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Trolley problems suck. Anybody's response is meaningless unless we take into account the context they have in their heads. A very common piece of context is:
by MrPatan 4y ago
Trolley problems suck.
Anybody's response is meaningless unless we take into account the context they have in their heads.
A very common piece of context is: "If you touch something and people die, it's your fault. If you don't touch anything and people die, you can very convincingly claim in front of a judge 'It wasn't me, I didn't touch anything!'"
That's a very different setting than "I'm a philosopher who wants to show how much I care or don't about total utility to other philosophers"
- adrianmsmith 4y agoThis is exactly how I've come to think about them as well. If you get involved with something, someone might blame you. I think that's why (bad) managers often just don't seem to make any decisions. You need to know if the feature should be like X or Y, why won't they just make a decision and tell you? It's because they instinctively understand if they can get away with not making a decision (e.g. you stop waiting and just go for one of the option, or you contact someone else to make a decision) then there's less chance they'll be blamed for stuff.
- mikkergp 4y agoI think the emotional context / trauma is interesting as well when considering many of the scenarios. Regardless of some sort of external validation, how will you feel after incident? The "If you touch something and people die, it's your fault" description is very clean and logical. or something like "I don't want to play god, when there's so much uncertainty", and lots of people leave it at that. But what would your conscious hoist upon you in the days and years after you made your decision. What could you _actually_ live with, not what do you think you could live with.