Having to choose between killing one or five people: am I missing something?

[StonedPhilosopher]

Ethics or philosophy the trolly problem is a sharp piece of reasoning which I think deserves to be applied to the ill conceived normative struggles of the day.

Its not.

It would be better if it were understood and it were applied.

 

[Jaguar]

Heteronormative society for the win. That is all.

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Also Jaguar is a buttmunch.

Infraction was worth it

I think an infraction for that nonsense you're posting would be a bit much.

 

[citizen cane]

As a Fi-er I stick with my lonesome homie and let the group die a horrible death. It's their fucking karma. I won't make it mine.

You see the irony here, right?

 

[Lark]

Yeah, that's usually how you get slavery and shit, carry on.

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I think an infraction for that nonsense you're posting would be a bit much.

Calling you a butt munch was what I meant, other stuff is free speech and shit, dontcha know?

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You see the irony here, right?

When the wind blows and the snow falls, the lone wolf dies, the pack survives.

 

[Population: 1]

Ah utilitarianism. The greater good. I believe a great man had something to say about this very idea:

 

[burningranger]

You see the irony here, right?

When the wind blows and the snow falls, the lone wolf dies, the pack survives.

Every other day (when the snow is not falling) the pack robs the wolf of his individuality and takes turns in raping his soul. That's why he became a lone wolf in the first place.

 

[Jaguar]

Calling you a butt munch was what I meant, other stuff is free speech and shit, dontcha know?

No.

 

[EcK]

Today was my first day of Senior year, and in "Ethics in the Modern World" there was a question on the board--mentioned in the thread title--that was something along these lines:



This is what I jotted down in my notebook:



The teacher tallied up everyone's answers and found that >80% of the ~20 kids made the same choice. We didn't have any discussion on what each choice would entail besides what was on the board (each class on the first day is 15 minutes long to just sort of get acquainted with it, so it was kind of justified).

Anyway, why would anyone choose the other option? Because by pulling the lever, you'd be sort of committing murder by willingly killing someone who would've originally lived? But if you didn't pull the lever, you'd be willingly killing five people by not intervening.

Thoughts?

My thought: you should have figured all that stuff out on your own years ago.

 

[ChocolateMoose123]

I read someone answer this question by saying the body parts would eventually stack up and stop the train, so best not to do anything. Not sure they understand physics but congrats on becoming a nihilist.

 

[Population: 1]

The one people usually decide to do nothing on is the bus one where pushing the fat guy in front of the bus saves others down the line from being hit. I guess killing by pulling a lever is more acceptable than having to physically push a guy to his death.

It's probably why it's easier to get people to kill with drones than say actually have to grab a man and stab him in the heart, feel him convulse, watch his eyes grip yours in the horrible realization that he's dying and then feel the warm rush of his blood cover your hands.

 

[Coriolis]

Today was my first day of Senior year, and in "Ethics in the Modern World" there was a question on the board--mentioned in the thread title--that was something along these lines:



This is what I jotted down in my notebook:

In physics, we often make simplifying assumptions. We do this because the problem is often far too complicated to admit an exact solution. The question always is: how much can we simplify the problem, before the problem we are actually able to solve is too dissimilar to the actual situation to be useful.

IME, philosophical problems like this are guilty of oversimplifying life choices to the point that the answers are basically useless. Real people in real situations are rarely limited to such narrowly defined choices, so asking what one might do in such a simplified case says little about how one will act in the many real-world situations that actually present themselves.

 

[Totenkindly]

The one people usually decide to do nothing on is the bus one where pushing the fat guy in front of the bus saves others down the line from being hit. I guess killing by pulling a lever is more acceptable than having to physically push a guy to his death.

It's probably why it's easier to get people to kill with drones than say actually have to grab a man and stab him in the heart, feel him convulse, watch his eyes grip yours in the horrible realization that he's dying and then feel the warm rush of his blood cover your hands.

Well, unless you're Dexter, I guess.

But yeah. It's normal human instinct -- when you need to hurt someone, unless you're a psycho, you step back / detach yourself in some way and it makes it easier.

 

[ChocolateMoose123]

I never liked this hypothetical. Always thought killing one makes sense in every aspect. Remember the Titanic, how the boiler rooms were shut killing those in it in order to save/prolong the rest of the lives on the ship? That's sort of what happens IRL when emotions aren't in play as forefront.

At least, I would like to see the comparisons to counterpart scenarios. The first being the dilemma as given. The second, the one person is a loved one and the five are unknown strangers. Then reverse it. Five loved ones, one stranger. I think you would rarely see continuity between all scenarios.

