeopardize people's lives (like inadvertently spreading disease, for instance).

Bottom line is, since both paths are uncertain, the situation isn't really applicable to justify a decision in the thought experiment.

You don't even have to volunteer. You could just send all of your excess cash and sell off all of your unneeded possessions.

Truly a clear sighted individual.

It's analogous in the way that you kill one to save 5.

What kind of stupid question is this. A good song vs. random cancer?
Gee I wonder

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Because I dislike fat people, the lives saved by my decision were just a side thought

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who the fuck makes all these trolley memes

9gag

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I am getting tired of you, t*rk.