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"One real-life example that comes to my mind is whether we should have done COVID vaccine challenge trials." You don't know what the result of the trial will b
by jerf 6y ago
"One real-life example that comes to my mind is whether we should have done COVID vaccine challenge trials."
You don't know what the result of the trial will be, already taking us out of the domain of the trolley problem. If you knew it was going to kill everyone who had it but you'd get this particular bit of info that was guaranteed to have this result for the general population, then we'd be much closer, but there are multiple false assumptions to get there... and we still haven't discussed all the different ways we could run the trial because it's not a matter of "Either we do the trial this exact way, or we don't"; do we do a double-blind? Base it on multi-armed bandit math? Do we focus on certain demographics? And so on and so on.
Not a binary choice between these two guaranteed results; a huge range of possibilities, unknown outcomes, even things that are hard to measure outcomes.
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoSure, real life adds complexity! I still think the simplified question is a useful framework, similar to how the concept of an infinite two-dimensional plane is useful in mathematics. We can use it to understand the more-complicated real world. And, note that my father's stated position was that regardless of anything else, the risk of giving COVID to participants wasn't worth the potential of a faster vaccine, period. He wasn't thinking of those other issues you raised, because he hadn't gotten there yet. (He did say there was one scenario in which he'd support a challenge trial—if we found a drug which rendered COVID non-deadly, but could only be manufactured in low quantities. He had a specific candidate in mind. But that's basically opting out of the problem—he would pull the lever if the trolly wasn't deadly to the other guy.)