Trolly problem: plot twist
7I don’t recall who or when but a link was posted in the forum regarding a trolly problem, to determine how ethical/moral one is by counting the number of people who would hypothetically die by train if a one had to make a choice between two train tracks.
Well I saw this and wanted to share a plot twist.
- 8 comments, 7 replies
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Unintended consequences, which is (or should be) the center of every “if you could go back in time and change one thing” story.
Peter Capaldi’s character in The Devil’s Hour:
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/the_devils_hour/s01
Is it wrong that I laughed?
@yakkoTDI Mmmm, nope. Nor is it wrong if you didn’t.
@werehatrack @yakkoTDI Or it could be that both choices are wrong.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That would be ‘trolley’.
EDIT: Oh no
This is what you’d want for situations like that:
I had to Google what the trolley problem is. Yikes.
I will now forever question my choices.
This is another potential version of it that I found recently:
(I’m glad to see that displays correctly enough.)
@xobzoo So there’s a solution where you can get them all!
Like the kid in the hospital, I didn’t see that coming until it was too late.
@mehcuda67
Neither did he.
I don’t know if you discussed this the last time, but there was a study done once that phrased the question slightly differently (and oddly, works slightly with this video).
First, they asked a group of people the standard question, sacrificing one person to save multiple by rerouting the trolly. Most said they would.
Then they asked a similar question: (I don’t remember verbatim, but something like this)
There are five people waiting for transplants that won’t receive them and will die. There is a visitor in the hospital who would be a perfect donor for all five people waiting for a transplant. Would you sacrifice the one donor so that the five on the transplant list could live?
Perhaps obviously almost no one was OK with that scenario… but the outcome of the scenario is the same. Sacrifice one person so that five may live. If it’s rerouting a trolly people see it (generally) as ethically acceptable and the right thing to do. If it’s hacking someone to pieces for parts (even though it’s saving five lives) people don’t like it and say it is unethical.
@OnionSoup But if it was a plot to a movie, most of the people who objected would be standing in line to see it.
@mehcuda67 @OnionSoup Plot to a movie? Something close was The Belko Experiment.
@OnionSoup
These are not at all identical or similar ethical scenarios …
At least I see them as not resembling the other
(And I see both of them as no more than simplistic thought experiments. So I don’t much care.)
In first scenario (standard trolley prob)
the initial situation is random, initial events and likelihoods of survival are not, as far as we know, “owned” by any party; only the party who makes the choice has even a tiny amount of control over the possible outcomes. .
In the 2nd scenario
We generally assume that most people not fighting a war and therefore under orders to do v dangerous things or be put in danger … and also not violently attacking someone at this exact moment or likely to very soon … and also someone not under a death sentence …and who is not in a war zone where errors and weapon/operator/stress issues might make people part of collateral damage … etc etc etc …
In the absence of those sorts of factors, a person has the right to their own body parts. And that right is kinda inalienable. And valued in any culture that we might consider even vaguely “civilized” by today’s standards.
(Even if that standard of personal ownership of one’s own body is often violated by sociopaths, psychopaths, within violent marriages, and within rogue states and cults, etc)
[exceptions exist, such as parents/guardian controlling the decisions and health of children and those who are mentally in dementia; emergency provisions to protect the life of a person by removing a body part when the body part is in a condition that, if left attached, would kill the person (such as emergency amputations or appendectomies and the like, to save the life of the patient, when the patient isn’t in a condition to approve a decision)]
Also human adult who is even infinitesimally well-informed knows that the biz of transplants is a far from perfect one.
Amd no ethical physician would perform the second supposed “solution”
Medical care ethics does not support destroying healthy patient in order to possibly save a fragile one
(tho adults will sometimes sacrifice themselves voluntarily for children, for the vulnerable, for their families or countries or co-workerkers, etc
But the choice usually belongs to the person who might make the sacrifice)
Emergency ethics, and life/death ethics can get v complex v quickly.
the second scenario is phony baloney.
We’d have to live in a Orwellian horror state before that became anything that could be discussed in ethical terms.
But the first scenario, the “trolley problem) is also phony baloney.
It’s fine for a classroom or lecture hall thought experiment. Illustrative that sometimes some people will face horrible decisions with no satisfactory outcome, and what does the person do?
But there’s nothing potentially real-world about it.
In a real world “trolley incident”, there would be infinities of specific available sight/sound/etc data and assessments of alternatives which an ethical “decider” would at east attempt to consider.
None of this is offered in the minimalist theoretical example.
But, we all know that in s real-world situation, we would be trying to figure out what to do based on the particulars.
Emergencies are almost never as simple as x# live with this outcome, y# live with that outcome
Reality is far too complex for that sort of simplistic ethical choice modeling to predict what we see as the possibility of how we might behave when we are trying to be ethical in an emergency.
(At least this will never re experienced within the “lived lives”, as opposed to “thought experiment lives” version of realiity).
And varying degrees of being able to control anything
What about stress? What about reflexes? What about ability to assess and evaluate? What about ability to operate control systems?
We all know that all of this would figure into any real situation. So it’s hard to take the trolley problem as being useful beyond its function as an example of a simplistic ethical insolvable conundrum.
—
Ethics itself can get v complex. The ancient worlds (various ones: Greek, Egyptian, Mayan, Roman, Jewish, Chinese, Rift Valley, Chinese, Tigris/Euphrates, other ancient civilizations; all had their various ethical and social codes and laws.
Some of that stuff is still pretty applicable and acceptable today.
(Thou shalt not kill which has too often been “honored in the breach”, but we still seem yo think it’s pretty good.
We still find value in the Hippocratic Oath.
And much of that ancient stuff would have been considered horrible even before the Enlightenment, let alone the 1800s.
And perhaps 40 years ago pretty much no one was talking publicly about micro-aggressions, even tho the victims of these were very well aware of them. (there were bigger fights to engage then.)
In 10-30 years we will have new areas of ethical discussion (as yet un-thought of, or as yet at the edges of awareness for most) about how to treat others and about what internal values to carry…
.
And these newish factors and issues will need to be added into the discussions on existing problems.
And on it goes.
I hope we don’t quit.
In the meantime … the trolley prob,
as presented, is nothing any of us will actually face.
If any of us even encounter something like this, there will be lots of extra factors, and each of us will try to include all the info we can assess as we try to make our choices … (if we are capable of action in the moment).
And, if a potential tragedy we might face cannot be avoided, no matter how we might choose (if we have the option of choice), it will all be be a terrible and bitter experience.