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It's really easy to see the answer to the supposed contradiction here: the question about torture is asked first, with no additional information. The question a

It's really easy to see the answer to the supposed contradiction here: the question about torture is asked first, with no additional information. The question about torturing the fat man presupposes that it increases the chance of finding the bomb by a large percentage. Torture is commonly cited as being far more effective than it is. This ultimately comes down to how people deal with being presented hypotheticals with false information. Many people will ignore commonly repeated lies, even in hypotheticals. Some people follow the hypothetical. Some people ignore the lie. Some people come over here to HN to point out the lie, and point out that the "philosophers" who posit these kinds of questions should probably be the ones tortured if you're going to torture anybody.

s1artibartfast 5y ago
The test results are input specific, so it is unclear what contradiction you got from the test.
version_five 5y ago
Yeah I'm not a philosopher, but I am an artificial intelligence researcher, and I feel like these questions have some aspect of the old rules based or expert system thinking in them, where we try to codify human thinking and it doesn't work because there are always edge cases and new information. These, and questions like them (typical of many surveys) assume that its possible to give an answer to a complex question based on limited (or closed) sets of facts. It's not in general, if it was we'd have human-like rules engines
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  I think this is the opposite of surveys. It gives you a set of unquestionable facts to eliminate edge cases. It is not claiming that it can be generalized to the edge cases or new information. If anything, I think the failure that people make when taking it is an inability to distinguish between absolute questions and general question. Without this skill, you end up with people saying "torture is unacceptable under any circumstance", then later saying "I didn't mean to include the circumstances where the stakes are high or it will work"

s1artibartfast 5y ago

The test results are input specific, so it is unclear what contradiction you got from the test.

version_five 5y ago

Yeah I'm not a philosopher, but I am an artificial intelligence researcher, and I feel like these questions have some aspect of the old rules based or expert system thinking in them, where we try to codify human thinking and it doesn't work because there are always edge cases and new information. These, and questions like them (typical of many surveys) assume that its possible to give an answer to a complex question based on limited (or closed) sets of facts. It's not in general, if it was we'd have human-like rules engines

s1artibartfast 5y ago
I think this is the opposite of surveys. It gives you a set of unquestionable facts to eliminate edge cases. It is not claiming that it can be generalized to the edge cases or new information. If anything, I think the failure that people make when taking it is an inability to distinguish between absolute questions and general question. Without this skill, you end up with people saying "torture is unacceptable under any circumstance", then later saying "I didn't mean to include the circumstances where the stakes are high or it will work"