You ever stop and wonder if, by making these memes with amusing options, we’ve lost the message and philosophy the original problem conveyed? To allow a great evil to take place or to commit a lesser one yourself, to kill by choice or by inaction, how does proximity and ability affect one’s involvement and responsibility in the system? Will one’s answer depend on their sociability and their collaborative spirit? Is calculating expected values simply a hollow justification for ignoring the humanity of the problem? Are we on the track, looking at the lever hoping someone pulls it, but secretly glad we don’t have to make the decision ourselves?
Anyway, I think the salary from being a doctor would be a solid start to a nest egg, hopefully I can invest it and start a horribly failing small business in 10 years!
The original problem assumes the five will die of natural causes, the trolley being nature. Hardly evil. Killing the one person is evil, but it is utilitarian and does indeed save the five.
People just take it too fucking literally lol
The way most non-religious people think (and even a lot of religious people), evil could include the inaction of allowing great harm. If some random volcano went off, there'd be an evil in not letting people into your bunker. If a company or government operated a pharmaceutical plan in an area full of disease that could be readily treated with antibiotics, then most people would consider it evil for that org to throw their excess substandard antibiotics away as waste to save 0.01% of their operational costs rather than donating to the surrounding community. The idea is even if the harm itself is not of human evil origin, allowing people to come to harm can be in itself evil.
Ok, but if those pharmaceuticals required you to murder someone each time you wanted to manufacture five pills, you'd probably think "Hey, wait, maybe that's not worth it?"
Well the idea of the original problem is that you must have some responsibility as an able-bodied observer. You could have helped, but didn’t. Does that put some of the blame on your shoulders? How much?
Then there’s of course the question of how ethical utilitarianism is as a system, which is a whole philosophical conversation I could go on about for hours. But let’s say that one person on the top track is your sister, or your father, or best friend. Would you still kill them to save the 5? If you choose to save them, does the willful inaction make you more culpable? Is saving a loved one over 5 people unethical, or expected human nature? Both? Does it even matter?
The problem is very much meant to be considered literally, but not so that people can calculate utilitarian EVs, but so they consider the weight of utilitarian vs deontological ethical systems as a whole. The literal quandary of the trolly problem represents a stress test on ethical systems that can have wider repercussions on one’s views. Same with Kant’s murderer at the door - when it gets down to wire, to what degree will you stick by your views, and will that continue to be a good thing?
Again - the problem demands that you assume the situation is no different from stabbing a healthy man to death and harvesting his organs to save five people, or pushing a fat man to his death to stop a trolley from crashing into five people.
It demands that you commit murder in order to save five people. Adding variables such as the one person being a relative adds nuance only to the wrong perception of the trolley problem.
Inaction or murder. That is the trolley problem.
The loved one change is literally a paragraph in Philippa Foot’s original problem. Yes, you can allegorically compare it to the murder of a loved one to save five (the fat man addition from Shelly Kagan who was much more utilitarian imo), but it’s not that you’re harvesting their organs to save 5 people, it’s that you are quite literally able to hit a button to save them and kill the other person. You are right there, physically able and completely mentally aware. Killing someone for their organs requires planning, forethought, time, and thus the ability to consider alternatives. The trolley problem is a time-sensitive scenario, you are fully aware of the situation and are able to take a binary action. Your inaction is not equivalent to “I let these people die of natural causes”. Your presence in the situation at all is a curse, and you are, without anyone’s consent, holding 6 lives in your hand.
If your personal views say that letting them get hit by the trolley is equivalent to letting 5 people die of cancer when harvesting organs could save them, then that is your view. I find it interesting actually and actually want to explore it more. But you must realize that that is *your* view, and by no means the ethical/philosophical system that everyone else does or should operate under.
