re: trolley problems
@amiloradovsky @namark
Most internet trolley problems exist for entertainment. The serious version I most see includes no people tied to train tracks. It compares one problem of saving 1 unaware bystander on supposedly disused tracks vs 5 workers doing maintenance on the regular tracks, versus a problem of killing 1 healthy person and harvesting the organs to save 5 sick people.
The point is just to explore the flaws of "save the greatest number".
re: trolley problems
@amiloradovsky @namark In both cases, the real issue is the expectations of the individuals. The workers are aware of risks, while the bystander has a reasonable expectation of safety. You as a third party saving the workers causes moral hazard by encouraging bad safety habits.
In the second case, the issue is that saving 5 people in the short term will have long term negative impacts due to healthy people wanting to protect themselves from organ harvesting.
re: trolley problems
Now you're not supposed to argue the analogy forever, they're just simplified frameworks to highlight the basic dynamics of an issue before you move on to more realistic examples.
But you don't start from real example because reality is complex and most people are dumb.
re: trolley problems
For an extra fun demonstration where namark's point is also correct, see the Good Place episode with the trolley problems, where the character who turns the thought experiment into a hyper-realistic simulation really is just torturing the ethics teacher for his own amusement.
re: trolley problems
@machado My point applies to all interpretations of the problem.
How is it that you know that either the workers or the bystander will have to die, and both the workers and the bystander (or anyone else that might be involved) are uninformed and entirely powerless? Did you cut their only communication lines? Seal all the possible escape routes? How did you absolutely ensure their chances of survival to be nil, or somehow exactly equivalent, all dependent on this single lever?
How did you find this exact number of people, and accurately predict, that before a willing or otherwise diseased donor is found they will all die, unless at this very second you butcher another person of all of their organs, which will, by a miracle alignment of all stars and planets, save them all. Or are you suggesting to preemptively butcher people, to always have enough organs "in stock", and sell the meat as well, cause why not at that point?
The problem is much more fundamentally flawed than you think, and there are people who are either convinced that majority should always be chosen, or that there is no clear choice, without questioning the premise which is in no way natural and most certainly orchestrated. I've yet to read an example that doesn't make its author look like that puppet from saw (though I haven't watched the movies).
There are situations where we are forced to make uninformed choices, but those are just that, we make them and we face the consequences. There is no right or wrong in that regard. The trolley problem is not uninformed however, it requires us to be informed to a degree only possible if we are the orchestrator, or being manipulated by the orchestrator.
@amiloradovsky@functional.cafe