 

[Coriolis]

It's probably why it's easier to get people to kill with drones than say actually have to grab a man and stab him in the heart, feel him convulse, watch his eyes grip yours in the horrible realization that he's dying and then feel the warm rush of his blood cover your hands.

Even better, tell them it's just a game. Then they won't think of the people as real at all. (See Ender's Game.)

 

[á´…eparted]

I've seen this one a lot over the years, and it is interesting. Or at least, it became so recently when I saw some fMRI studies explained that used this as an illustrative tool.

When posed the original question, the vast majority will choose to pull the lever and kill the 1 person over the 5 set to die. In the brain there is activity in the thinking regions and whatnot. However, when the questions is changed slightly things get more interesting: You're posed with the same scenario. Except, to save the 5 and kill the 1, you must push the one person off a ledge who will hit the train (killing him) and stop the 5 from dying. Of course this isn't how physics would work, but the hypothetical stated it would work and assume it would work. The interesting part here, is in this version of the thought experiments, the participants amygdala (the emotional center of the brain) and the hippocampus lit up like a christmas tree. Many participants in the study paused, changed their original answer, or couldn't answer. In this scenario the psychological distance from the killing is far closer and it takes over. What was significant in the study is clinical psychopaths had no brain action in these regions, and answered to push the individual off the ledge with zero hesitation.

With myself, I definitely felt my emotional end "wake up" when I was posed this version of the question and I hesitated. I would push, but it would "hurt" to some extent and would take a day or so to work out any guilt or bad feelings.

 

[StonedPhilosopher]

Today in class, we discussed the question. The first one to speak made the exact points I was going to make, and after someone who chose the other spoke, someone else yet again stole what I was going to say.

Anyway, the stuff about if we knew some or all of the people, and whether you're responsible if you don't pull the lever, was discussed. It didn't really change my mind.

 

[Agent Washington]

Hard's post is correct, though I don't remember teh details. The point of conducting these cognitive experiments is also to understand how people react in certain ways, and whether or not the right choices can be made... And to what extent the actions involved would probably change the emotional or psychological reaction of the actor.

This is a more interesting comparison wrt human psychology and ... well. ... ethics. since both don't exist without one another.

I wouldn't push unless it's someone i know within the five, or unless it's clear that the five are there due to institutional injustice and the one is there... benefitting from institutional injustice. Because, in real life, THIS is what is going to happen. Not all people are worth the same in the eyes of society. And those who are worth less in the eyes of society are usually the first to fall.

The lever? Who cares? It's utilitarianism vs principle. This is a situation where in philosophy it's to determine whether principle/morals (I irc it's called universalism, idgaf) Update: It's moral absolutism or sheer hardcore utilitarianism. It's a thought experiment. If you put gandhi in that situation and gandhi's philosophy is 'do no harm', then he's not going to pull the lever or push the person off, but if you force him to because it's the 'right' choice then it disregards his dignity. Sartre is right in that both are choices. That's the nature of being. So basically it's just a really simple one, reality is always more complicated than that, and there are reasons to determine which one is right or wrong, and at the end of the day if you don't believe in the sanctity of human life or the equality of human life (which, if you look at the world, society, and how people react to the news, you will know that people implicitly DO NOT believe that all human lives are equal, even if they say otherwise). so. fuck ppl

And how many times are you realistically going to stand there and pull levers while people vote for warmongers or perpetuate systemic inequality everyday with erroneous beliefs that have already been disproven by social sciences... people... like. ....lark................? It's bullshit. Those choices are illusory in the context of the world system.

 

[anticlimatic]

I don't like the amount of certainty in play regarding the question's relevance towards actual potential moral dilemmas people could face. I'd like to see a few questions with more comparable odds thrown in. Like:

You think there is a good chance five people might be tied to the track, but you're not positive. However you can see the one person is clearly tied and pulling the lever would kill them.
or
There is a second lever that will blow up the train and you along with it- push one, the other, or neither?

 

[Typh0n]

Deciding who gets to live or die seems random and arbitrary. I don't see myself as having that authority.

Who am I to say the lives of five individuals are worth more than the life of one individual? The argument assumes that quanity is better. Perhaps commiting an act of murder five times (either by killing five people at once or at seperate instances) is worse than murdering only one person, but the whole question rests on the principle that I have some authority to decide who gets to live and die. If I act on such presumed authority, and pull the lever, I am commiting murder of one person. If I don't pull the lever I am letting five people die, which isn't the same thing as deciding who gets to live.

 

[Tater]