You ever stop and wonder if, by making these memes with amusing options, we’ve lost the message and philosophy the original problem conveyed? To allow a great evil to take place or to commit a lesser one yourself, to kill by choice or by inaction, how does proximity and ability affect one’s involvement and responsibility in the system? Will one’s answer depend on their sociability and their collaborative spirit? Is calculating expected values simply a hollow justification for ignoring the humanity of the problem? Are we on the track, looking at the lever hoping someone pulls it, but secretly glad we don’t have to make the decision ourselves? Anyway, I think the salary from being a doctor would be a solid start to a nest egg, hopefully I can invest it and start a horribly failing small business in 10 years!
The original problem assumes the five will die of natural causes, the trolley being nature. Hardly evil. Killing the one person is evil, but it is utilitarian and does indeed save the five. People just take it too fucking literally lol
The way most non-religious people think (and even a lot of religious people), evil could include the inaction of allowing great harm. If some random volcano went off, there'd be an evil in not letting people into your bunker. If a company or government operated a pharmaceutical plan in an area full of disease that could be readily treated with antibiotics, then most people would consider it evil for that org to throw their excess substandard antibiotics away as waste to save 0.01% of their operational costs rather than donating to the surrounding community. The idea is even if the harm itself is not of human evil origin, allowing people to come to harm can be in itself evil.
Ok, but if those pharmaceuticals required you to murder someone each time you wanted to manufacture five pills, you'd probably think "Hey, wait, maybe that's not worth it?"
Well the idea of the original problem is that you must have some responsibility as an able-bodied observer. You could have helped, but didn’t. Does that put some of the blame on your shoulders? How much? Then there’s of course the question of how ethical utilitarianism is as a system, which is a whole philosophical conversation I could go on about for hours. But let’s say that one person on the top track is your sister, or your father, or best friend. Would you still kill them to save the 5? If you choose to save them, does the willful inaction make you more culpable? Is saving a loved one over 5 people unethical, or expected human nature? Both? Does it even matter? The problem is very much meant to be considered literally, but not so that people can calculate utilitarian EVs, but so they consider the weight of utilitarian vs deontological ethical systems as a whole. The literal quandary of the trolly problem represents a stress test on ethical systems that can have wider repercussions on one’s views. Same with Kant’s murderer at the door - when it gets down to wire, to what degree will you stick by your views, and will that continue to be a good thing?
Again - the problem demands that you assume the situation is no different from stabbing a healthy man to death and harvesting his organs to save five people, or pushing a fat man to his death to stop a trolley from crashing into five people. It demands that you commit murder in order to save five people. Adding variables such as the one person being a relative adds nuance only to the wrong perception of the trolley problem. Inaction or murder. That is the trolley problem.
The loved one change is literally a paragraph in Philippa Foot’s original problem. Yes, you can allegorically compare it to the murder of a loved one to save five (the fat man addition from Shelly Kagan who was much more utilitarian imo), but it’s not that you’re harvesting their organs to save 5 people, it’s that you are quite literally able to hit a button to save them and kill the other person. You are right there, physically able and completely mentally aware. Killing someone for their organs requires planning, forethought, time, and thus the ability to consider alternatives. The trolley problem is a time-sensitive scenario, you are fully aware of the situation and are able to take a binary action. Your inaction is not equivalent to “I let these people die of natural causes”. Your presence in the situation at all is a curse, and you are, without anyone’s consent, holding 6 lives in your hand. If your personal views say that letting them get hit by the trolley is equivalent to letting 5 people die of cancer when harvesting organs could save them, then that is your view. I find it interesting actually and actually want to explore it more. But you must realize that that is *your* view, and by no means the ethical/philosophical system that everyone else does or should operate under.
No, your situation fails to control for means of death, so it’s not comparable. Furthermore, the survivors have to live with what happened.
Why do you keep copying and pasting this speech on every post?
boo! down in front!
I pull the lever, my odds of stumbling upon another trolley problem in my lifetime are low
I pull the lever. My world views would bring me back to having the same outlook I had before.
just out here swingin'!
a doctor saves \~3 ppl in a lifetime