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It’s not ducking the issue, it’s denying the framing. “If you give me the choice of hitting X or Y” of two nearly the same things I would not focus any energy o
by satisfice 5y ago
It’s not ducking the issue, it’s denying the framing. “If you give me the choice of hitting X or Y” of two nearly the same things I would not focus any energy on making the choice, but instead devote my energy to finding a way out of the choice until it’s too late to make any choice. If I can’t find a way out then I want to postpone things as much as possible to allow time for the situation to change.
I deny the whole premise that there are correct moral conclusions in these hairsplitting situations. It’s not the choice itself but the act of struggling with and living with the choice that matters, morally. A machine is incapable of that struggle, so it is immoral to create machines that face such choices. In effect, the self-driving car is an attempt by humans to escape responsibility for whatever damage driving might do.
- dash2 5y agoBut your claim that the situations are nearly the same is itself a moral evaluation. (And it’s clearly false in many of the cases presented.)
- satisfice 5y agoIt’s a philosophical evaluation, which underlies morality. On that meta level I am saying it is immoral to perform this kind of “morality” data collection. This does not get us to a better world. The nature of morality is not like making a table of logarithms that you then look up answers from.